>> Announcer: Live from Washington D.C. It's the Cube. Covering .NEXT Conference. Brought to you by Nutanix. >> We're back. Welcome to Nutanix.NEXT. NEXTConf. #NEXTConf. This is theCube, the leader in live tech coverage. We go out to the events and extract a signal from the noise. My name is Dave Vellante and I'm joined by my co-host Stuart Miniman. Mike Day is here as the CEO of PXP Solutions. Financial services company and a customer of Nutanix. Mike thanks for coming on theCUBE. >> My pleasure. >> So, tell us a little bit more about PXP Solutions. >> We're a payment gateway which is a part of the financial services industry that most people don't even think about. And if you think about going into a store. Going into a hotel. Presenting a card. We're the bit between there and the bank. So, talk about mission critical piece of service. That is a very complicated process involves many banks, many card scans. Visa, Mastercard and so forth. So we actually have to be the piece between the retailer or the merchant. The consumer and the bank. >> So, in thinking about your industry. Some of the drivers and changes of the industry. How has that affected your strategy with regard to information technology? >> For us it was about expanding our business. We came from that really old three tier model. Big investments, they're a lumpy IT. We're moving more and more to a global business. We worked in the US. We have some big retailers here involved in EMV rollout for the US. And that creates demands on us where we have to have processing in the localities. So we have to create a new infrastructure here in the US. So we've taken up Hostess space in New Jersey. And we had to build a whole new processing infrastructure. I don't want to have teams here. Nothing personal. We're a small business, we don't want to have teams dotted around the world. Which means I have to think about getting manageable IT in the right territory. >> So Mike, I hear things like that and it comes to mind. Well, why don't you just use the public cloud or what is the edge implications of what you're doing. Edge computing, may have been talked about a lot. So maybe sketch out for us a little bit about. You know, kind of this scope of what you do. And do you tie into the public cloud? I think of like CDN's. Are you related to that or what do you deal with and what don't you deal with? >> It's an interesting conversation. It's one I've had with the public cloud vendors. For us it's all about PCI scope. You'll get all the merchants talking about this. It's about card data. There's a lot in the press about companies being compromised. We provide secure processing. So, as soon as that card is either on somebody's webpage or is delivered into a pad. We encrypt that data. Now, if we start putting that encrypted data and those tokens and card records. And we manage over a billion card records. Into the public cloud. That brings that cloud infrastructure into scope of PCI. You don't want to be doing that. So, we kind of have to use our own infrastructure but we want to leverage. Leverage, nice American way of saying it. We want to get some leverage to way that we want all the benefits of public cloud. But we need to do it ourselves. Now, I'm sure a public cloud vendor will say. Oh, we can be PCI compliant. Right this time. We don't want to do that. So, we have a cloud solution. But it's our cloud. >> Okay, so you're essentially trying to mimic that public cloud experience on-prem. >> Mike: Yeah. >> And so presuming that's where Nutanix comes in. That's their whole message. >> Mike: Absolutely. >> So, can you maybe take us through how you. Where you came from and where you are now, how you got there. >> Okay, again the benefits to being a small business. The benefits of being an ex CIO means that we can make decisions quite quickly. You're not going through layers of the CTO and his infrastructure guy and the sequel guy and so forth. You can play fast and loose. We had a three tier architecture. Largely coming to end of life. We had a big sand. So you had lots of single points of failure actually in the process. And we needed to do something different. We've been bumping into Nutanix. And they were very aggressive three years ago. As you can imagine as a new entry. They did the puppy dog sell. You know, here have one. See how you get on. We deployed that. We were going to do a VDI deployment which seems to be how most people start. But actually, we thought why? Why do you do that? So, we went straight to heavy lifting. And we put production into a production environment into Nutanix. And immediately kicked it out. The two new data centers with Nutanix kit. It means that a whole storage compute piece is gone from our daily management. >> And Mike, can you talk about the operational model. You said especially you've got some remote sites that you don't even want anybody there. How many people do you have managing this? How's that different from the old sand days that you had before? >> I hesitate. Six people operate our entire infrastructure. They're not located anywhere near the infrastructure. The infrastructure is in the London Docklands and in New Jersey. We go to New Jersey for physical inspections once a year. Everything else is done remotely. >> I'm from New Jersey originally and I understand why people don't want to go there too often. >> Mike: It's a nice place to visit. >> But right, so. Does it live up to that invisible infrastructure that Nutanix? What do your people, in operative? What do they touch, what would they have to worry about? >> Okay, so I'm going to give you a scenario. Where we obviously have processing in more that one data center. One of the things that we need to be able to do with that processing is to move stuff. Either for reasons of operational requirements where your trying to take a part of your infrastructure down for maintenance. Or if you had a disaster recovery incident you need to be able to move your processing to these different DC's. What we can do and what we do on a regular basis is that we will ship our processing between the different stacks and the different locations. And that's the press of a button. I mean, obviously our infrastructure and our systems and solutions are designed to operate in that way. But literally we can move processing to a new data center. And in terms of consumer experience. No change. Technically there's about a half a second delay. In half a second, no problem at all. So we can move stuff between data centers. And we do that on a regular basis. >> Mike, you mentioned that initially you were considering just doing a VDI workload. Kind of testing the waters. And you decided, no let's just go forward. What were your concerns at that point? >> I think the concerns for us was does it live up to the hype. We were being given lots of figures. All the vendors were doing that. Telling us how much quicker it would be. How much less compute we would need. How cheap it would be. But only when you do this thing in real life. When you actually do some real heavy lifting. When you start installing sequel service into a Nutanix environment, does it work? I had a queue of people telling me don't do it. It's going to be a disaster. And we did it and it wasn't a disaster. It was outstanding. >> So, we always talk about the labor costs. As a former CIO you know how labor intensive IT is. >> Mike: Yeah. >> And our premise is, you know what you've described. Mimicking cloud on-prem. Our premise has always been. You know, research indicates that a lot of the savings are in the productivity of the IT people. You can shift those resources elsewhere. Guys like you are trying to do digital transformations. Which sounds like such a buzz word. But it's actually starting to gain foot hole. It's a real deal. >> Mike: Absolutely. >> And you can't be doing long provisioning and fund that and fund these analytics and data driven transformations. So, is that a correct premise? Does it have a sort of major business impact on your IT staff? >> It does, I mean. Basically what it means now is our guys can get on doing the fun stuff. When we started doing this, they all thought they were loosing jobs and we were going to be cutting head count. We were never doing that. Because we never got out of the soup. You know, the IT guys would understand this. You spend all day fighting fires. You never get to do the fun stuff. But what we've managed to do is. We've managed to get to the point where our fundamental processing is just solid. We can deploy service at the click of a button. We can move service between data centers at the click of a button. We can do the stuff that everybody aspires to. But then, now those guys can then go and do the fun stuff. >> Interviewer: What's the fun stuff? >> The fun stuff for us is the analytics. It's using tools like Splent to truly understand what's going on. Getting predictive in what we do. That's the fun stuff. >> Were the skill sets of the guys who are putting out fires with the infrastructure compatible with the fun stuff or did you have to reskill? >> We trained. It's very easy to take a bunch of guys that you always asked to do one job. Then change the job and then assume the guys are bad guys. That's not how it works. I do think it's 80% personality, 20% skill. You can fill it in. So what we did was the guys who have been previously just fire fighting. It took a while. And it took a while for them to trust us. That we weren't really taking them into a trap of some sort. But we reskilled them. We didn't just bring new people in. >> Would you had. You feel like you would have had to hire more people if you didn't make this move? >> I'd say we couldn't have actually deployed in the model we currently did deployed to with the people we have. We were looking for operation efficiency. But we want resilience. Think about payments. You don't get two chances to take a payment. >> I mean, there's a very high level. Let's not be precise by the way. In percentage terms, how much more? What percent more IT labor would you have needed if you didn't make this move? Was it a 10% factor or 20%, 50%, double? >> Remember, we're a small company. We're talking about six people now. We'll probably need another four or five people. And at one point we had that as vacancies. And we've done other things recently. So in terms of our corp environment we're going to have to office 365. You know we're taking away again stuff that doesn't add value to us as a business. And pushing that out of what we do. >> That's a substantial business impact. >> It is. So Mike, you seem really happy with Nutanix but what's on your wish list? What would you like to see from Nutanix or maybe their Ecosystem? We've got the big expo floor here. What would make your companies life easier, you know simpler? >> I think for us it's just having some clarity as to where they're heading next. They've been an excellent start up. They've been moving the market. They've been ahead of the market. The problem I've always seen is companies as they get to this size. Almost like the wave go the market swamps back over them. They start hiring in from all the companies they used to be different to. And it's how do they stop that happening? How do they preserve the essence of what made them dynamic? So, you talk about functionality. You talk about the hypervisor. We're a EXS house. We use Vmware. But we're now using a cropless hypervisor in some of our environments. The issue for that is. >> Any information you can give us as how you make that decision? Whether you go ESX or AHV? >> It's purely down to the. Not so much the capabilities of AHV or ESX. We think AHV from a price point prospective is incredibly attractive. But as you know, everybody's infrastructure isn't just the hypervisor. It isn't just the hardware. It' all of the other ancillary platforms. You know, the security platforms, the thin platforms and so forth. And until those vendors start saying they support AHV. That's a barrier to us for using it in a production environment. Nutanix are great. They'll say they'll look after us. But no CIO ever got praise for just trusting a guy that he met on the street. You know, you've got to be careful. >> So you want that ecosystem to develop further? >> Mike: Very much so. >> Whether it's Nutanix, you know. Writing, integrating with a particular platform that you need or vice versa. >> Yes, definately. And you can see that here. There are some announcements I know that are coming from some other vendors here. Where they have much tighter integration to AHV. That's got to pick up a pace. >> Well, and that's their philosophy I would presume. We're going to write you our API, at least make that open. Now, but somebody's got to write to the API. >> Mike: Absolutely. >> So the work has to be done. But fundamentally it's there. It's not a closed sack as it were. >> But there's got to be a compelling client driver for that. So I can understand where these other vendors haven't made investment in the past. Because until they know they can make money with it. Having full on deployment with AHV. Why would you invest in that? But I thing Nutanix has got to the point now where there's no doubt they're a player. So now you have to be bold. >> Well, being a public company helps. >> Mike: Yeah. >> And seeing the growth rates and it's just you know. Helps with that sort of advertising the brand. But that takes time and they're still a small company. >> Mike: Very much so. >> Mike, you said you started out with VDI and kind of got to know it. You kind of look back at what you've done. Were there any surprises or anything you'd give advice to people that are just starting this journey from your learnings? >> I'll use a really bad analogy that I used last year. And most people don't sort of like it as much as I do. When people start on VDI and we never did it. We actually have never gone down the VDI route. We looked at it and went ahhh. We've got more important stuff. More fun stuff to do. Going down this road. Taking a VDI approach. I said it's like driving your Ferrari down the high street. You might think you look cool. But you're not really driving a Ferrari. You got to take this kit out on the road. And you need to give it some heavy loads. Because in the early days, the new tanks box hated being quiet. That they took time to spool up and so forth. That problems gone away now. But if you're going to really look at this stuff and you're going to get proper return on you're investment. Give it heavy lifting to do. And use it in anger. And don't just take the easy option. You know, the option where you don't have to convince the production guys. I would say, for us, the biggest lesson. >> Absolutely, find one of those hard problems. Throw something meaningful at it. >> Mike: Yeah, and you learn then. >> You learn then, absolutely. >> How about any thoughts on the events? I mean it's early but you know inner access. >> This is my third. My third .NEXT. So they've only had three. >> Okay, so you've been to all three in the US? You didn't go to the one in Vienna? >> I did as well. My head office was in Vienna so I actually wasn't at the event. But I attended the parties. >> Oh, okay. Even better. What do you get out of event like this? >> Two things. First of all, we get to understand what's going on. We do get briefings from Nutanix, so obviously we're quite involved with them. But it's good to hear it and hear the reaction from other customers. I think more importantly is an opportunity to network with other customers in Nutanix. Understand their issues. Share ideas. It's a great networking event for like minded people. And I think for me, it's worth the trip over to the US to do that. >> Good, Mike thanks very much for coming on theCUBE. It was a pleasure having you. Appreciate your insights. >> Mike: Yes. >> Alright, keep it right there everybody. Stu and I will be back at Nutanix.net NEXTConf. This is theCUBE. We'll be right back. (tech music)

(electronic music) >> Narrator: Live from Washington D.C., it's theCUBE covering .NEXT Conference. Brought to you by Nutanix. >> Welcome back to .NEXT, everybody, Nutanix' big customer event. This is theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. My name is Dave Vellante, and I'm here with my co-host, Stu Miniman. Virginia Gambale is here. She's the managing partner at Azimuth Partners, LLC. Virginia, thanks for coming on theCUBE. >> Oh, my pleasure. >> So tell us about Azimuth. What do you guys do? >> Well, we focus on helping companies grow, transform, and remain or become relevant. We work at both ends of the spectrum, so we work with early stage private companies that are either trying to raise capital, prepare to go public, or just get to that next level of growth. And then on the large public side, we work with companies who are more legacy-oriented in their traditional products and services, and really help them jumpstart a transformation process. Whether it be through setting up an investment venture arm, or through creating a transformative independent business that begins to create a different model, but at a distance from the original organization. >> You're a former CIO, you're an investor, you're a board member; a board member of our favorite airline, Jet Blue, and a strategic advisor. >> The best. (laughs) >> You're the best. >> Boston Base. >> We love Jet Blue. >> So, you know, a good hub, (mumbles). >> Best app. You know. >> That's right. >> Love you guys. So kind of an interesting and varied background. How did you get to this spot? >> I'm always focused, from the time I was a CIO, on looking at the companies that are going to change the game, and they could be the smallest companies that really have something that will allow us to leapfrog. I really believe in the concept of leapfrogging next chapter, and you want to be there first if you can. So, that's been the thread in my life, whether it be in a financial services business or an airline. It's always trying to double, triple, and multiply the value of the company, and also its relevance with its customers. >> So you believe technology is a sustainable differentiator, presumably, and despite what Nick Carr wrote way back when. >> I was one of those CIOs where the consultants would say, "Don't say what you're saying, because you're saying that technology is the driver for the business model, and we're saying it's an enabler," and I'd say, "No, it's really a driver." So I'm really happy that we've come into that, where it's not only acceptable, but it's the right thing to think about when you're sitting at a board. "How is technology going to drive my business?" And its relevance with my customers. >> Well, there certainly was a period of time where CEOs could call that into question because, as a CIO, you were spending a lot of money on heavy lifting that maybe wasn't adding value to the business, but now every company is a technology company. >> It is. >> There's far more SAS companies outside of tech than there are inside of tech. Everybody talks about the buzz word of digital disruption, but it feels like that's actually happening. Brings us to Nutanix. I mean, that's kind of my view anyway, what they're doing is to try to help us cut out that IT labor cost and shift the resource elsewhere. What's your take? >> Well, many times I talk about capital allocation. When you're sitting at a board level, you really want to be allocating your capital efficiently, and on the right aspects of your business going forward. And Nutanix, I think, offers incredible value proposition. If I can literally take my infrastructure costs down by 60 or more percent, and actually redeploy that capital into game-changing technology, then, to me, it's a no-brainer. >> Yeah. Virginia, I love that. When we came to the first Nutanix conference in Miami two years ago, it was great to hear IT people say, "I got my weekends back," but what's exciting is when we had PXP Solutions on, who's in the financial tech industry today, and he said, "What Nutanix allows me to do is allow my team to work on the fun stuff," which means they're off coding, or they're creating a new app, or, you know, creating more value for the business rather than just, you know, running around keeping the lights on. >> And I see the early adopters of Nutanix actually are the more vision-oriented CIOs who get that. It doesn't mean that we are going to not be able to use the talent that we have on board, but again, we have to use it more efficiently and to the best yield that we possibly can. And so I think the companies that are a little afraid, or they actually delegate that to a group who is concerned that that may mean they will no longer exist, we have to really break down that misconception. >> And Virginia, it often requires either some retraining, or, you know, there might be changes in kind of the makeup of your environment. What are you seeing out there? What are you advising companies as to how they manage their IT staff? >> Well, what's really interesting more and more now is Nutanix is now public and it's continuing on with its future strategy. I really believe they are completely redefining the concept of Cloud in context of the new world, and so the possibilities of starting businesses, transforming businesses in a very quick-start manner, but also deploying fundamentals of other industries where some industries thought they never could, so speed of execution and processing of enormous amounts of data, again, are made possible with a Nutanix type infrastructure. >> So, you're giving a keynote later on. Today, or is it tomorrow? >> Today. Yes. >> Okay. What are you talking about? Can you just set that up for us? >> Well, today I'm on a panel with a few other constituents who represent different aspects of the world today. And tomorrow, I'm going to be focused on a topic that's near and dear to my heart, which is in the executive session, and that is where we're going to talk about the market today as established in Wall Street is really focused on any number that is already public and how they can analyze that to the nth degree. But the question they really should be asking is, "How much are you spending on technology? How are you using your technology dollars? What are you doing with them?" And instead, if you think about the Amazon moment, which I call the "a-ha!" moment. I loved listening to Bloomberg Radio the day that AWS really became known as a business entity within Amazon, which was in the fall a couple of years ago. And the analysts on that call were actually saying, "I'm going to have to rewrite my model," because for so long we were saying Amazon was not profitable, and we would sort of discount that stock because of that. But meanwhile, they were siphoning off, you know, billions of dollars to create a business that is actually going to continue to support the technology revolution that's happening today. >> Well, so, let's unpack that a little bit. So investors today, they clearly want growth. You look at a company like Nutanix, Pure, you know, decent valuations, whereas companies like IBM struggle. You know, whatever, 12 straight quarters or 26 straight quarters of declining revenue. Amazon growing nicely. Throwing off a ton of cash. Not necessarily profitable. Do investors have that wrong in your mind? >> I really do. You know, I think that all the long-term businesses that have existed are standing at the edge of a cliff today, looking down at the abyss. And that is the reality. And so, if they listen to Wall Street, they're just going to perpetuate that getting closer and closer to the end of the cliff before they're going to fall off. Wall Street should actually be facilitating a conversation which allows them some time to actually speak about a transformative process. I would put my money into a company who talks about transforming their business or investing in new technologies as opposed to someone who's standing up there as The Emperor Has No Clothes and saying, "Oh, no, business as usual. In fact, we're cranking out higher margins." To me, that's a warning signal. >> What do you think of the private equity model these days? We've talked on theCUBE a lot about how it's changed quite a bit. You know, it used to be just suck as much cash out of the business as you can and leave the carcass for somebody else, but you're seeing some strategic investors... You see companies like certainly Riverbed, BMC's gone private, Dell obviously appears to be doing quite well. They're not on the 90-day shot clock. IN4's another one that we track. There are many, many more. I'm sorry I'm leaving some out. But is there a new private equity model in your mind where they're trying to invest more, get the valuations up, and maybe go back to the public markets? What are your thoughts on that? >> Certainly I see there are two models that are taking place. There's the private equity model where people are saying, "I need air cover," so I have to take my company private in order to reinvent it. But only still a small percentage of those private equity investors are really investing in the fundamental transformative aspects of those businesses There are still a lot of them who still see the opportunity to really manage the balance sheet, and the pure financials in order to make it look good and put it back out in the market. And there's several examples of that, I think. The other is the activist investor who is standing by, listening to the analyst conversation as I am, and saying, "Well, this is not going to bode well for this stock or for this company, and we want to proactively now start to influence how capital is allocated and how the company starts to make those transformative decisions." >> Well, and oftentimes, they're pushing for for a buyback or a dividend. I mean, that's kind of what happened to EMC. They couldn't weather the storm. Again, is that a good thing or a bad thing? >> Well, some of them, again, are in for the short-term gain, right? But there are increasing numbers of firms that actually believe that that is the way to transform an industry, whether it be media or the airline industry, or consumer goods is by beginning to get in and take seats on the board. Because at the end of the day, the buck starts and stops at the board level no matter what. >> Yeah. Virginia, wondering... You've been a CIO. What's your opinion on the role of the CIO going forward when we have things like the public Cloud, we're making infrastructure invisible, you know, great shift into kind of the roles and responsibility. What's the CIO of the future look like? >> I think this is a pivot point for a CIO. And whereas before the real enablement of the Cloud, CIOs had really A They were either going to become a chief digital officer, or they were going to stay sort of running the day-to-day shop. Because they didn't have the tools to be able to transform their existing day of operations. Today I think actually the CIO has the opportunity to make the choice, "Do I want to be driving the digital business in terms of product and service and move into that area, or do I actually want to begin to drive a transformation of my original cost structure and then begin to have the dialogue where the two are meeting now?" So the chief digital officer and the work the chief digital officer is doing is becoming day-to-day of operations, and the CIO is handling day of operations. So they actually have the ability to meet and transform the company. So I think that is a really important question that CIOs need to be asking themselves today. "Which of these roles do I see myself in?" >> We only got a couple of minutes. I got so many questions for you. So what's rhe I'm going to totally pivot here. The security discussion at the board level. What is that like now? How has it changed? And how should the CIO be communicating to the boards about security? >> Well, I fall in the camp, and I think I was one of the early drivers of making sure that the chief information security officer does not report to the CIO. It's a conflict of interest to me, plain and simple, like any audit principles one would have. But, and I think that will change over time in terms of the security that we are so hypervigilant about will become threads within the fabric of our infrastructure, and it will become day-to-day needs that will be put in by the CIO. Today they have to work very complimentary and very cooperatively, and so one should not feel that a CIO is failing in their job because the CISO is on top of them. Their job as the CISO is to be out in the market, and be understanding what is happening in the world today, and to the degree they can anticipate what will happen. They also need to be talking to the boards and educating the boards. Boards today have become... I would say cyber security is one of the main top three topics on conversation with every board. It should be talked about at every board meeting, at least a readout as to where we are, and what's happening and what are we doing? So it's a very important role. >> Before we go, I just want ask you about women in tech. About, we know, 50% of the population roughly are women. Only 17% of the tech industry comprises women. Thoughts on that? Do you feel like this industry is making progress, is going in any movement, wrong direction, right direction? What can be done? >> I think there are a lot of different philosophies in the world today about helping drive more women into tech. Certainly I've been in this business for, I hate to say, but it's multiple decades, and I was the only woman CIO at the time I was the CIO, or one of the first women board members sitting at a board table of all men. And some of the arguments say that women should be coding from very early ages, and that we have to get women coding. You know, I think women, just like men, fall into the category of broad spectrum talents. Not every woman is suited for a code job, but today, the great thing about technology is, we have visualization components, we have design components, we have strategy components more than ever, and I think when we educate our young girls, and I have one myself, we should understand where their best talents are, where their interests are, and help shape them in the areas that are tech-related, but not hardcore coding at all. There's a lot of organizations about women who code, and I think that's great, but that's not all that women need to do to be in the tech world and be successful in the tech world. >> Love it. Alright, we're out of time. My last question is sort of advice for Nutanix. What do you think Nutanix should be doing? What can you share with us? >> I'm very impressed by the CEO, because I think the first and foremost role of a CEO is to have vision, and I really believe that this CEO has vision. The difficulty now, once you're in the public markets, and you're under the scrutiny of a public market, and yet you as a company are in your infancy in how you grow, they have to walk that line between, "Yes, I hear you, Wall Street, but these are the things that I need to do to be the best, the biggest, and the most enabling company to my customers that I can possibly be." And that is a fundamental that they can never lose sight of. Don't listen to the street too much, and don't err on the side of only one way. >> Great. Virginia, really a pleasure having you on. I hope you come back to theCUBE. >> Yes, thank you, thank you. >> Appreciate it. Alright, keep it right there, everybody. Stu and I will be back in D.C. at the .NEXT Conference right after this short break. (electronic music)