>> Live from London, England, it's theCUBE, covering .NEXT Conference Europe 2018, brought to you by Nutanix. >> Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman. You're watching theCUBE's coverage of Nutanix .NEXT 2018 in London, England. Joep is my cohost for two days of live coverage. Happy to welcome back to the program Dan McConnell, who's the vice president of Open HCI Solutions at Dell EMC. Dan, great to see you again. >> Great to be back. Always a pleasure to see you guys. >> Yeah, so Dan, actually first time I met you, same time I first met Joep was at the Vienna show two years ago. Dell has multi-year partnership with Nutanix. I see you stateside here and there at some Dell events also. But you know, Dell is Nutanix biggest partner as an OEM. So give us the state of the state. >> Actually just crossed, last quarter, crossed over a billion dollars in sales. >> And I think overall-- (stutters) Said $3 billion worth of total sales, so a billion of that through Dell. That's pretty impressive. >> Yep, yep. I jokingly say, biggest quarter ever! Every quarter's the biggest quarter ever. And we expect Q four yet to be the biggest quarter ever. So it's a strong business, continues to grow, over 2,000 customers and growing. Continues to be a good partnership. >> It's funny you say but it's not joking, it is, every quarter is the biggest quarter ever, despite some people in the marketplace, oh, well that relationship's dead, right? So talk to us a little bit about the portfolio and where it fits, 'cause obviously the revenue numbers speak for themselves, the customers, and the like, so... >> Absolutely. My easiest way to describe it is HCI is, it's a style of architecture, right? Just like in the old three-tier land we had multiple arrays and our servers support multiple operating systems, just like in HCI we're gonna address the market with a portfolio. We've got more than one product. It is a portfolio to address the whole market. So the partnership continues. Strong focus on enabling the Nutanix stack. We're gonna be the best hardware infrastructure solution for the Nutanix stack. It's a portfolio approach, it's what makes us the leader in HCI across all of our products. And it will continue forward. So I know we always get that, well, you've got multiple HCI products, which one will win? HCI's a style of architecture. We're gonna have a portfolio. >> Yeah, we saw that in the CI space, we see it in every market. Especially storage, there's never been somebody that can get more than 20 or 30% of the market. >> So what makes it special? Running Nutanix on Dell, what makes it special? Why would customers wanna do that? >> Let's see, how long do we have? No. The easiest description here, one, I'll focus on LCM, lifecycle management, the thing that is core to Nutanix. Ease of use, one click, I'll use the one click. We actually have the best integration into their overall LCM package. It literally is one click from the Prism UI to update all of the server firmware as well. And it's cluster-aware. So we know how to evacuate, we know how to flash stuff, and repatriate the data. So it's actually, it's something we have that no one else has. We are, once again, like I said before, we will be the best hardware platform, best infrastructure to fit into the Nutanix stack. I'll say stack these days 'cause what was once HCI is now a list of single-word products that is a pretty big stack and growing. >> So you know, zooming into LCM a little bit. So back when I was at Customer, I build IS platforms. And that whole operational pain of keeping hardware up to date, keeping the firmwares up to date, that sounds like a very operational benefit for the teams working with those products. So how does this work into freeing up time for people doing other stuff on that platform? >> That is the whole goal. Hate to fall into catchphrases, but invisible infrastructure. The goal is to make the entire infrastructure easy, simple, invisible, such that more and more... IT is becoming the differentiation piece for businesses focusing much more up-stack in how to innovate around the business logic side of the equation as opposed to the infrastructure componentry. As IT becomes an innovation engine for customers, they need that focus more towards the business, less towards the bits and bytes of the infrastructure. All of what we do is focus to enable that. >> So even if you're talking about making infrastructure invisible, making it easy to operate and manage, there's still a lot going on in the infrastructure space. Specifically around hardware, around running applications. One of the things I learned is that you are now certified to run SAP on top of it. So please explain how that works, what it means for customers. >> Absolutely, absolutely. I don't know, we sat in places like this four years ago and people would ask, well, what workloads are good for HCI? We'd say Test/Dev and DDI. Nowadays it's everywhere. It's what workloads aren't good for HCI? And I woulda told you, you know, two years ago, well, big databases, blah blah blah. But at this point everything's within HCI. HCI has been the style of infrastructure that could run any workload. And our certification with SAP is just a huge instantiation with that. Matter of fact, I believe we are the only one that has a two socket and a four socket certified from an HCI perspective. Something we're very proud of, something we'll continue to lean into moving forward. >> Yeah, Dan, absolutely. When I've been talking to customers it's those edge cases. It was, you know, my AS/400 I haven't migrated over because I'm actually gonna modernize and put that stuff in the cloud or things like that. So any application on HCI today, Nutanix hasn't been sitting still though. We've been listening for the last two days, really growing the portfolio. What is the increase in products? What does that mean to the offerings from Dell? >> Sure, obviously we'll keep up with the Intel Heartbeat, we have a pretty big refresh coming up here early next year with what Intel calls Cascade Lake. Also, not just keeping up with the generations, but as Nutanix evolves, things like Buckets, you've probably heard Buckets mentioned this week. We've got some hardware platforms. I won't pre-announce any of my PowerEdge brethren platforms but we have some hardware platforms that are focused much more around storage density. So obviously a great fit for something like Buckets. So we'll look at, as Nutanix matures, what is the best fit hardware for that stack. >> There's been some updates as to how you handle the hardware and software, working with Nutanix, maybe explain how that works now. >> Absolutely. So we've got, we call it XC series, and XC Core series is the appliance, it continues on just as it was. It is software licensed and packaged with the hardware. And then recently we announced something called XC Core, which has all of the goodness of the pre-installation, all the software comes on it, it's easy to use, but the licensing, you can bring your own licensing, so to speak, from Nutanix. So the flexibility to either get licensing with the hardware in the appliance form, or bring your own license in XC Core, as is what we call it. >> Yeah, that's really interesting. When I think back a year ago is when Nutanix started talking about moving to all software. And one of the things I said is like, hey, this is a great opportunity for Dell and Lenovo just to pull everyone in. But it's not that simple, right? Some are still gonna wanna buy the software from Nutanix. Have you seen much change in your business and interactions with customers in the field after that change? How's it gone? >> Short answer is no. And before the formal introduction of Core we were... We had, we called them ELAs. We had large customers that were buying things in different forms, which is why we went to go do Core. We saw this trend happening. And with their shift to software, it just made sense. So the engagements with the customers continued to be I'd say almost in an appliance form, even though they're buying the software directly from Nutanix. So it's similar engagement, similar go-to market, different fulfillment model. >> Dan, how about looking forward? What do you see for the portfolio overall, and any places specifically we should be watching? You mentioned Buckets, anything else from the Nutanix side. >> Sure, sure. Obviously continue the LCM focus. Well one, I'll start with SAP, continue focus. We're gonna lean into SAP, we see that. And broader what I would call enterprise workloads. But also the Intel refresh coming up. From a hardware perspective you'll see Cascade Lake roll out across all the platforms. Also you'll see us introduce, or potentially introduce, some new denser storage platforms for things like Buckets. So continuing to drive the portfolio forward, offering it both in a appliance perspective as well as a core perspective. So it's a really broad portfolio today and you'll see that continuing forward. >> Yeah, just actually, so you mentioned there was a big focus talking about the new memory type of options, new things like NVMe, I know I've heard lots from Dell as to where they're going. So potentially that's areas where I would see that and some of the cloud native applications and the like seem a natural fit for Nutanix plus Dell in the future. >> Sure, absolutely. You'll see incorporation of NVMe. Some of the storage class memory stuff. So without pre-announcing, so to speak, obviously Dell, from a harder perspective, keen focus on these upcoming technologies and how to enable them. We work tightly with Nutanix on how to integrate them into the stack. So you will definitely see us take advantage of things like NVMe, things like storage class memory. Technology never sits still. The partnership we have between Nutanix and Dell helps us keep on the edge of that. Sorry, I'm gonna use the edge word. >> All right, if we had another hour, Dan, we would go there and talk about where that fits. (laughs) But I think we do have to leave it there. Thanks so much, Dan, for the updates, as always. Congratulations on the progress and look forward to hearing the best quarter ever in the future. And thanks so much for watching theCUBE. We'll be back with lots more coverage here from Nutanix 2018 EU in London, England. Thanks for watching theCUBE. (electronic music) (electronic music) >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman.

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Dell Technologies World 2018, brought to you by Dell EMC and its ecosystem partners. (bright music) >> And welcome back here on theCUBE, we continue our live coverage at Dell Technologies 2018. We are in Las Vegas, and we are in the Sands right now. 14,000 people strong attended this year's show. And great energy, great buzz here on the show floor. Keith Townsend, I'm John Walls. We're joined now by Ben Gibson, who's the CMO at Nutanix, and Dan McConnell, Vice President over at Dell EMC. Gentlemen, thank you for being with us. Good to have you here on theCUBE. >> Great to be here. >> Thanks for having us. >> A lot of conversation about hyper, right, and hyper-converged and about some numbers that we've heard, that Dell's been talking about, that 60-plus percent of inquiries, discussions here from the customer is all about HCI. So how does that stack up with what you're hearing, first off, Ben or Dan, in the marketplace, and what's the driving force right now behind all that discussion? >> Absolutely, yeah, it's been, HCI, I guess the Nutanix partnership, we've been about four years, right? I'll jokingly say, back before HCI was cool. And more and more, what we've seen is in the early days it was, pick an application, okay, it's VDI. And that's kind of its starting point. But now, more and more, these discussions, it's not what app or what workload works for HCI. It's really which one doesn't work. I'm trying to throw everything I can on HCI. Which one should I park over here? So the interest has really, really flipped. And it's the ease of use, it's the flexibility, it's the incremental scale. So it's something that we've seen huge traction in on the Dell side. Obviously it's where our partnership with Nutanix, as well as some of our own solutions. It's tremendous growth. And year over year, we've seen stronger and stronger growth. So definitely getting traction. It's moving out of what is test and dev, and it's in core of the data center right now. >> And what's driving that, you think, in the marketplace? I mean, how's it responding, I guess to performance that it's seen from other early adopters, basically, and what's that motivation there? >> Yeah, John, you know, as Dan just said, there's a lot of growth in this space. And the market for hyper-converged in general, it's probably among, if not the top IT growth segment that we're seeing out there across the whole IT landscape. Analysts are pegging this as 60% or above year on year growth business, and the multi-billions of dollars. So I think what's motivating that interest, I think there's a huge surge that I think together we're seeing around data center modernization initiatives. There's a lot of need for application traffic growth and how our customers modernize their data center environments to keep up with that demand they're seeing, with the workloads that they're running on premise and those that they may be developing off prem and bringing it on prem or the like, it's really driving a lot of this hyper-convergence growth story that we're seeing out there in the market. >> So let's talk about some of the myths out in the market. Hyper-convergence, not enterprise-ready from a couple of different areas. One, let's talk about the relationship that Nutanix has with Dell. Global reach and scalability. Nutanix, not a hardware company. Nutanix is a software company. But the product is sold in a box. Those boxes have to be supported. How does Nutanix support global companies when you're a software company? >> Yeah, for us it is about software choice. But it's also about very strategic partnerships. And I count the Dell partnership we have as one that's been, in our history and moving forward, our most fruitful. It's about delivering different offerings in different ways for our customers to consume our joint hyper-convergent solutions. Just recently, we announced what we call XC Core, which now another option for Dell customers to take advantage of Nutanix HCI with Dell hardware and be able to consume via software license from Nutanix, buy and continue to buy their hardware platform from Dell, bring that all together in solution. So we have a real freedom of choice here that we drive out locally. It's a great combination with go-to-market reach with Dell, combined with innovation that we bring to the table together. And I think it's working really well, and promising. >> And even our services teams, to your point, have worked very closely together. Depending on which consumption model you choose, on the appliance side, we'll take L1, L2 support, on the Dell side. So as the products scale, we help that services aspect, that scalability, that reach. >> Yeah, so for a practical perspective, I'm a global company, I have retail shops in Germany, based out of the US, drive those out, who do I call in, how do I get support for that? >> The great news with this relationship is it's really the customer's choice and what their preference is. We have many customers where Dell is providing that global support model. We now have a new offering that allows the customer to choose whether they get their software support for HCI from Nutanix and continue their existing service relationships with Dell. The nice thing is we're not forcing customers in any one decision on this front, whatever suits their interests and their needs the best. >> So, next myth. HCI isn't ready for mission critical applications. Dell yesterday brought a customer that went head first and everything their mission critical systems, it's Celtic, a global hotelier, their reservation system, their big Oracle apps. Talk to me about the mission critical story, Nutanix, Dell together. >> One of the key, I don't know, just to exemplify this, we continue to get customer demand for four socket, recently, just released a four socket version of the XE Series. Four socket, that's database, what do you mean database on HCI? So yeah, it is continuing to grow into mission critical, exact status like 45 or 50% of HCI is deployed in the data center, all right. So, mission critical workloads, databases, there's no more mission critical than that. And the majority of them sitting right in the data center. So it's, that myth of non-data center, to the side project or VDI only, that might have been where it was two years ago, no longer. >> Yeah, I love myths because it makes for good marketing. We're seeing this trend. So obviously VDI was one of the first sweet spot workloads for HCI in it's infancy. We're seeing across our customer base now, and we talked about this in our New York Investor Day a few weeks ago, now we're seeing 60% plus of all workloads are tier one applications. Databases, other mission critical applications, that are running on HCI infrastructure, with Dell and Nutanix together. We've seen that really start to quickly shift over into that front. I think what the market should keep an eye out for is more and more not only customers running those tier one applications on HCI but you're going to start to see more and more of these major ISVs start to certify their major applications on HCI infrastructure. >> Poke at SAP Hana, I would love to see SAP Hana on Nutanix, that would be awesome. >> Ben Gibson: No comment at present >> Well you're kind of talking about trends in a way here, in terms of adoption, people wanting to do, I'm always kind of interested in the chicken and the egg. You're developing product, you're listening to customers, you're hearing their demands, and you're also trying to, perhaps develop in a vacuum, and give them new capabilities that they haven't dreamed up yet. So you do you work that in terms of that give and take and in your development responding to what the market wants and also driving the market to what you think it needs? >> I think what's proven to be very successful for Nutanix is, obviously we're very customer centric, we also have a strong opinion. Dheeraj our CEO talks about having a real strong opinion on architecture and vision for how do we innovate, how do we solve some problems that maybe our customers haven't faced yet? So I think it's a good balancing act. So we come to the table, we listen very carefully to our customers, we understand what their key challenges are but we come with an opinion as well. And so, conventional wisdom would say go down a certain direction architecturally well what if you collapse those three tier data center architectures, what if you move towards this hyper converged offering, how to you manage and automate and bring together more glue, if you will, across multi-cloud environments? That combines having a vision and a strong conviction of opinion about where it's headed combined with making sure there's always a check and balance what are our customers thinking, where are they seeing their challenges? >> No, absolutely. As customers step in to HCI we're seeing more and more people testing in different areas people looking to solve different problems with it. Typically, all around the agility, the scalability, the ease of use, but it is, like you said, there's a combination between opinionated and listening. Some of our best innovations have come directly from the customers. These are people who are using it in the field and are tripping over the new cases. So it's a balance. >> So Michael Dell on stage just talked about the ability of Dell to be able to run workloads wherever customers wanted run their workloads. So far we've talked about HCI, which is interesting, however we're going into a model where we need to run workloads in a data center, we need to run workloads outside a data center, and we need to manage that infrastructure. What's the Nutanix Dell story around managing workloads across hybrid clouds? >> I would say this is a big trend we're seeing in the market there's different terminology for it multi-cloud, hybrid cloud, right workload on right cloud platform at right time. When you start throwing those vectors in place it creates a lot of potential confusion and complexity, right? How do you determine what's the best cloud platform in terms of cost, in terms of the laws of phycics, in terms of latency, with SLAs with these workloads? In terms of laws of the land from governance and overall legal perspective. So you start to bring in, as the market moves towards multi-cloud, there's this vacuum that needs to be filled that we can fill here together. It's like how do you determine, what's the context, what's the right cost model for a particular workload that makes perfect sense to run on a public cloud platform, like an AWS or an Azure or a Google cloud? What other highly predictable workloads absolutely need to be run in a modernized data center environment powered by Nutanix plus Dell HCI? To me there's a lot of vacuum that can be filled by innovation with management, automation, context around making those decisions. And the last thing I will say, it's not just about technology innovation, it's an opportunity for our customers, I believe, to really evolve their careers to the next step. If you're an infrastructure manager and all of a sudden there's different platforms where the infrastructure resides, what better opportunity than to become that strategic consultant within your own enterprise to help make those decision with context and with good smarts behind it? >> I think you hit some good points. When you look at it, there's going to be multiple clouds and it's about enabling the choice and integrating with whatever the right cloud is for your needs. We've got virtue stream capabilities for tier one type cloud stuff all the way to Azure on the XE series we just integrated with OMS on the Azure side so we'll actually upload all of the stats and metrics into their log analytics solutions. It's enabling choice, enabling which cloud, there's going to be multiple clouds and different clouds are going to be optimized for different things so I think you'll see us embrace hybrid, embrace it across multiple clouds on the back end. I don't know if there's one size fits all. >> So opinionation, I think, is a great segue into what's important I think as IT managers are looking at solutions, there's no one vendor today that can that an end to end solution and say, you know, we're your one stop shop for hybrid cloud. So this is where opinion matters. What is Nutanix's opinion when it comes to how to deliver hybrid cloud? So this is what you will be judged on, can't be judged on the technology because the technology isn't there yet, but where's the vision? >> I think it starts and ends with make complexity, make the complexity with multiple cloud environments, with complicated legacy data center environments, make that all invisible. How do you radically reduce that complexity and we talk all about one click, one OS, any cloud. It's not just a nice marketing tag line I think it really stands for a principle and a vision around how do you make a lot of that complexity go away? So you can redirect a lot of these IT man hours over towards inventing more. We just launched a new campaign you're talking about freedom to invent, freedom to build the data center that you want to build. So it's about coming with that opinion that everything that was so complicated and the next big horizon is multi-cloud environments, how do you make that essentially disappear, go away, so you can reapply your IT resource to new things that can really impact the business. The last thing I'll say too, spiraling cloud cost, and so if you have a teenager at home and maybe you're brave enough to give that teenager the credit card and they're online gaming or doing something, so it's kind of that shock bill you get at the end of the month, depending on what workload you're running on what cloud platform you could have this teenager with the runaway credit card syndrome. So how do you simplify, or bring that context and visibility to the forefront to help make some of those smarter decisions? So that's some of the things that we like to think about in terms of removing barriers and empowering the customers to take back control of what could potentially become a rapidly disaggregated, chaotic environment. >> You just threw every parent off their mark right there. Oh my God the credit card! >> I've lived it. >> Are we going to hear some of this next week? I mean we've got your big show, you guys almost flip rolls, right? Dan you're hosting this week and for you Ben it's next week down in New Orleans. Give us a little sneak peak. >> We're really excited about next week. So Dan has been kind enough to host us here this week in Las Vegas, so it's a rough life next week >> New Orleans >> We go to New Orleans. We have our user conference we call .NEXT and Keith you're going to be joining us >> Keith: I will be there. >> theCube will be there >> Looking forward to theCube being there. So this is about bringing together it's a lot of early adopters, but increasingly it's about more and more customers that I would call more the early majority as you see hyper-converge start to surge, multi-cloud start to surge in terms of how do you fill that vacuum that's out there? That's what this conference is going to be all about. We'll have new announcements, we'll have innovations that we'll be demoing, and most importantly we're really about openness and this is about strategic partnerships. To the earlier point, show me a one stop shop that solve all this complexity and I'll show you unfulfilled promise. And so I think the work we're doing with Dell will be at the forefront talking about, hey, how are we working together to solve some pretty snarly issues here that we have to solve for our customers. >> Well, you're going to go home both of you and say it's been tough, two weeks on the road. You get no sympathy though, Las Vegas and New Orleans back to back. >> Not bad. >> It's a good way to go Dan and Ben thanks for being with us. We appreciate the time. Look forward to seeing you next week >> Thank you very much >> down in New Orleans theCube continues here, we are live in Las Vegas at Dell Technologies World 2018.

>> Announcer: Live from Nice, France, It's theCUBE, covering .Next Conference 2017 Europe brought to you by Nutanix. Hi, I'm Stu Miniman and you're watching SiliconANGLE Media's production of The Cube here inside the Acropolis Conference Center in Nice, France. Beautiful location, happy to welcome back to the program off the keynote stage this morning, Sudheesh Nair, President with Nutanix, and a first-time guest, someone I've gotten to know through the industry, Dan McConnell, Vice-President of the CPSD group inside DELL EMC. Gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for having us. >> Dan: Thanks for having us. Sudheesh needs no introduction, but Dan, why don't you tell us a little bit about your background, your role inside of DELL EMC. Sure, I guess, I've been at DELL for about, I don't know, 18 years, in various forms, engineering, CTO, product management. Nowadays I've got a collection of the CPSD businesses. Chad will refer to it as the horizontal businesses but basically all the things that are multi-hypervisor in nature. XC series, clearly one of those products, one of the long relationships we've had with Nutanix, very successful. Matter of fact, coming off Q2 was our strongest quarter ever. We're still closing Q3 so I can't talk about that, but safe to say these last six months will be six months of the strongest we've had with Nutanix and the XC series. I've got a collection of products from Block to FlexTech C Series. Yeah, so you come from what was the DELL side of DELL EMC, in through, of course, the DELL VMware relationship, been a strong one, driven a lot of joint revenue for the companies, yeah. Yep, absolutely, it's been great. Been good getting to know Sudheesh over the years. It's been multiple years at this point. >> Sudheesh: Almost four years now. But it's been a great relationship. Sudheesh, please. Yeah, first of all, thank you for having us. It's always nice to see you. And I still am amazed by all this equipment and how professional you are when it comes to doing these sort of things. It's very nice to be here with Dan. He's one of the nicest guys in the company and I'm not just saying because he's sitting here. A very good human being, it's always been a pleasure. It's almost four years we've been working together. Sudheesh, our audience loves when, they're looking forward to this session because, come on, DELL EMC, Nutanix, wait, they're friends, no they're competitors. No, yeah, they're, you know, it's a mix together. They say it's like the macaroons. It's, a couple of pieces go together, some of the flavors you like, some maybe you don't as much. Probably a bad analogy. Bring us up to speed as to kind of the Dell relationship. You know, how important is it to Nutanix? I know it's something that I talk to customers that are running Dell EMC and say, "Does it concern you at all?" And it is something that at least is on the radar for most customers. I'll try to give a shorter answer. It's a long answer question. The first thing is, this is a relationship that is built to last. I know that it is not an easy relationship, but let me also be honest about, look inside the industry and tell me a single relationship that is absolutely black and white. I mean, it's not that long ago when in one of the VMworlds, I don't remember who exactly, but someone from VMware actually said, "We're not going to lose to a bookseller," right? And then in the last-- >> Stu: Yeah, he's a VC now, so doing quite well for himself. Yeah, he's a great guy, it was his call, yeah. Again, it's a point in time of opinion, and I would do the same thing because we all compete with our heart and mind. It's not about that point. The fact that the company evolved, and in the last VMworld I think the CEOs of both AWS and VMware were hugging it out. Does that mean they've built a relationship that will not have conflicts? Absolutely not. I fundamentally don't think that the relationships in IT industry specifically will no longer be black and white, and it will always be shades of gray. The question is, should we be focused on customers who wants us to stop bickering and deliver what's right for them, and continue to focus on the overlaps of interest as opposed to focus on the conflicts that will arise. Absolutely well said. It's clear, and Dell's always been focused on a strategy of customer choice and flexibility. One of our key strengths at DELL EMC now is the portfolio, the fact that we've got multiple offers, the fact that it's a focus on the customer, what the customer wants, giving them flexibility as opposed to always trying to pigeonhole a specific product. It's interesting because I've been watching since the first days of the relationship. Dell's goal is to be leader in infrastructure. Nutanix's goal, be an iconic software company. Well, you're not going to be a server manufacturer, there's room there. So, Dan, why is Nutanix best on Dell? That's a great question. So one, the long relationship, right? So, we actually have teams of people who focus on integrating the platform and the software. There's a software stack in there, we call Power Tools internally that, long story short, manages all of the firmware stacks as well as, essentially lifecycle management of the hardware up underneath Nutanix. So, one piece is the hardware integration. The second piece, which we talked about a year ago at .Next, that we would be focused on integrating the broader Dell EMC portfolio, namely data protection. So, you'll see in upcoming weeks, we've already announced it formally, it gets turned on here in a few weeks, tight integration of Data Domain and Avamar with the XC series. Not just to reference architecture, but actual integration into the management. So, full lifecycle integration of data protection leveraging Data Domain, Avamar, tightly integrated into XC series, keeping that focus of ease of use, lifecycle management not only around the infrastructure, but also from data protection. So, hardware integration as well as tight integration of other pieces of the ecosystem. One other piece there, not to take too long, but not only data protection but we're also leveraging our relationship with Microsoft, and you'll see us integrate XC series into Azure with things like OMS, with our Log Analytics solution, so building out that ecosystem around the infrastructure. Yeah, Sudheesh, the Microsoft relationship's an interesting one, of course. You know, Dell, very long, strong relationship. I remember Satya Nadella up onstage with Michael Dell at Dell World years ago. It seems like a good opportunity for even deeper partnership. I think it's not just Microsoft. I think Dell EMC is the single largest vendor in this space and ecosystem, for example Pivotal. The innovative things that Pivotal is doing, Nutanix has an opportunity to partner with that because of the ecosystem. The global support, the global reach that Dell has, we have access to that. Customers get choice. Pretty much every customer who's buying anything in this industry probably have a contract with Dell. We have access to that. So, it requires a level of maturity for the business to sort of turn off the noise and listen to the music. We have been able to do that, and I know that people would love to see a fight, and yes, sometimes we have friction, and I think that is healthy. But by and large both companies have figured out the most important thing is to focus on customers, do right by them. So, Sudheesh, I think it would be fair to say that both companies have a sales culture that many outside call a bit aggressive. And especially where it's been interesting and sometimes challenging to watch is when it hits the channel. So, I know a number of channel providers, love Dell, love Nutanix, and have felt pressure sometimes from the Dell side to move to some of the other products, many have stuck. How do you balance that to kind of keep the channel happy, keep them working on that? You're absolutely right. I think both companies have a sales-driven culture, no question about it. And Nutanix, even though we are a younger company, much smaller in size, I don't think our aspirations and the fighting spirit is any less. In fact, in some cases it might even be out there. However, what we have done is we always focused on partners as part of the customer in the same ecosystem. That is, do right by the customer, do right by the partner. And I think that applies to both companies. What we have done early on is actually put together some guard rails between companies, how do we approach when those sort of conflicts arises, number one. Number two, we put together processes in the field when it comes to dual registration which is somewhat convoluted on the back end, but extremely delightful on the front end. Now, that doesn't mean there won't be friction. What we've done is we made sure that number one, the frictions are exceptions, not an example always, and second, when it comes up, we talk. So, he's on my WhatsApp. When something really blows up he will say, "Sudheesh, what's going on?" It's less and less now because our people have actually done a pretty good job of managing it. But ultimately, the one thing that'll continue to sustain and grow this relationship would be trust and communication. In the last four years, we know the people. We have built the communication, we speak the language, and because of that we are able to overcome all those problems. Yeah, the key is when those arise, getting the right people involved and ultimately doing right by the customer. There's always going to be conflict, this, that in the field. It's getting the right people involved early managing it and making sure we're putting customers first, not getting them in the middle of it. >> Sudheesh: Absolutely. Alright, so Dan, one of the things we heard from Nutanix today and I've been hearing all week, Intel Skylake. You've got 14 Gs available. Since it's not announced yet as the date, what kind of guidance can you give, and how's that rollout going to look for customers? Especially, I love your viewpoint as you know the server world forever, and you've got a broad portfolio. How does customer adoption across the various buying modes happen? I'll dance around this a bit and say stay tuned, very soon you'll hear some announcement around the 14th Generation PowerEdge. >> Stu: If you're watching the replay, call your rep now, it might be ready. Exactly right, so yes, stay tuned, very, very soon. We've already talked about it back at Dell EMC World. You can expect us to fully embrace the 14th Generation PowerEdge. We've already having some conversations with folks in the field. Obviously, we've got the PowerEdge line out there already. It's actually, the adoption of 14 G has been very, very strong, so we expect that to pick up here on the XC series very shortly. So, like I said, stay tuned. I have to dance around a little bit, but it'll be very, very soon. But one point, it's not available any later on the XC than it is on the other hyperconverged offerings that you have, correct? Correct. Yeah, so that's, I think, kind of the main thing. But that also tells you that we don't just take the same server and ship it out. We actually go through a different process to make sure that this can actually run mission critical applications. That's part of the problem as well, we have to do this right. Take a lot of time hardening that, what we would call standard server, so that's what's in process now, and almost done. I'd like to give you both a last word. Talk about customers, talk about anything we should be looking at down the road from the partnership. Dan, we'll start with you. Sure, you'll see continued, what I'll say tight integration, focus on the ecosystem. I think big steps with data protection integration, focus on Microsoft. You'll see more integration in that vein filling out that overall ecosystem. Partnership continues to be strong. I think it's a very good combination of software, hardware, and ecosystem. So, on the Dell EMC side you'll see us bring that ecosystem focus, and continue working with these guys. Obvious integrations on the hardware side with some exciting technologies like NVNE and RDMA. So, we'll continue to leverage the hardware technology to promote HCI and to drive HCI, make it stronger, and continue to focus on the overall ecosystem. So, we're excited for the relationship, and I'll hand it over to Sudheesh. Yeah, I think, see Nutanix, we always were a software company. But taking a product like this without the help of an appliance form factor would not be feasible, because any problem happened, it would be our problems. But now that we have the last five years behind us, we know how to make it work. What sort of products do we need to build to support the installation process, the upgrade process, lifecycle management, all of those things are done. Now starting next year, you'll see Nutanix making a conscious decision to become a truly software company, without the reliance of being, pushing through hardware. Our sales organization will be retooled and restructured to become, and incentivized to focus more and more on software, and less and less on appliances, which will bring companies like Dell EMC and Nutanix closer, because they have the footprint. Some of the conflicts used to arise basically because we had our own appliances as well. And once the sales organization is differently incentivized, you will see the trust building faster between the resellers and the companies. So, I am very optimistic because of not just the technology vision. Nutanix with hyperconverged, and the Calm and Xi, and everything else that we laid out. We know that for us, hyperconverged is just the foundation, and the support for everything that we're building. That fully aligns with Dell EMC's aspirations on how Nutanix should proceed. So, we're pretty excited, but always cautious about what could go wrong, focused on those things. As long as we talk and communicate, and we focus on customers and partners, I am pretty confident on the future. Sudheesh Nair, Dan McConnell, thank you so much for catching up. Welcome to The Cube alumni. Much appreciated. He's a pro already. We'll be back with lots more coverage here from Nutanix .Next in Nice, France. I'm Stu Miniman, you're watching The Cube. (electronic music)

>> Hi I'm Stu Miniman with The Cube, and we're here at the Winslow Technology Group Dell EMC User Conference here at the Hotel Commonwealth in Boston. Happy to have with me Mike Berthiaume who is the northeast SE manager with Nutanix. Mike it's great to see ya. >> And I'm happy to be here Stu. Thanks for having me, appreciate it. >> So Mike, I've actually known you for a bunch of years. We've been in some of the local user groups, actually moderated a panel you were on a couple of years ago. Talk to us a little bit about Nutanix's channel and of course the relationship with Winslow. >> Excellent, I think Nutanix's channel is very strong. As you know, I think a lot of our viewers know, all of our Nutanix sales are done through the channel. So we are a 100% channel focused company. The Winslow Technology Group has been a tremendous channel partner for us in New England and other parts of the country as well growing their business down in the southeast and the New York Metro area. But they've been fantastic. And what makes them a little bit interesting, you know, they are very focused on Dell EMC, right? So being part of the Dell EMC portfolio opens up quite a few opportunities I think for Nutanix. And it really I think helps Dell EMC complete their portfolio with our technology. >> Sure, Mike absolutely. We're going to be talking to Scott Winslow today. You know, been using Dell, and I think was one of the earliest of the Dell XC customers out there. What is it for the customers that they look for, I guess specifically for Dell XC from a partner like Winslow Technology Group? >> I think from, you know, customers are looking for a partner who has their best interest at heart, right? So the value at a reseller as in specifically Winslow is going to their customers as trusted advisors, as consultants, understanding business challenges, and how to they can solve those with technology. And Nutanix is a natural fit, specifically Dell XC, due to the simplicity, you know, the non disruptive operational procedures that we can bring in. And that's some of the new exciting stuff around our enterprise cloud operating system that we recently talked about at our .NEXT conference. I think the vision that Nutanix holds is in lockstep with what Winslow is trying to do for its customer base here in New England. >> Mike, I want you to talk a little bit about your customers that you're meeting with. What do they care about? What are the drivers there? What are things like converged, hyperconverged, and cloud? Does that mean something to them, or how is it, how do they say it in their business terms? >> Yeah I think when we talk to customers, most customers today, almost all customers, know what converged infrastructure is. Hyperconverged I would say is a little bit less than a converged, but most customers are educated and understand the concepts. I think when we start talking to customers and educate them about the XC platform in Nutanix and open their eyes to this concept of enterprise cloud or enterprise cloud operating system, it changes the discussion. We see, typically I'll see a lot of light bulbs go off and a lot of, "I didn't realize that Nutanix could do that," or "I didn't realize you guys had a native integration with public cloud" or we're focused in the application stack which is again some of the announcements that we made last week, or a few weeks ago now, at .NEXT. >> Yeah, specifically around cloud, what's the, I find there is no typical state out there. Companies are all over the map trying to figure out kind of hybrid or multicloud. Give us a couple examples, probably can't give us customer names, but how are they integrating cloud? How are they building their environments to be more cloud-like, what we at Wikibon call true private cloud? What are you seeing out there in the field? >> It's a great question. So I think there is a sort of a misconception from my view that cloud is purely lift and shift. I'm going to take my applications, and I'm going to move them into public cloud or somebody else's environment. In reality, cloud is a way of doing business, right? It's a way, it's a new way of thinking about IT. We talk about mode one and mode two applications are your legacy and your more stateless applications that probably belong in a public cloud environment. And what Nutanix brings is the ability now to manage an environment in that new way, focusing both on your traditional legacy applications, but helping you move to those mode two applications, partnering with public cloud providers, specifically Google. So that's the conversation we're really having is don't think of cloud as lift and shift. Think of it as a new way of doing business. Let's figure out how cloud is going to benefit your business and align to the business style you're looking to achieve. >> Yeah, absolutely. One of the lines we've heard many times is, "Cloud is not a destination. Cloud is really an operating model for many of the users." Last thing, just what's kind of the feeling you get from people in IT today? In the keynote this morning, discussion was, "IT kind of went from a call center to supporting the business and now IT is a driver for the business." Is that what you're seeing? Where is kind of the typical IT mindset? What are they thinking about? What's exciting them, and what's worrying them? >> Yeah I think first and foremost, digital transformation has quickly become kind of the cliche term, right? Maybe one of the most hated terms in IT these days. But it's a reality I think for most folks, and understanding what digital transformation means in the business now understanding that, again IT is actually driving business value in every way. And how can they get to the level where IT's no longer in the way, you know. Long duration projects are a thing of the past. It's a move forward mentality now. Continue to push the boundaries, but yet keep, obviously keep the lights on and ensure that we're not going to disrupt existing business processes that are tried and true. So it's kind of a tough paradigm that we're in right now. And again I think Nutanix really helps because we bring that non disruptive perspective to being able to get to that next level. >> Alright, Mike Berthiaume, really appreciate you joining us here. Nutanix been a great role and working with partners like Winslow Technology Group. You're watching The Cube. We've got lots more coverage here from the WTG User Group Event.

from Boston Massachusetts it's the cube covering wtg transform 2018 brought to you by Winslow technology group you're watching the cubes coverage of wtg transform 2018 happy to welcome back to the program fresh off the keynotes page where he discussed the specter of clouds Rick Cowan who is the chief technology officer of window technology group Rick great to talk to you thanks for having me - all right yeah thank you for having us here so we're talking about this whole cloud thing and you and I've been talking about this for a couple of years gives it gives your viewpoint you talked a lot of customers we can talk about architecture but you know the average customer when they hear you know cloud you know there's some puffy things up in the sky but you know what what does it mean to them sure yeah so I think one of the things that we're advocating as it relates to sort of starting that cloud journey is to do some homework ahead of time make data-driven decisions and we don't want you as our you know customer base to get into a situation where you're kind of backed into a corner right where you move something you decide you need to bring it back or or or anything like that so we're a big advocate of you know running some analytics and making some intelligent decisions you know try and start with that low-hanging fruit where you can kind of ease your way in and and the stuff that doesn't require re-platforming and you know get your toes toes in the sand a little bit before you wade all the way out there yes so if I step back for a second just immersed and point one of the things I liked in your keynote is so many times we think about technology it's like oh well it's a new server or it's you know something I swipe a credit card and I go using the cloud cloud really we need to think about the operating knowledge as it's the policies and the people that are as important if not more important than the okay what's the pipe price per CPU and things like that right right yeah yeah and one of the things that we talk about a lot is that when we're talking about cloud we're not talking about a place we're not talking about who owns it we're not talking about any particular public cloud provider we're talking about a way of doing business a way of bringing your services to your internal customers and a way of kind of transforming your IT infrastructure to more efficiently consume those resources right and that's that's a change in operating model that's a change in sort of way of thinking not just from you know this whole cloud thing but also towards delivering IT more as a service yeah and you spent a lot of time talking about applications which I really like because I'm an infrastructure guy by background when we talked about virtualization when we talked about converge and hyper-converged a lot of times we're talking about you know boxes and cabling and networking and things like that the role of infrastructure is are on my application they're all the applications to run my business right that's the big theme we've been hearing for years is you know IT your role isn't to be this thing off on the side and it's not necessary you know dollars in headcount and all that are important but if you don't serve the ultimate business and what they need to do to keep us running we're all out of business right yeah this whole transformation is all about aligning right those business requirements with IT and starting to deliver services that are tailored towards what the business needs as opposed to what I can offer what my capabilities are right those need to be more in synced and that's what this whole operating model is all about right is aligning those services to the business and and creating the infrastructure so that the business can consume it more easily yeah and you gave some really good pointers I want you to give us the you know your customers because when I heard things like oh well you know let's say I'm using a public cloud well I need to understand how availability zones work and how I spread things out which you know if I'm used to you know H a on VMware or you know your hypervisor Troy some of those things I got used to it because things work they were built for the enterprise now it's you know well it's distributed but you need to think about things from that application level a little bit more right yeah and so that's something that we're trying to educate our customer base on is as we move forward and as we start to move workloads into various you know clouds public/private what-have-you we have to start considering some of those availability aspects that today we don't even think about right almost everybody who is still sitting in that traditional infrastructure they're all having their availability provided probably at the hardware level they have you know multiple controllers and clusters and all this stuff so they put a they drop an application into their environment and it's already gonna have pretty good availability when we as we move forward we have to start pushing that availability up the stack and thinking about it more at the application level and so when we're deploying workloads into different cloud environments we may be sponsible for providing our own high availability and that's something that in some cases requires a fair amount of expertise to to you know get that architecture right so that we do have the same level of high availability out in these cloud environments that we have in our on-prem infrastructure all right so Rick inside your customers you know who are the people you're talking to that kind of get this you know we lived through the transformation of like well you know the storage guy was doing this thing we need to kind of have the virtualization person own more you know cloud architect has been a title that's been you know expanding quite a lot over the last few years who are you getting at the table who's making these architectural decisions when you're working with your users yeah so we feel like it's something that we have to get the entire team on board with it's something where it might be an initiative that we start to address with the CIOs and the IT directors but it's important to get the entire organization's IT staff on board with the transition because each one is going to have a part to play and in sort of moving forward into that IT as a service sort of an organization great so you know when it looked at some of the things that wtg is doing you know obviously you know Dell EMC Nutanix VMware your biggest partners you know what's what's kind of you know the the big you know big push team today from the majority your customers and what are some of the you know more advanced customers getting excited about yeah so I think you know you listed off those those partners and when we look at them a common theme there is adding this built-in sort of cloud interoperability connectivity and feature set so when we're thinking about all the characteristics that we look for in a cloud operating model we're seeing things like self-service portals things like you know the ability to measure multiple tenants and things like this and so what we're seeing across all those partners is more and more of those features come as parts of the infrastructure solutions and that's reducing the burden on our customers to be able to deploy something that you know operates in that cloud sort of IT as a service offering and so you know some of these customers are getting really excited about that capability to write out-of-the-box deploy a self-service portal deliver these these capabilities straight to their in colonel customers without having to do a bunch of development or or you know build complicated systems to deliver them so it's a self-service portals it's the built-in cloud connectivity to be able to archive things and and send dr out to you know third-party service providers so those are some of the things that our customers who are on this journey and you know maybe they started last year the year before they're moving forward those are the sorts of things that they're starting to point out you know one of the big challenges when we talk about this rather dispersed world we're moving towards you spend some time talking about SAS absolutely SAS is the biggest piece of you know if you call public cloud some of it doesn't live in one of the big clouds or can live lots of places data right data protection a security are something that no matter where I go I need to worry about that it's there's there's no way actually in your definition you're like oh if I do SAS I don't need to worry about the data no no no great - well I think you took somebody's slide there but you know there are some people that mistakingly oh well I ran on a pass I don't need to worry about security no you do containers any of these things data protection my data and you know security I need to worry about that everywhere and that brings a whole new set of challenges yeah and and you know so you make a good point because on for example I'm a security side of things it's continues to be just as much of a concern as it ever was but it's an entirely different way to think about it you know likewise with data protection it's just as important as it ever was but it's an entirely different way to think about one of the things though that I thought was really interesting about security is that when I'm talking to these CIOs and IT directors across our customer base in the past you know if I go back rewind this thing three years they would say I can't go to the cloud because of security right now we're you know were a little bit more mature and in our cloud understanding and and starting to you know transform a little bit and they now that lists that as one of the reasons they want to move to the cloud and I think that was one of the most startling sort of realizations as that shift in my chair yeah absolutely we actually did did some surveys there was a big survey we were attached with called the future of cloud computing and you're right if I hadn't dipped my toe in I was worried about it but once I got there I realized I kind of looked in sighed and said oh my gosh what did I be doing interesting analogy I've paired sometimes is you know the autonomous vehicles and things like that I'm worried about this self-driving or even the braking or things like that that challenging have you looked at most drivers most people you know oh my gosh they're checking their tax they're you know doing all sorts of stuff there it is a bit of a mind flip as done how you think of these things doesn't mean it changes overnight or that there's there's never a silver bullet night day but you know it's some of these viewpoints that we need to change and think a little differently yeah yeah I think that's a great analogy I'm probably SD laughs all right Rick what's exciting you these days your CTO you know you're here there's you know Boston area love if you've got you know anything about you know cool things in the area or just cool tech in general yeah I think you know and and I dressed a lot of this in my keynote earlier today but I'm really high on an analytical approach to a hybrid cloud I want to start to get customers thinking about you know how we can make this a transition as opposed to a you know just jump in right in the deep end it doesn't have to be this this big jarring event as we sort of transform this is something where we can take baby steps and and start to move ourselves forward and so you know we're getting really excited about those technologies that allow us to integrate our existing infrastructure with various other you know cloud services whether they be you know platforms infrastructure and software offerings things that allow us to take the investments that we already have and you know sort of integrate and make use of these cloud services that we know can deliver value to our organization that's what we're most excited about is you know getting more out of what we have yeah you mentioned analytics I mean here in Boston you had in the opening video there was some of the I think it's the Boston Dynamics robots you know right across the river here yeah in the area when I talk to people like in the storage world we talk about intelligence but their eyes light up because we've been talking about intelligence storage for decades but no really now that with all the cool technologies yet we can really put this in here and it's not about you know getting rid of the admins it about really supercharging and be able to deal with you know we've got way more data we've got way more devices we've got way more things I'm going to have to do so you know we need some help with all of these machines to be able to pair the machines with the people to make them do their jobs better yep yep couldn't agree more all right we're going pleasure to catch up with you and thanks again thanks so much for having us here be sure to check out the cube net for all of the content here and all the shows will be back with lots more coverage thanks for watching the Q