>> Man With Accent: You got any phone calls you need to answer? (laughing) >> Man: Hold on, let me check. (lively music) (lively music) >> Welcome back and happy to have a special presentation of The Cube here from our Palo Alto studios. Welcome back to the program. A multi time guest, Howard Ting. Who's the CMO of Nutanix. And we're going to be talking about Nutanix.NEXT 2017 Washington D.C. at the beautiful Gaylord. Howard, thanks for joining me. >> Great to be here again Stu, thanks. >> Alright so, boy, not a lot gone on in the last year. Company went IPO, you've added to your family, lots of things going on. So tell us, what's new in your life? >> Yeah, it's been a pretty memorable 12 months. Actually, it's been a pretty memorable 4 1/2 years for me at Nutanix. I joined the company when it was doing a couple million and probably had less than 100 employees and now, we're approaching 3,000 employees and we're doing close to a billion run rate in sales. You can imagine a lot has happened and a lot of things to be proud of for sure. >> Yeah, so we've talked to (mumbles) a couple of times before the IPO rate, after the IPO. I want to get your viewpoint. Is there more magnifying glasses on you? Do you get more calls or people calling you everyday about every move and change on Wall Street? What's it like on the inside? >> Sure, yeah, it is different, it is different. But, I think, for most people, it's not that different. For our sellers, for the people who work at our headquarters office for people who are supporting our customers. The day-to-day is no different. I think there is this quarterly cadence now, obviously, as a public company. >> Interviewer: A 90 day shock clock perhaps? >> Yeah, there's a shock clock. But we've been operating like that for, probably, five to six quarters before going public where we were on this cadence. So, I think, there's a little bit more of that cadence and attention to results on a quarterly basis and, obviously, more careful planning and things like that. I would say, from a sales and marketing standpoint, I think the brand has gotten a huge lift from going public and the awareness about Nutanix and also, the category and the disruption we're creating is at an all time high. It's been, definitely, a big help in that regard. >> And so you won't need to do a funny video on the street asking people what Nutanix is? >> I still want to do that. We have to see. It'll be fun. See if I can find some Trump impersonators. I might have a little bit of a twist. >> Well alright, you always like to bring some interesting things. Let's get to the preview of the show itself. It's the third year of doing the show. The first year was in Miami. Second year was in Las Vegas, 118 degrees. How you going to keep the heat in the show in D.C.? >> I think the heat at this conference is always the attendees and the content. It always comes down to the people you're going to spend time with and the great content you're going to absorb. This year, I think we have something like 70 plus sessions. Over 100 speakers. And as with every Dotnex, it's always about customers presenting. Our users presenting what they've learned, how they're using it, what has gone wrong for them. Pit falls to avoid, things like that. So, just awesome content. That's first and foremost what's always made it a great event. And, of course, we like to sprinkle in all the little extra stuff that you expect. We have this thing called NX files where, under India, leave your phones at the door kind of thing. Where we will show all the advanced R&D that we're doing for select customers and prospects. >> Okay, so Howard, you're going to give us a preview of all that here, right? >> Can't give you too much of a preview Stu. But I can tell you that it's something that you, definitely, want to check out when you're there. So we do stuff like that. We have a bunch of other programs around the event. We have partner track for our resellers and our channel partners. We have an alliances track. We have a customer advisory board. So there are just a bunch of programs. It's not one event, it's five or six events all packaged into a couple of days. It's a pretty intense couple of days. >> And we're excited at The Cube. Thank you for bringing us back there. One of the things you guys do really well and we always appreciate at shows is we get to talk to the practitioners. We love to talk to the people that are employing it. I've had the pleasure of talking to service providers, to enterprise customers, to smaller customers and I'm, assuming, in D.C. you're going to have some government customers there. >> We will have a few, yeah. I don't know if they're going to be able to talk on The Cube but we'll certainly try. The U.S. Federal Government's always been a fantastic vertical for us. One of the reasons why I decided to bring the conference to D.C. is to show that team some love because they've been such a big contributor to our company's success. And we're doing so many interesting things. One just quick side note. We're now partnering with a company called Class, who have built a hardened system of platform that runs our software and this data center is being parachuted into battle fronts. It's a really interesting use case. There's so many things like that that we're doing with the federal agencies that, hopefully, we'll get some of those stories out at the conference. >> Beyond the conference itself, can you give us an update, kind of partnerships, shifts in the industry. There's been a couple of acquisitions in the storage space and of course, you guys are not a storage company but overlap and play against some of those. What are you seeing these days? >> Clearly, I think, all the big systems vendors are now comfortable leaning in on HCI. I think HCI has become almost like a defacto starting point for a conversation about any sort of new infrastructure deployment. Whether it's a private Cloud initiative, a data center refresh et cetera. And so, I think there's far less resistance to the concept of HCI today. I would say, also, that the market is still trying to understand all the differences between the different HCI options. Because you have some Gen 1 type products like Cisco HyperFlex. You have some much more advance products like VxRail and then you have products like Nutanix that are much more than HCI, much more than hyper converged. We market and message as an Enterprise Could platformer and price Cloud Operating System. And we do networking and security, we do Cloud orchestration, we have built-in virtualization. So we do so much more than HCI. So our conference, is not a conference about hyper converge, our conference is about how to build Enterprise Clouds. And I think it's the only conference we would argue or maybe, the best conference where you can meet the practitioners building Enterprise Clouds. >> It's interesting, we've definitely watched that messaging resonates with a lot of things we've been saying and hearing from our community on the research side. We called it True Private Cloud as well as just, what is that hybrid definition? I've been up in San Francisco attending the Google Next conference. There's a Nutanix booth there. I was at AWS Reinvent, there was a Nutanix booth there. How do you guys see your relationship with the public Clouds and private Cloud, hybrid Cloud, how does that fit into your overall messaging? >> Yeah great question. For us, Enterprise Cloud is the Cloud. And the Cloud has to stretch across boundaries. In the future, we don't see a real delineation between public and private. In the end state, if there's ever such a thing. Whatever it is, three, five years out, we think that the workloads in apps will move very freely between borders. Between walls of a data center. It's all going to happen with one click simplicity and delight. We believe we can deliver. We think that real hybrid scenarios. They're not fulfilled today. There's a lot of promise. There's a lot of talk. There's a lot of hype. But there's no real execution of true hybrid scenarios. I can tell you and this is my one little nugget that I'm going to drop for you as a preview. I can tell you that hybrid is an area that you should expect, for us, to make some announcements around coming this year. Because that's an area where, I think, there's a massive opportunity for a company like Nutanix to do it well and own a great share of the real estate. >> Well Howard, I want to give you the last word on the conference itself. I'm sure you've got an audacious goal, for the team, as to how many people are going to be there. What's the pitch to get people to say, go to Nutanix.com/Next, click that button now, come join us at the end of June? >> I'd say it's the best place to come if you're thinking about the future of your IT operation and I want to make it as broad a statement as that. It's not just about what you're doing with a particular PC or stack, it's about thinking about your real strategy. Long term, what is my Cloud strategy? And if anyone out there is wondering about that, this is the conference to go to because we're going to have conversations about hybrid Cloud, we're going to have conversations about how many of my workloads should I put in the public Cloud? We're going to have lots of conversations with practitioners that are building the private Clouds today. There's going to be a lot of rich content. I think this is the place to go if you're thinking about Cloud. And you really don't know where you're going to end up. Whether you're going to end up, mostly, end up in the public or private but we think that's where most people are today, they're not sure. There's a lot of boomeranging too. Folks that have started in the public and now, they're trying to bring work load back. If you're in that scenario because the public is too expensive, this would be a great place. Cause we already have a few customers presenting on why they brought work loads back and how they were able to do that. >> Not to just be a blatant plug but we go to a lot of shows. I tell you, the community of people that are at the show are great. And something that I don't get at every show. Not only do you get to understand the technology but you've got some good thought leaders. And not just technology industry leaders but thought leaders in general. Talking about innovation, talking about the future. I see you've got founders and CEO's and professors and authors that I've read and have seen that at previous shows. So always excited to have places not only that I can learn but expand the mind so we're excited. I mentioned to the audience Nutanix.com/Next is where you can go register for the event. Of course, check out, siliconeangle.tv for our upcoming events including the Nutanix show and look forward to seeing you at many of the shows up. Howard, thanks so much for joining us. >> Howard: Thank you Stu. >> And thank you for watching The Cube. We'll be back with more coverage here and you're watching The Cube. (lively music)

(uplifting music) >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman and this is a CUBEConversation at SiliconANGLE's, Palo Alto studio, happy to welcome to the program, a first time guest and and new to Nutanix, the Chief Marketing Officer, Ben Gibson. Ben, thank you so much for joining us. >> Stu thanks for having me here. I love the studio and love the chance to chat with you. >> Alright, so our audience know Nutanix really well, so let's introduce them to you first of all. Give our audience a little bit about your background and, you know, we know Nutanix IPO'd not that long ago. Exciting. Growing real fast so, you know, I'm sure it makes sense but why for Ben? >> Yeah. For me, firs and foremost, it's such an exciting company. We're going through a lot of fairly strong growth right now. We've really created a category in the Space Realm Hyperconvergence and now we're really expanding from that position and to be in the middle of that, I think is really exciting. >> So your background is mostly in the networking space and it's one of those things, I'm a networking guy by background. >> Yeah. >> Networking is changing a lot, lately, but not nearly as fast as some of the other parts so, you know, tell us a little bit about your background, where you've been, what your skillset is going to bring to Nutanix, in that ecosystem. >> Yeah, you know, I did, like you, I hailed from the networking industry. I spent a good portion of my career at Sisco, I spent part of my career at Aruba Networks, which is in the Wi-Fi, wireless space, but I think you're right. I think the acceleration of innovation in Nutanix's industry a lot of stuff has changed so quickly in that space, so networking hasn't quite kept up with that level of change of things and for me it's kind of getting on a much faster train and moving forward with it. >> Alright, so we've had theCUBE at every single one of the DotNext conferences >> Ben: Thank you. >> They're fun. Your predecessor Howard Ting had a certain flair so let's talk a little bit about the show and, you know are there things that your going to be putting your stamp on at this show, coming up in New Orleans? >> Yeah, I mean first of all it great to succeed Howard, in the role. I used to be an advisor for the company and so Howard and I used to have periodic pancake breakfasts and I told him what I thought and he shared with me a lot about how exciting things were. What was happening at Nutanix and how they really move forward. And I knew about DotNext, I've seen DotNext I know what an exciting show it is. For a company like Nutanix to draw, this year, over 5000, attendees to this show, that's notable. And, what, to me, that signals is the level of intensity and the level of loyalty that we enjoy in our customer base, they're believers and they're coming to the show to learn from us, to connect with each other and really to accelerate some of their plans on how they continue to innovate. >> Yeah, you know, we travel to so many different shows and absolutely, it is at it's core, it's a user conference, it's users there wanting to learn how to use what they have even better. Learn about the cool net technologies. Dave Valente and I have talked about Nutanix is up there with companies like Service Now, that have, just, people that come and are just, you know, kind of fanatically supported. It reminds me of, you know, Vmware's a great company, doing well today. Many years ago everybody had the I love VMware bumper stickers. Vmware is a great show. We'll be there this year >> Ben: Yeah, so will we. >> And your company will too, so ah, what, what do people what brings them to that show from your standpoint and give us a little insight as to, kind of, some of the special things they'll be seeing this year in New Orleans. >> Yeah, you know, I think one of the biggest attractions of coming to this show is if you think about the role of an infrastructure professional, someone who's looking at hybrid Cloud environments and how do you manage those. Thinking about what applications run on what cloud platform. There's a lot of change and fluidity to that and I think the nature or the role of an IT or an Infrastructure professional is changing. Server Store J-Admin is quickly evolving because that's converging, just like the technology has and so, for me this show is about how do you get ahead of those trends. How do you position yourself to be as strategic as possible, within your own organization? And that's the way I like to think of Dotnext, it's a place that a professional can come to learn and to grow their career and their technology expertise. >> Yeah it's a great point, one of the things I've loved on theCUBE is there are speakers that aren't just from the tech industry, so everyone from Deepak Malhotra, who is from Harvard, um, thought leaders in the space to onstage at one of the shows it was David Blaine doing a magic trick while one of your engineers was configuring stuff. So there's some great speakers that'll be at the event this year to, not only learn the tech but as you said, you're thinking about the persons career and how do they embrace change and how do they help become more valuable to their company. >> Yeah, you know, there's two in particular that are going to be joining this year that I'm very excited about. One is Dr. Brene Brown. If you haven't seen her TED talk on YouTube I highly recommend you go and check it out. It's something different. It's about how do you be vulnerable, with yourself, with your career. How do you take chances? How do you take risk, and that's a lot of what's going on in our in our industry right now. The second one I think is going to be really fun and that's Anthony Bourdain. Known for his show, Parts Unknown and he's going to have colorful language, right, noted, some colorful language but also he's just a riot. He's the one I think is going to bring his special kind of flair to the show and get everyone really excited, laughing and maybe a little bit of gasping, in terms of what he's going to be sharing with us. >> Yeah, absolutely I mean, New Orleans is a great culinary destination and so I know everybody that's going there you'll want to check out the music, the culture and a lot going in there. So, excited about the show. We're going to have theCUBE there for two days. Last thing I want to talk to you about, Ben, just, Nutanix as a company, when I registered for the show there was one of the questions I thought was pretty interesting. They said, "What do you think Nutanix is?" You know, how do you, what's your relationship with Nutanix? And I'm trying to remember, I know one of the options was M: Is Nutanix a hypercovergence infrastructure player? Are they a cloud player? I think storage might even be in there, it's been one of those things as to, who is Nutanix? What are you today and what do you want to be in the next phase of growth? >> You know, it's a great question Stu, "Who is Nutanix?" We are focused on helping our customers build their enterprise cloud. Our taglines could be Your Enterprise Cloud. Enterprise Cloud is not only how you modernize your own data center but it's also, how do you embrace? How do you have a strategy? How do you govern? How do you bring together the right workload, for the right cloud platform at the right time? And that's the direction we're taking with our innovation. This is what more and more of our customers are looking to do. Not every application's going to a public cloud provider. Not every application is staying on premise. We're going to be living in the hybrid world, Enterprise Cloud is about how do you take the ingredients of hyperconvergent infrastructure? Take the ingredients for automation and management, over these different workloads, across these different environments and do so in a way that makes the complexity of infrastructure and multiple cloud management and make that all invisible. So for us that's our mission. It's building that Enterprise Cloud and making all that complexity go away. And that's the vision we're going to be talking about and that's what we think our attendees are really looking to get the guidance and, kind of the vision of how they move their careers forward and flourish in that space >> Ben, it's the barometer that I've been using for probably the last two years. If I spend a lot more time in kind of the Dev/Op Cloud native, you know, worlds these days. We were at an Amazon summit yesterday but, absolutely. It's heterogeneous world. IT has never, you know, let's throw out the old and start the new. Sure there's some new companies that might do that but it's a heterogeneous world, it's a multi-cloud world and big struggle for people is how do they get their arms around it? So if I look at a company that has started mostly on premises, it's like, oh how are you evolving? How are you working with the public Cloud? You know, Nutanix has been working very closely with Google over the last year or so. A new acquisition recently that I know plays into this whole story. Tell us a little bit about the acquisition and, you know, how does Nutanix look at itself, which is now, I mean, if you read the Wall Street reports, Nutanix is a software company. And you're getting great multiples on that and it's helping and you know I've been pretty vocal on this from it's early days, is Nutanix was never a hardware company. It, you know, building an appliance was a go to market choice to simplify and make it easy for customers but as the company matured, >> Yep. >> It made a lot more options and today it makes perfect sense that really software is where it goes, so you talked about a bunch of things there but specifically, kind of the multi-cloud and the acquisition first. >> You know Stu, we're really excited about this recent acquisition we made. It's a company called Minjar and the offering is essentially it's going to be integrated into our broader software platform, that allows customers to be able to assess on a realtime basis. What's the right Cloud platform for a particular workload from a costing perspective? From reliability standpoint. Derish talks about the law of the land. The laws of physics and the like, you need to apply these all to determine what you're going to run where. And what we got with this Minjar acquisition, is a really sophisticated way that our customers can embrace and is part of their enterprise cloud. Because part of this is taking back control over all this disaggregation of workloads running everywhere. You're losing control. Losing governance of your data and your applications if you don't really keep on top of it, this acquisition, I believe, is going to be a really key part of helping IT organizations regain that control. Yet still enjoy all the benefits of hybrid-cloud environments. Whether it be with an AWS an Azure a Google Cloud platform, like we're partnering very closely with, as well as what they're building with their Enterprise Cloud on premise. Whether it be, you know, with Nutanix. >> Yeah, it reminds me of, was it Progressive Insurance, I think has the, you know >> Yeah. >> We're going to give you quote on all of the things there. Cloud is complicated these days. Is there bias towards it, pushing towards, you know, Nutanix closer partners in the technology itself. >> Yeah, I mean it certainly has. There's a lot of complexity around that and to me the industry hasn't solved a lot of new complexity that has come out of the emerging trend of a different line of businesses starting to develop a new application now, on a certain Cloud platform and the like. And as you're seeing this demand for more application mobility between clouds, so all of a sudden the partners that are coming to us and the partners we're seeing and are demanded of that we work with in the market our players are looking at application automation. Players that are looking at dev/ops tools and the like and it both guides how we innovate on our Calm platform, which we introduced last year at DotNext as well it helps us expand our reach. So, we talked to our traditional buyers but there's a lot of new buyers now that are building those apps and managing those environments and we're going to start to see some of those come into the DotNext show. >> Alright. Ben I want to give you the final word. DotNext is one of the many events that I know you do lots of regional shows and the like, what should we expect to see from Nutanix through 2018? >> Yeah, you know the first thing is that the dialogue, the narrative for the company, that we're going out with we've moved to be a software only company and I think our customers tell us and I heard this from one of our largest retail industry customers just a few weeks ago, by moving to a software only model, it's given them freedom to take advantage of Nutanix, regardless of their hardware platforms. And like you said we've never been a hardware company, it's all been about software value and what you're going to see from us is a new narrative. An expansion of the branded Nutanix talking about the freedom we give for customers to build the data center they've always wanted to build. Freedom to run their application or the workload that they've wanted to run, where they choose to run it based on that insight I talked about. And in another realm, the freedom to play. Freedom to get their weekends back. A lot of our value proposition is because of all the complexity we've taken out of the equation, is that we give our customers their weekends back. This is a story that our DotNext attendees, I think, know better than other but we want to spread the word and so part of that is harnessing that freedom concept to build, to run, to play to invent and tell the world. And DotNext, whether is be in New Orleans, which I think is going to be a blast. When we take it to Europe, London and we do this all around the world, to me that's kind of ground zero for that story. For the community of what we've built together with our customers and partners and that what we take out to the world. >> Alright, well Ben Gibson, I'm glad we could introduce you to our community today because we're going to be seeing you at lots of other events, you and your team, of course, theCUBE will be at Nutanix, DotNext in New Orleans. Nutanix and you will be at Dell Technologies World in Las Vegas. Google Cloud Next happening this summer in San Fransisco. Lots of other shows so be sure to tune in to theCUBE.net, get the list of all the upcoming shows, Ben, Nutanix and of course lots of the Cloud and infrastructure ecosystem. Check it all out. I'm Stu Miniman and thanks for watching theCUBE. (uplifting music)