>> Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE covering Microsoft Ignite, brought to you by Cohesity and theCUBE's ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back, everyone, to theCUBE's live coverage of Microsoft Ignite here at the Orange County Civic Center in Orlando, Florida. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host, Stu Miniman. We're joined by Brian Cox, he is the director of product marketing at Nutanix. Thank you so much for coming on the show. >> Well thanks for having me, Rebecca, and Stu, it's good to see you again, so-- >> Yes, you're a CUBE alum, an esteemed CUBE alum. >> I've been here before and it's a great experience. >> Great, well, before the cameras were rolling we were talking about how Nutanix really pioneered hyper-converged infrastructure. But, the vision is bigger, Nutanix is about more than hyper-converged. >> Yeah, and we're very, actually, glad to see here at Microsoft Ignite that Microsoft, in the next version of Windows, is touting the whole hyper-converged concept. So, we are seeing validation from one of the most established computing companies in the world. The thing is, when Nutanix got started, we didn't even know what to call it. We never used the term hyper-converged infrastructure. It was one of your colleagues in the analyst community, they coined that term. We were really thinking of something, I think, bigger and beyond, which is, how can we simplify IT, because at the end of the day, all the business cares about are the services that IT delivers. Those get delivered through applications. Everything below that, frankly, the business doesn't care, right? If you're a donut company, you want to make donuts. If you're a shipping company, you want to have trucks and all that logistics to be optimal. IT, and finance, and marketing, and HR, they're all just means to an end. And so, when we looked at this we said, What can we do to just deliver those services and apps, and simplify everything else? Anything that we can do to save time, that we can save money, we get to return that back to the business to help be a better trucking company or a better donut company, right? So with that in mind, we said we need to simplify. >> Brian, great point, I mean, your background, my background, we're on the infrastructure side of things. You know, I got reminded many times in my career, Look, the whole goal of infrastructure is to make those apps run. You know, it's my data and my applications, those are the important things of the business. That doesn't mean that we've, you know, made y'know, IT is not yet a utility, it's not completely commoditized, there's differentiation, so, maybe help explain a little bit, Nutanix in the Microsoft ecosystem and how that fits in the overall view of Nutanix's value in the marketplace. >> Sure, so, the larger vision that Nutanix had is just, Let's simplify everything below the app layer. We did start at one place, which is just to fundamentally clean up and simplify the physical infrastructure, so you have storage arrays over here, servers over here, a sand-fabric in-between, virtualization layered on top of that, all coming from different vendors, not necessarily all tested together. I know because I used to work at the vendors, right? All different management consoles. It's really hard to become a mastermind of all of that, to have it optimized, and not to have points of failure. So we said, The first thing we need to do is eliminate that complexity. So we brought that down into like a single building block appliance, which ultimately got termed hyper-converged infrastructure, but that wasn't our destination. That was just, we needed common building blocks like LEGO pieces, right, that can snap together without any fuss and allow the companies to build that up. Then, from there, we can then raise the level of simplification all the way between the physical infrastructure to the app. So, one of the things that we get an immediate benefit from, when we consolidate storage and servers, the virtualization, is that we improve performance for things like Microsoft SQL or Exchange. So, no longer do you have that long hop from the compute with the servers all the way out to the external storage arrays. It all collapses, performance gets better, we eliminate points of failure, and, in fact, even when you have multiple of these LEGO blocks, this cluster, we try to always associate the data and the compute onto the same node, so there's very little latency at all. So, Microsoft SQL, Exchange performance goes up, the up-time goes up, and then to manage it, is also simpler. >> Alright, so Microsoft business productivity apps live on the Nutanix infrastructure-- >> Yeah, they benefit immediately by going to the simpler infrastructure versus this complex distributed architecture, where there's different pieces from different vendors. >> Alright, so, we hear from Microsoft, and we know customers hear, it's a multi-hypervisor and multi-cloud world, so, how does the Microsoft pieces of that fit in with the Nutanix Story? >> Well, we realize that customers want to have choice. So, if you look at really the three pillars, that come from our founding, is we want to be able to make it simple, we want to make it scalable, and we do want to give you choice. So, when we look at that last one, we're going to give you a choice of, let's say, whatever hyper-visor you wish to use. It could be Hyper-V, it could be DSXI, it could be the Nutanix AHV, it could be XenServer from Citrix. All of those are supported, we support this on multiple different hardware platforms. So, you have Adelium C, Lenovo, IBM, Fujitsu in Europe, we just added Hitachi last week as a partner, we run on Cisco, we run on HPE servers, and that list continues to grow. So, whatever is your standard, we'll go ahead and work with that. We'll give you choices, different clouds, as well. So, the software to manage and optimize is not only just for your on-prem environment, you can use this if you're in a distributed environment, whether it's Robo or Edge sites, like oil rigs and other IOT, we can give the same interface, and then the same interface out to the public cloud as well. So we give you the choice of different clouds, different platforms, different hyper-visors, and then different operating systems. We support everything from a Windows server environment to Linux and even IBM's AIS. All are supported on the platform, so you get to have it fit the way you want to work, versus the other way around. >> How closely do you work with customers in making theses decisions? Because, as you said, your goal is simplification, making it easy for them to choose and deploy, so how do you walk them through the process, and is it ever analysis paralysis, because there are simply so many options? >> Well for some customers who are struggling with that choice, we do offer our own branded appliance. So, it's very simple, you have the computing framework, the Nutanix software's there, it's one single support line to call, and that's a very simple model. Other customers, though, have chosen who their platform of choice is, whether that's on-prem, like a physical server, or it's a public cloud. That choice, oftentimes, has already been made, right? We're just working with that, so, for those who already have an opinion in the customers sight, we'll work with that. If for some reason they don't have an opinion, or they want it even simpler, they can go with the Nutanix branded offering, but we'll work either way. >> Great, Brian, you go to a number of different shows. Tell us, what are you hearing from customers, what are some of the challenges, what are they looking for, and maybe what's different about the customers who are here at the Microsoft show, versus some of the others we might hear. >> Well, it depends on who you're talking to right? So, if you're talking to C-suite, at the end of the day, these are the guys or gals running the donut company, they're running the trucking company, and they view IT just like they view HR, or finance, or whatever. It's like, yes, that's absolutely critical, we need that function, but the goal is to make it more efficient, more effective so I can deliver more shipments, make more donuts, right? So, for the C-suite, they want to see, On my capital that I'm investing, what is the return on this, and do I have to over-commit capital now, because I can only buy it in big chunks?. So we address that by having what we call fractional consumption. Basically, you're buying one LEGO block at a time, so you're not consuming capital that could elsewhere be used in the business. So, C-suite, they have a different, y'know, one set of needs. Then you look at the sys admins, and they are overwhelmed with all of this complexity of infrastructure, it burns all of their time. They're spending all their nights, all their weekends, they're not very happy, they make mistakes. If we can give them back hours in their day, they're going to be more productive. They can actually do higher level tasks. And even for the folks on the dev team, if we can simplify the infrastructure and spin up new instances, whether it's containers, or VMs, and they can even do it through self-service, that makes them more productive. So, we try to address the needs of all those audiences. >> The customers you are referring to, they are different groups of customers, but they're all essentially the same company, so, are they talking to each other? I mean, are the tech people talking to the business people in terms of what are over-arching goals here. >> Yeah, they do talk to each other. Granted, probably the audience we talk to them most frequently are the sys admins, y'know, because we're very operationally tied, and we'll then arm them with arguments to talk to the C-suite, right? So I was just presenting yesterday here, told them, You're going to get your nights and weekends back., but when you got to go talk to the CFO, here are the things that that person's going to care about, right? When you go talk to the dev team, here's the things that you need to share with them. So, we do arm the sys admins, but we do have a growing presence, at the C-suite, for example. We've also started attending a number of developer conferences, saying, Hey, this actually makes sense to you, to get your job done, it's not just the sys admins, it's you as a developer, it's you as a leader of the company. This is transforming the power of IT to help fulfill the organization's mission. >> I'm curious about your perceptions of Microsoft. Right now we have Satya Nadella, who really portrays this company as a company that is open, inclusive, with a growth mindset, Don't be a know-it-all, be a learn-it-all. I mean, is that your... Do you feel that as someone who works closely with Microsoft, who rubs up against its colleagues-- >> I think it's an embrace, like what you can't exact in regards to, the reality is customers want choice, and it's not one size fits all, not one cookie-cutter approach. So Satya is saying, Hey, what can we do to integrate with Linux? That never would've been heard, maybe, under the previous regimes, right? What can you do to work more closely in the app development environments that the app developers want to work in? So, there's a lot of affinity, I think, between Nutanix and where Satya's going, and in providing that choice, providing best-in-class wherever you can then let the customer choose, but provide them the pros and cons, so they make an informed decision. >> Brian, thank you so much for coming on theCUBE. It was a pleasure having you. >> Well, thank you Rebecca, and thank you Stu, it's always great to be here. >> We will have more from theCUBE's live coverage of Microsoft Ignite coming up in just a little bit. (techno music)

>> Announcer: Live from Washington, D.C. It's theCUBE covering DotNext Conference. Brought to you by Nutanix. >> Welcome back to the district everybody, I'm Dave Allante with Stu Miniman, and this is theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. We go out to the events, and we Extract the Signal from the Noise. We're here, this is day two of the Nutanix.NEXTConf, #NEXTConf, Chris Hsu is here, sorry Calvin Hsu is here, VP of Product Marketing at Citrix. Welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you very much, nice to be here. >> So, you're up on stage earlier today right? A lot of good action here at the show. Talk about Citrix, and what you guys are doing here. >> Yeah, so I think Citrix, Nutanix, we've had a partnership going back for quite awhile. I think what really brought us together were customers that were actually trying to solve this issue, of how do I implement VDI, and how do I do this better right, there has to be a better way. And it's funny, we were just talking about chatting a little bit before about how many different infrastructure pieces and how many different components there are to learn in order to do VDI, and that was one of the things that always kind of stood as a barrier to adoption in some of the early days, going back, I don't know several years now, and they would say, well, you got to have, be an expert in networking, you got to be an expert in storage, you got to know all the server side infrastructure, the virtualization that goes with it, and then you got to also know the desktops, and the app parts of it, and how to manage all that. And in my experience it was all that technical knowledge, but it was also, it was also the people right? So, you also had to bring those people to the table, have one VDI project, go in and talk to a customer, and we're going to do a pilot for 200 people to start, and there'd be 20 people in the room. Because everybody had different areas of responsibility. And so as Nutanix is involved, and the whole idea of hyper-conversion, and HDI that's come around, that's really been some of the basis of where VDI is kind of getting that second booster of, in it's life cycle here, where they're realizing that it could just be a few people that are responsible for that HDI infrastructure, can deploy the VDI, and now they have a more simple reliable way of implementing that solution so (mumbles). >> I mean, that's kind of where, even when I go back to the converged infrastructure world that's, VDI was the one like foothold use case with Vblock's in the early days, and the HPE stuff, or HP then, and you know I have to say, I have to ask both of you guys, because you know this business really well, and you're obviously a VDI expert but, when you talk to customers, they get really excited about VDI, they're like, "Hey, this is a great use case, "we're going to, we're doing VDI, VDI, VDI, "it was a big project effort." When you talk to the analysts they're like, "Uhhh, VDI is so boring." What is it about VDI that there's this bifurcated opinion base right? Analysts uhhhh, okay, but customers eat it up. What's going on, what...? Unpack that for us. >> Well, I mean analysts don't necessarily feel the day-to-day pain of managing a desktop right? That's what it is right, so for them it's a-- >> Well said. >> It's the truth. Well, actually I know, I know some analysts that actually did that job, and so they're the ones that are still excited about it right? But in general, like once you get past the idea of that consulting a client on the complexities, and how do you choose a vendor and, and then it comes down to a few basic things, it's which one's going to deliver the best employee experience with the solution, which one's going to be the best operationally to manage and then sort of their job is done. But then, from a IT Admin perspective it's like they're still, every day they're managing new application update, the new desktop image, and it doesn't end right? And that's dozens and dozens of hours out of every week, every month, that you spend. >> Alright let's hear from the analyst. >> Dave, it was called VDI fatigue. Every year was the year of VDI you know. I think we've gotten beyond that, because I tell you, from my viewpoint, it was wait. It was this mess of a stack, and we're going to fix that. Oh wait, now storage is the mess, now flash is going to solve that, oh wait, mobile adoption is you know, the barrier, yet the opportunity, how do we modernize our applications, the changing workforce, mobile workforce. There were always the next, the next, the next, the next, the next thing and, it reminds me of our conversations with (mumbles) you know, it was like we're never finished, and a lot of it was, it was this big category of you know, you talk about the user experience, is I think, what Citrix is focused on, and how do we make that simpler and you know, so many analysts... The other thing from an analyst is, most analysts focus on a piece of it, and this is very different. I know some analysts focus on like, user experience, and let's look at the application, that's probably closer to where VDI is then, right, if you ask the storage guys they're like ah, VDI. If you ask the desktop people they're like wait, my place is fine so, it's that, it was a really complicated problem, but it's very different today, than it was, and I have to think with Nutanix it is, must've changed in the last five years. >> Absolutely, and well, I think the other thing is that's funny is if you take it back to like 2008 right? Analysts called the VDI game really early, so it's like you're saying every year was the VDI. Before anybody was deploying it in any sort of size, they were already saying it's a, X gazillion billion dollar market and that, and it, I think it's taken awhile for the customers... The customers are still just trying to dealing with some very basic desktop management issues today, and they're probably lagging behind the industry and analysts by three to five years I'd say, right? But what I hear now is, Windows 10 is coming around the horizon, how am I going to manage Windows 10 updates? I've got an Office 365 deployment project on my hands, how am I going to get this all out, how am I going to get the functionality that every one of my end users needs? And it comes around and it's like VDI is a great answer for that, it's a great way to solve that issue. >> Calvin, one of the things that we hear from new (mumbles) customers I mean, they love that kind of one-click simplicity, one-click update, and I hear about you know, Windows 10 is like the roll-out of the next thing, and where things break. How are Citrix and Nutanix working together to solve some of these challenges? >> Yeah, I think that approach of one-click, the automation you know, both the blue-printing types of technology is what we're pulling together. All that sort of automation is really important for, for this type of environment. You know I think the, we're both willing to pull together solutions that really then, drive that simplicity for, for both the infrastructure and the management, ongoing of that solution. It's like for example, we're working together on, work on the district's workspace appliance right? And that's, for us it's not a product name that's really a program, it's a way of defining HCI infrastructure like Nutanix and they're jumping on board with this. To be able to point that thing at the Citrix Cloud, and then download all the resources that it needs in order to run a Citrix workload on it. So it's a very automated way of getting stood up, so that not only is it deployment of the infrastructure, automated and simple, but placing that workload on it, and getting it set to manage, and then even running it and operating it is more like running and operating a Cloud service than it is even operating a local infrastructure for it. >> One of the things that David Floyer from Wikibon, has done a lot of analysis saying, if we can get to basically a single-managed entity is where he calls it, so I can have the entire thing comes out, not just the infrastructure, but all the way through the stack. Not only does that really help your deployment, but the overall kind of time-to-value, customer experience is just tremendously improved, tell us how you're helping to kind of reach that vision. >> Yeah, well I think it's time-to-value, but it's also making VDI accessible to more customers right, and more segments of the market. The types of things that VDI solves, security, manageability, those aren't just enterprise problems right? Even midsize companies, they have security concerns, and for them it's actually probably even more dramatic, like they have a breach there, and it's catastrophic for the company, not just, you know we're delayed by a few hours. And so you know, having that simplicity, and then making that whole thing easier to deploy, and faster, it's not just easier to deploy, but on day two, it's easier to manage ongoing. Those things are getting into tension again. >> So for years I remember in the Citrix, Synergy, a bunch of VMware, VM world's, talked to customers, and it was always a two-horse race between those two companies, and Citrix was like Secretariat, and VMware was like Devil His Due. You've probably never heard of Devil His Due. Pretty good horse but not Secretariat, and you guys, Citrix was the dominant player in that marketplace. What's the competitive situation today? It seems like VMware has made some acquisitions, has maybe caught up, maybe has some advantages, what, how do you see them as a competitor? >> I, so I think where Citrix is, I think that what really happens in the competitors space now is that it becomes less about VDI, versus VDI, and like what features are in each one. Although I could talk for hours, I think there's still a bunch of differentiation in there. You know earlier talking about user experience, I think the way we're looking at this market, and what's happening to it right now, is less about sort of user experience in the sense of a classic protocol versus protocol sense, in a technical sense, and more about, and I'll use the term more and more often about employee experience, alright, so it's not just what is the performance of my virtual desktop when I'm on x-y-z device, over a certain network. It is what happens that first time I give an employee a resource, or a virtual desktop, or a mobile application, or access to a SAS application, or an internally-hosted Web application through a virtual browser, and they go in and they, they want to get work done right? So the experience of that employee is now, not just one of these technologies, it is what we refer to as workspace technology. It's everything I need from the applications, to the files that I want to use, to the workflows that I want to kick off, and I think that will be their new area of differentiation, and again, that's where we want to move very far for. >> Calvin, what should we be expecting to see from Citrix and Nutanix going for a long partnership, and how does it improve even more for customers? >> I think you know, the stuff that Nutanix has announced here, with the whole Hybrid Cloud strategy, I think that very much is in alignment with our philosophy on Hybrid Cloud approaches for customers. So I would expect to see a lot more in that collaboration area. There's lots more that we can do on the NetScaler side of the business for networking, and enabling the reliability of a lot of these network connections as people become, you know I love that concept of the core, the distributing the Edge Cloud right, and all of that's going to need interconnectivity, and security and reliability. And you know, more of the same on making VDI simpler for, for all customers of all sizes. I think we're just at the cusp of you know we've got this automation plan going in, we're creating the workspace appliance in its simplicity there. I think there's a lot more we can do, again, from day two perspective operationally, as I keep going and I'm growing this thing, and I'm managing my images, and I'm managing applications, and growing the infrastructure, increasing performance, taking on different types of workloads, there's lots more we can do in that area. >> What is the all Citrix Stack Workplace Appliance? >> Right, so that is really the Nutanix has announced support for XenServer, and for us, you know XenServer, we've really done a transformation of that technology over the last couple years, where we've taken what was a general platform virtualization solution, and we've really specifically targeted at our workloads. At XenApp, XenDesktop, NetScaler, and making it the best virtualization platform for our, for our solutions. Why do we do that? We do that because there's going to be certain things that we need out of that layer from an innovation standpoint whether it's supporting graphics, which we were the first to do, across all the major ship vendors, virtual GPUs, coming up with new security paradigms like being able to do deep Hypervisor Introspection, and identify day one malware attacks before they, even infect any of the machines. You know, those sorts of innovations become really important that we can drive, and having control over XenServer we're able to do that. So through the partnership with Nutanix, and getting their support on that as well, then all the joint Nutanix and Citrix customers could take advantage of that innovation. So now they also have the obviously at their disposal, everything that Nutanix is putting into HV, everything we're putting into XenServer, and being able to manage it that way. So, in the workspace appliance, sort of reference guide for building this, one of the things we focus on is the XenServer component of it, and being able to have that innovation coming from Citrix as part of that solution. >> Great. Calvin, thanks very much for coming to theCUBE, appreciate your time, and your insights. >> Thank you, yeah it's good to be here. >> Good to see you. Alright, keep it right there buddy, Stu and I will be back with our next guest. We're live from DotNext, #NEXTConf, this is theCUBE. (techno music)