>> Narrator: Live from New Orleans, Lousiana, it's theCUBE! Covering .NEXT Conference, 2018. Brought to you by Nutanix. >> Welcome back to theCUBE, here at Nutanix .NEXT 2018 in New Orleans, Louisiana. I'm Stu Miniman, my co-host this week been Keith Townsend. Happy to welcome to the program two first time guests, we have Rodney Foreman, who's the Vice President of Global Channel sales at Nutanix. Thanks for joining us Rodney. >> Thank you. >> And we've got Deborah Bannworth, who's the Senior Vice President of Alliances and Inside Sales at Sirius, not the radio but the channel partner. >> And you got the last name right, so thank you very much, good to see you. >> Stu: I'm glad I didn't lose that bet. >> Deborah: You practiced well, you practiced well. >> Rodney, let's start with you. You're new to the role, a lot going on in the channel, I definitely noticed when I came to the show this year, the X Ball hall has a whole area of the channel partners. There's obviously been channels since day one from Nutanix, but, you know, big emphasis here at the show, so, tell us what's new and tell us what brought you to Nutanix. >> Yeah, so my background is I ran the cloud channel business at IBM for that middleware channel business for years. I joined Nutanix in January, and since January we've been making a lot of progress. We're evolving and changing our channel program, into a industry leading channel charter, that we can all be proud of and that will make our partners more successful in the market. I'm pleased with the event, we've got a record number of partners here, last count was 1600. We had so many partners that the partner exchange keynote was overflowed, and we had to stop letting people in. The room was overfull and so we made some exciting announcements there. Acknowledged the partners for all the new customers they're bringing Nutanix, helping us grow our market share. All of the success we're having with customers is in large part due to our partners because of successful implementations that our partners are driving. And I'm very very excited to be a part of the Nutanix team, and working with partners like Sirius, who I worked with at IBM, and now we're working together at Nutanix, and driving a lot of success in the market together. >> Great so Deborah, I got to know Sirius some through the virtualization community over the years, so give us a little bit about your background, for those that don't know Sirius, give us kind of-- >> So I've had the privilege, the distinct privilege of being at Sirius for a little over 21 years now, so I've seen a lot of change, internal and external, and my role at Sirius is I have responsibility for all of our partnerships, nationally, as well as inside sales, so a little bit of the two prerogative approaches here at Sirius. We have enjoyed, and I actually look you in the eye and tell you, we have sincerely enjoyed the partnership that we have with Nutanix, because it is just that, it is a partnership. It's a win win, and it's something that started in late 2013 for us, and it was something that our technology community, right, our technical and as well as our architecture folks actually take a look and said HCI could bring a lot of value to our client set, and we entered into that partnership and it has been a phenomenal success for us, hopefully you have seen the same, and we see nothing but growth for both of us. >> And Deborah, for those that don't know tell us what GO is Sirius in, what's kind of the breadth of portfolio that you offer. >> So Sirius today continues to grow, and we are North America basically. >> I like that of the, one of the companies Sirius acquired was Viro. >> Yes, at the Carolinas. >> And they have the Viro (mumbles). >> Great group of guys. >> Great culture, so let's talk about the customer engagement. A lot of customers here, a lot of joint customers, are we to the point that, you know, we're beyond a chicken egg discussion, and customers are coming to Sirius and asking about HCI and Nutanix specifically, or do you guys have to push out the message? >> You know, it's funny, so, if i may be candid, in 2013 I would tell you we were pushing, right? Here's Nutanix, here's what they do, here's what HCI is, here's the value of HCI to your environment. Today it's no longer like that, right? It's no longer in the corner with the lights blinking and "Hey let's not tell anybody we're doing this", it is much more adopted, it's embraced, it's something that people are building off of. And what we're seeing with our clients is we're seeing a continual, my environment is complex, I need something that doesn't just do VDI, but does beyond that, and I think, interestingly enough, Nutanix has grown up, if I may say that, in that, when we started we were, we were a VDI company, no more. You're expanding across all workloads. >> I have the folks at Sirius credit, because they continue to come up with innovative ways to apply our technology in different use cases, different customer types and industries, and they are bringing us a lot of new logos, because of that innovative approach, so they're a very valuable partner to us from that perspective, in that they're reaching customers that frankly our direct sales team couldn't reach with the bag of products they had to sell. They add value, they add innovation around our technology and then we're able to extend our reach into the market, leveraging Sirius. >> I'd like to go into the cloud conversation. So when I look at the channel, it was, sometimes there was fear at the beginning days, there were plenty that had Microsoft practices that have worked along those lines. Today, Amazon's working with them and of course Nutanix is expanding how it works in all of those environments. Deborah, if you could share, how does cloud fit into it? You know, kind of with and without Nutanix. >> I don't think you can leave this event without talking about cloud, right? In and of itself, so, Sirius believes and will continue to believe in a hybrid world, right? Hybrid IT, and I think cloud is an extremely important part of that conversation. I think where Nutanix is uniquely positioned is with their enterprise cloud, and what they've done with not being just a VDI solution set anymore, they can span, and help our customers share multiple workloads within a data center, as well as and or within the cloud set. So it's an extremely important part of where we are today, more importantly where we're going with cloud. 'Cause I don't think anybody has it all set with cloud, candidly. I think a lot of us are learning. But again, I think Nutanix is uniquely positioned today, for that. >> Yeah I agree with what Deb said that you hit on something that's come out very strongly at this conference, with some of our announcements around Beam and Era, and Flow, which is hybrid cloud. Customers have hybrid cloud environments that and we bring together that private cloud, and public cloud environment seamlessly, and now we provide some intelligence behind the decisions customers are making. How much is it really costing me to have a public cloud environment versus private cloud, and where will my workloads run more effectively and efficiently, at what cost? And this is going to be technology that Sirius will be able to leverage, not only to sell in the market, but also add value into their solutions around cloud. So, we're excited about being able to provide technology and tools that Sirius can use to extend their value proposition, to be more competitive in the market as well. >> And this is what Nutanix is doing so well to Rodney's point, they continue to innovate, right? Again, kind of what got them to where they are today is not going to be the same thing that kind of gets you to where you want to be as a company, and you continue to innovate, and we see that and we need that, because ultimately, at the end of the day, our respective, our bosses if you would are our clients, we have to make sure that we're making that complex environment less complex for them. And much more open. >> Yeah, I mean we're proud of being in that upper right in the magic quadrant, but let me tell you there's others that are in that magic quadrant behind us that want to take that spot back. And we know that, so we have to continue innovation at a very fast pace, which you're seeing from us, to continue to move hopefully in a whole nother zip code from our competitors, which our partners benefit from. And it allows them the freedom to sell more into the market, leveraging that innovation that we continue to drive and I don't see the rate and pace of that ending anytime soon. >> So Deborah let's talk a little bit about the value that Nutanix has brought with abstracting the software even further from the hardware, after Norr becoming a appliance company is now a software company. What flexibility does that give Sirius when it got to talk to customers, when it talked to platforms that Nutanix has partnerships with, and platforms that they support, but not naturally have partnerships with. What are those customer conversations like? >> Yeah, this is interesting, especially from a company that started in 1980. >> Rodney: We've had several conversations about this. >> Many conversations about this. Yeah well, I'm going to make it short though Rodney, how about that? But again when you take a look at our customer environment now, I mean, our job is to make sure that we're bringing best of breed technology. But more important, that it's open. And what's Nutanix brings to the table. It's an open environment, being able to utilize different technologies together to collaborate, I mean just take a look at the floor today. Who would've thought that IBM and Nutanix would be sitting at the same table? Truly, and I say that in a very positive way. It enables us to take, a great example is IBM and Nutanix, it enables us to take that strength, and that power of IBM power AIX, meld it with the Nutanix solution, being able to create a much more powerful and open environment forum. So it's being able to be agnostic and an integrator for our clients. >> I wonder if you can expand a little bit, the power one something that not everybody fully understands. It's often starting with a different set of applications, adding AIX into there, what are you hearing from customers, what's so attractive? >> So I think with the announcement this week I think it was a lot of discussion before kicking tires, I think what you're going to see in the 30 to 60 days are people are actually going to start allowing those conversations to go deeper and wider within their existing customer base. Because again, Sirius is privileged to have one of the largest, if not the largest in North America IBM power base. It enables us to go back in and have relevant conversations and say, "Let's get a little bit open, with Nutanix as a software". >> So Stu let's face it, not every customer of IBM has the latest power system. (all laughing) I mean, that's a fact. >> We've tried Rodney, we've tried. >> So that's opportunity for us, and I think the customers are going to be very excited about this offering, because they've not all upgraded, a lot of them have old, power sucking, you know, old power systems on AIX and they are welcoming this solution and opportunity to upgrade, and modernize their data centers, leveraging this offering and certainly Sirius is a long time top IBM partner, and those customers, IBM customers, look to Sirius for solutions, and look to Sirius to advance their infrastructure, modernize it, this is a great opportunity for both us, leveraging this announcement and what we're bringing out to the market with IBM. >> So outside of power, what's the exciting buzz at the show? What have customers, that you guys talk to, generally said, "You know what? We got to have this tomorrow". >> Right. >> So, I have to be selfish a little bit, I'll tell you that the buzz for us and the 54 team members that are here from Sirius, I would tell you I would be remiss not to thank you know, Rodney and Sherry and the rest of the executive team for recognizing Sirius as the US Partner Of The Year. That is quite a buzz, and one that we will continue to discuss throughout the show. I tell you that, for us right now, when we take a look at the most opportunistic way of going back into our client sets now and offering a solution, would be the IBM piece. The IBM power AIX announcement is probably one of the key opportunities for us to go back in and offer value to our client sets. That's probably the biggest, the buzz for us today. >> Yeah, and I tell you that, they should be very very proud of this award because one of the things I did, taking over the channel, and leading into this event, is we had a lot of awards before. I mean, it was like a nine year old soccer game. Everybody got a trophy. And I reduced the number of awards down significantly because I wanted more press coverage, I wanted more recognition, and I wanted it to mean something. So winning this award for Sirius, there was some tough competition, they're against some big partners, and Sirius really, you know, comes to the top of the heap, clearly with some of the investment and focus and what they're achieving in the market with us, so, it's no longer a nine year old soccer trophy, I mean they really accomplished something. Yeah in winning this award, so congratulations. >> Thank you. >> Rodney, so last thing I want to ask, it's competitive in the channel these days. >> It is, very. >> Sirius has a broad spectrum of partners, what do you want people to take away from the show about Nutanix's commitment to the channel? >> Well, we announced a new channel charter, okay, and I call it a channel charter on purpose as opposed to a channel program, for a reason, because it's different. It's not the same old channel program with platinum, bronze, and gold, and the tearing, and the same old thing, we have to differentiate ourself in the market from other channel programs. We are evolving as a company to be that provider of solutions in the multi cloud era. Which means you can't have the same old channel programs anymore, and deliver in that type of market and environment. So, I'm excited about the channel charter we've defined in our rolling out into the market, it is clearly different than any other provider, different than our competitors, and it's going to help our partners both large and small, to be effective in selling our solutions in the market with competitive rewards, and financial benefits as well as the ability to build skills, drive pipeline, across our ecosystem of partners that we have for Nutanix. So, I'm very excited about what we've announced, and I think it's going to differentiate us from the rest. >> Deborah, congratulations on the award. >> Deborah: Thank you very much. >> Rodney, thank you for all the updates, great to see you, you know, it's the technology, the channel, everything we're hearing here. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> For Keith Townsend, I'm Stu Miniman, thank you for watching theCUBE. >> Deborah: Thanks for having us. Rodney, thank you. (electronic music)

(upbeat music) >> Narrator: Live from New Orleans, Louisiana, it's theCUBE! Covering .NEXT Conference 2018. Brought to you by Nutanix. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage here from Nutanix .Next 2018. I'm Stu Miniman, with my cohost, Keith Townsend. Happy to welcome back to the program, Ben Gibson, who's the Chief Marketing Officer at Nutanix. Ben, nice to have you on your third time now on theCUBE. Couple more, you got one of those VIP badges on our website. (Ben laughs) >> It's getting to be a really good habit. I'm really enjoying it. Thanks for having me here. >> Well, thank you. And You and Keith share something in common. This is the first time you've been to a .NEXT conference. >> Indeed. >> So, I've had the pleasure of actually being at every single one of the US and Europeans. Haven't done the .NEXT On Tours. But give us your impression so far as to, you're heavily involved, but of the show. >> You know, I have to say it's lived up to all my expectations and more. I talked about this, this morning. The first .NEXT back in 2015. You were there, it was in Miami. We had a little over 800 people. Today, we had 5,500 registered to be here. And it's a thrill to see that many of our best customers and partners come together. And for me too being new to this company, I've been here almost six months now. It really brings home the level of energy, and loyalty in excitement that we've engendered within our customer base. It's palpable. And what better way to experience that live than here in New Orleans? >> Yeah, as we say, a lot of shows like this, there sometimes it's like well, I've got all the true believers here. But, you know, there's good customers here. They're poking, they're prodding, they're trying. But they are big fans of the product. Any kind of key things, interactions, you've had so far? >> Yeah, I've had a lot of conversations with customers here. And I am picking up on some common themes. One of them is moving more and more of tier-one applications onto Nutanix. And that's very exciting for us. You know, in our early days, it was all about VDI and that was the sweet spot workload. And now, we're starting to see more and more Oracle and SAP, and other major tier-one applications, being deployed over Nutanix. And customers are excited to do that because we've made things so much radically simple for them in terms of the infrastructure that is being run upon, (laughs), so to speak right? And so that's certainly a key theme that we're hearing. >> Yeah, one of the things that I took out of your opening at the keynote is that we talk about how much change there is in the industry, but in some ways it's a challenge, but another way it's really an opportunity for customers to go through their transformations, change their businesses, and prove their careers. What's Nutanix's positioning? >> Yeah, first of all, my first and Nutanix's first position on this is .NEXT. We see as a place where IT professionals can come, they can learn, they can share, get certified; but also help them position themselves for all this change that's happening in the industry. Public cloud, right? If you're managing and building infrastructure or you're renting it. And we think there's a really interesting opportunity for those who have built, to become those who have advise and lead. As everything moves to be a more hybrid cloud scenario out there. And so, I think that's the opportunity that we have and this show is about how do we empower our attendees to go back out and be that strategic counselor. To build the right type of data center the way they've always wanted to do. And, be that broker almost, between different clouds. And that's a lot about, what you heard Sunil talk about today. >> So Ben, one of the things that I've heard consistently from customers over the past couple of days: Nutanix, humble. Nutanix, not entitled. You're the chief storyteller at Nutanix. How did you get that message out, without eliminating the core of that message? I mean, that's great to hear when I'm here at the show. But how do you expand that message out to the greater audience and future customers? >> That's a great question. It's something I think about every day and every night (chuckles). And for us, you know, we talk about our core values, about being hungry, humble, and honest. And I really think we live up to that. I think, how do we get out that persona of who we are as a company out to the broader marketplace? We have a lot of great early adoptive customers. And now as we move and as hyperconvergence and everything we're doing moves more into mainstream with candidly more conservative customers that may not be ready to try the brand new, then we do have to get that story out there more. So one big way we do it, just this week we've launched our new brand campaign around freedom: Freedom to build. Freedom to run the applications where you want to run them. Freedom to choose the right cloud platform that suit your needs. And so, a big thing we're doing this week is we're rolling out this campaign. And who better to unveil that to you first, than our best and brightest and most loyal customers here at .NEXT? >> Yeah, expand on that, that freedom campaign. It definitely, it struck me when I landed in the airport, here in New Orleans. And I believe it's: "Build, run, cloud, invent, and play." >> Ben: Yeah. >> Some of those themes, I've heard in the past. I remember the first .NEXT conference, it was, "Nutanix gave me my weekends back." And then, you know went a little bit, "Nutanix enabled me to go to "that security project that I couldn't do before." So, why the freedom brand? what have you heard from customers that resonated with that? >> We chose to go down this path, because we wanted to make sure we connected, everything that's wonderful about Nutanix. And, I'm going to brag about my marketing team. What I inherited here is an amazing marketing team. And, we've all recognized that what this team has built in terms of the voice of the company, in terms of the story that we created. A category how, maybe not quite so humbly, say we created with hyperconvergence. We want to connect the past to the present and into the future. And so, yes, give us your weekends back. That's something in common, we have heard from customers. Freedom to play is about building all for that. Freedom to build, is about building on the early success we've had. Now it's freedom to run, Freedom to cloud. As we've moved into multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud management automation and control. These are new elements to our portfolio. So these are new storylines that we need to open up. So, the way I like to think about it, this campaign is connecting everything that's been great about Nutanix to today and then also taking us into a new direction. >> So, Nuich talked earlier about the importance of being able to just go to that website, download Nutanix CE version, kick the tires; A promise Angelo Luciani, who runs the community program-- >> They did a wonderful job. >> Wonderful program, tie that together to their freedom program. How important is your community program? Which gave some big numbers today on stage. How important is that in helping customers discover Nutanix and move their careers in help digital transformation? >> Keith I'm glad you brought this up. Our next community, yeah, so the number I gave today was close to 70,000 active members. And we've drawn almost 20,000 to all of our .NEXT conferences over the past year. The online community to me is fundamental to how we continue to grow and deepen the connection and affinity we have with our customers. And what you going to see us do is really bet on driving more curriculum that's easy to consume, that helps our community members expand their knowledge base in the areas like multi-cloud, hybrid-cloud management. We introduced Nutanix Era today bringing new database services to the floor starting with copy data management. That community needs to be step number one for where our best customers go and learn more about the roadmap. Learn about best tips in trades to be able to embrace this new capabilities and then weed down into the fabric of they are doing with their data center builds. So community, I'm a big believer in it. We are lucky enough to have a vibrant and strong community already. So, now it's like how do we add more to that experience. This place, is kind of like coming to Mecca, it's like coming to-- (laughing) For us, right? It's coming to the event to have a touchstone. But then for the other 51 weeks to the year, that's what NEXT community is all about. >> Yeah, Ben, what type of roles are you trying to reach with your message? We've talked traditionally. We're talking kind of the infrastructure, getting out of the silos, going to the architect, But then we have a product like Beam which doesn't even. It started in the public clouds and working there. Who are you trying to reach with your freedom messaging and as you expand the portfolio to SaaS and beyond. >> You know it's interesting. Our business is diversifying and the audience and the personas that we have reach is definitely diversifying. So, obviously we have great affinity with servers, store admins, infrastructure managers. We are increasingly engaging up the IT stacks so to speak. Application owners and developers, is a significant audience for us. In fact yesterday for the first time in .NEXT, we had our inaugural Hackathon. And we had lot of folks that come from DevOps practices, within their organization, and this is a huge growth area within enterprises, and they came yesterday, they sat down, they had six hours, we fed them cookies, we gave them drink. All sorts of drink, and they came up with some really cool new apps where they developed to our APIs. And that's just one representation of a new audience and building that bridge between whose building an architect in the infrastructure And who's developing these new apps, which by the way need to get to market immediately. Which is why you need such radically simplified infrastructure to make that happen. App developers move up the stack. Before I came here to join you, I was with a room full of CIOs, and we talked a lot about some of the business pressures they're feeling. We talked a lot about governance and cloud. So there's a lot of new topics there, that under the freedom campaign, we talk about freedom to cloud. But then the meat underneath that is really around some of these topics we covered earlier today. >> So, still we've been at other infrastructure shows that have tried to do DevOps and Hackathons and they haven't been successful or they've been successful for a limited amount, you guys actually, quote unquote, sold out the space. What is the message that's resonating with that crowd that's bringing them to a DevOps Hackathon at what is essentially still, an infrastructure-focused audience? >> You know, the way I'll answer that question, one of my favorite early stories since I've joined Nutanix; major retail or customer. The infrastructure team without telling the app dev folks, moved some of their early apps onto Nutanix and didn't tell them. All the sudden, they started getting all these phone calls, and it's like, "what did you do?" "My apps are performing beautifully. "Oh, my Gosh it's so simple." Then they provided them with the portal that we offer through our software, So they could see how everything is moving. Are the SLAs there? Are these Apps humming? And they said, "what did you do?" "Well, we moved it onto Nutanix." And so then all of a sudden this new audience for us started saying we want the Nutanix. (Keith laughs) Which I think is a brilliant tagline, I love it. >> Keith: The Nutanix. We're trying to capture that spirit. So to me it's about. In the past there's been a lot of frustration, candidly, between these app developers who are under extreme pressure to get their new app to market. Customer facing, business facing, or what have you. And it's been so slow to get it done and so then often a crazy CMO of an organization, may work around IT and go throw something out in the public cloud. Well that could still be the model, but with the tools and HCI as a simplified infrastructure. Now there's a big answer, hey, we can move, we can sprint at your speed. And I think that's the key message. And so we're starting to attract that self-fulfilling prophecy to help make that possible. >> All right so, Ben, you are talking about your teams built a really impressive show here. Got the Hackathon as a new thing, one of the things I noticed here in the Expo Hall, there's now a whole area with some of the channel providers. There's always been channel providers here but they've got booths and speaking gigs. What other aspects for those people that didn't attend, in person here would you want to call out, give a little bit of color to what's happening? >> Yeah, Stu thanks for pointing out channel partners. This year over 1,200 representatives from Nutanix's channel are here. And Lou Attanasio, my esteemed colleague and global head of sales, and Rodney Foreman, our head of channels, they are both with me very focused on how do we go bigger and deeper with our channel community. If you think about it, we've moved to a software choice strategy. You can consume Nutanix on our own appliance, you can consume it on our OEM, great OEM partner Dell, but we also have ways that you consume our software with Cisco infrastructure, with HPE servers and the like. Channels is a wonderful way for us to be able to gage and find that new elasticity, candidly, in the market where they have customer relationships we may not have yet, but we have to invest in that, we have to invest in technical enablement, we have to invest in co-marketing with them, and I'd say we've done some on this front in the past. The time is now for us to really go deeper on that front. And that one's a big message we delivered during our partner exchange event just yesterday here in beautiful New Orleans. >> All right, so Ben do we have to wait to the closing keynote till we know where Nutanix .NEXT US is next year? >> Yes, you cannot get it out of me. The announcement will come tomorrow end of day. >> Camera's will lie for their all asking. >> No, I'm not going to betray any body language or anything, but we're looking forward to seeing you there next year. >> All right, well, Ben Gibson, pleasure to catch up with you again. For Keith Townsend, I'm Stu Miniman. Lots more coverage here from Nutanix .NEXT in New Orleans. You're watching theCUBE. (upbeat music)