>> Live for London, England, it's theCUBE, covering .NEXT Conference Europe 2018, brought to you by Nutanix. >> Welcome back to the theCUBE here in London, England for Nutanix .NEXT 2018. I'm Stu Miniman, my cohost, Joep Piscaer. Happy to welcome you to the program, first time guest. Simon Townsend was the chief marketing officer of EMEA for IGEL. Thanks so much for joining us. No, thanks very much for having me. All right, so I see your team has a booth here and it's the end-user computing space, the EUC, as we look at it... We look at... The VDI marketplace is one that's been around for quite a while, but EUC has been heating up quite a bit. Maybe help set the stage for us as to what you're seeing in the marketplace, what's so important now. >> Yeah, I mean, the EUC market's served me very well across my career. I've been in it for probably near on 20 years and for the majority of that, I've seen Citrix dominate that market. When we talk about EUC, we typically are talking about desktop virtualization or terminal services, as it has been for many years. EUC, to me, interestingly enough, probably extends out to these types of devices that you've got in front of you as well now, right? We shouldn't think EUC is just desktop virtualization or desktop as a service. It's how we deliver the workspace, how we deliver applications and data to our users. But yeah, in the last couple of years, we've really started to see a few new, big players come into the market. And I think as we look forward now to 2019, we're now starting to see even more technology and new vendors come into this space as well. >> I actually had a friend of the program, Christian Riley, who is actually now with Citrix, had him on the program two years ago at the Nutanix European show in Vienna. He actually had educated me early on, back when he was at Bechtel, and he said, "We did a disservice to the market calling it "desktop virtualization." Because it's really not about the desktop. It's about the applications and how I get them. And therefore, if I can make that experience on a tablet or on a phone, get it to the mobile workforce, as it were, we're breaking down it into pieces and just enabling the workforce. And therefore, that end-user computing was a better nomenclature. And therefore, architecture's changed greatly from what we called VDI back in the day. >> You're exactly right. And I think as we move forward, at the moment, end user computing... A lot of organizations who historically have had separate VDI teams and separate Windows desktop teams, those two parts of the organization within IT, have actually come together now. And now we have Windows engineering or end user compute teams. But what's interesting is not just the new technology and, perhaps, new organizations, vendors that are coming into the market, but also what's going on on the endpoint at the moment with regard to to Windows. Right? Microsoft is moving very much to this Windows as a service. Lots of organizations are still considering how they're gonna get to Windows 10, but more importantly, how they're gonna deal with Windows 10 once they get there. And IT, to be frank, has been used to building a machine, putting an operating system on it, putting applications on it, giving it to a user, and saying, "Hey, come back in four years time "when it breaks." And Microsoft is changing that. They want to deliver updates significantly quicker as I'm sure everybody's that's watching knows. And I think, actually, that alone coupled with security, which tends to be a key priority for the CIO at the moment as well, that is actually driving some of this change and this fact that this market is heating up again. Because people are saying, "Well, how can I challenge how I deliver applications again? "How can I overcome some of the challenges that Windows 10 "and desktop endpoint management presents me? "And how can I deal with it differently?" >> Yeah, gosh, I think back to... I used to read Bryden Madden when I wanted to learn about VDI He said, "All I need is Microsoft to flip the switch." Because Microsoft Licensing was one of the major things holding us back >> Yes, it was. >> I give Microsoft great kudos as to the push that they've done to sass-ify the world. They not only gave the green light, but they're pushing customers to move to Office 365. And therefore, it's moving to a sass world And so, it sounds like that same floodgate is helping in the EUC space. >> 100%. I mean, if you roll the clock back to Ignite, they announced their Windows Virtual Desktop service that sits on Azure, and about how organizations can (mumbles) for a much lower price point. And then only last week, they did the acquisition of FSLogix, who again, enhance how things like Office 365 are being delivered on those types of non persistent platforms. So Microsoft are putting some investment and some time into desktop as a service or what we would know as VDI, which to be fair, in my opinion, is probably the first time we've seen that in the 20 years I've been working in the EUC space. For many, many years, Microsoft sort of sat back and said, "Well, we've got this terminal services technology, "but somebody else, and A and other vendors "can build that market and sell that product." And now, obviously, Microsoft (mumbles) service. So, things are gonna get interesting. Are they suddenly gonna take over the world? Probably not. People are still gonna wanna deploy things on-prem. People are still gonna want to utilize technologies like Nutanix to deliver a scalable performant desktop at a known price point. It's gonna be a hybrid, but I think it definitely validates the market, and it makes sure that when we're talking about end user compute, VDI or desktop as a service, and virtualized (mumbles) is a serious and key consideration. Yeah. >> But it does move the goal post from it being a problem of hardware, a problem of the operating system, towards solving problems around the applications so that you deliver, solving problems around security or latency. So how does that changing market affect IGEL? >> How does it affect us as (mumbles) organization? IGEL have been around for over 20 years producing... Let's not beat around the bush, it's thin client technology. But as you scratch the surface and you look into what this organization is actually built on, it's actually a operating system organization. The fact that we've got some hardware, the fact that it's German engineered hardware and that we ship hundreds of thousands of these units every year, that's great. And those thin clients, if you like, are provided a way in which organizations can access those virtual desktops, whether that be Citrix, VMware or whatever else the market might offer. But the strength of what we're now doing is in this operating system. And whether that's an operating system that we are delivering via SCCM or an endpoint management tool or whether it's on a USB key, it's the operating system. And the simplicity and the security about Linux space operating system that is changing how people think about the endpoint. And so when I couple what's going on in the virtualization, desktop as a service space, and then also the challenges that people are facing with security and endpoint management, all of a sudden, we have a very unique proposition. It's slightly disruptive because, ultimately, you're saying, "Well, does Windows belong on the endpoint anymore?" Right? There's a strong argument to say that, Microsoft now validating it, saying that Windows probably deserves to belong in the data canter where it's a lot easier to manage, it's a lot easier to patch and deploy applications to, and what you actually need is something that is simple and secure on the endpoint that you're not wasting weeks' worth of time on to try and keep it up to date or to patch it. And it's that operating system that IGEL is providing our customers with that extends the life of the endpoint, but also offers significantly lower operational costs. >> All right, so Simon, Nutanix did a good job of simplifying a good chunk of the stack here. Update us on the relationship, where you see the joint customers, where that's leading in the marketplace. >> Yeah, I've really enjoyed yesterday and today, by the way, at this event. And one of the key reasons for that is not just the joint customers that I get to talk to, but more importantly, the joint partners that we get to talk to. I think there's three words I would use, simple, scalable, and performant. And I think when you're delivering a desktop or applications and data services (mumbles) a user, you want something that's easy and simple to do. You want something that is easily scalable, both up and down. But also something that is performant. And I think when you combine... Particularly historic, when you look at combining Nutanix, Citrix, and IGEl, all of a sudden, you've got all the right ingredients there to provide a very simple, secure and performant environment. As I said, a lot of the people that are here today, joint customers that are using our technologies, we're worry about how we can simplify and secure the EDGE. They're worrying about... Nutanix is really looking at how we simplify and scale the data center and how those desktops are delivered. We've got a whole host of joint activity in the market that goes on, lots of joint customer case studies. But more importantly, I think... And kudos to a lot of the partners that are here. It's the partners that tend to pull a lot of these things together. It's very easy for IGEL and Citrix and Nutanix to say, "Let's work together, do some joint marketing, "et cetera, and go to market." But it's the partners, the valuated reseller, the systems integrators, they're the brains that are pulling these together. And actually, they're removing the complexity of what the products are and the technologies underneath, and providing a solution to their customers. >> All right, Simon Townsend, really appreciate the updates on IGEL, for Joep Piscaer. I'm Stu Miniman, we'll be back with more coverage here from Nutanix 2018 in London. Thanks for watching theCUBE. (slick electronic music)