>> Announcer: Live from Washington, DC,
it's the Cube
covering .NEXT Conference,
brought to you by Nutanix.
>> Welcome back to NEXTConf everybody.
This is the Cube, the leader in live tech coverage.
My name is Dave Vellante and I'm with Stu Miniman.
This is the president's segment.
Sudheesh Nair is back.
Good to see you again, Sudheesh,
the president of Nutanix.
And Captain Canada himself, Chad Sakac.
>> Dave. >> Cube alum, good friend.
>> Dave, it's good to see you. >> Good to see you again.
Stu.
Hey everybody, most important thing,
great, you know, .NEXTConf,
but look, Canada Day, July 1st, is right around the corner.
So remember, everybody,
go have some poutine,
drink some beers and celebrate.
Then there's this July 4th thing that is
apparently right around that.
>> Yeah, well, it's important to us,
'cause we've ended an eight-week sprint of the Cube, so.
>> Isn't Chad wearing red, white and blue?
I think he's, uh ...
>> I actually did that on purpose.
You noticed!
>> Here in DC, nice job. >> I figured when in DC,
you know, celebrate Americana.
>> Why not? Well, there's a lot of celebration going on here.
You guys have been celebrating several years now.
What is it?
Two and a half years of ...
>> With Dell, yes.
With Chad it's relatively new, so ...
(all laughing)
>> It's actually been about three years, and
it's been a ridiculously successful partnership.
You know, I think ...
>> I would say face-meltingly successful, but ...
>> Yeah, you know what? I agree.
>> Okay, so coming into this role,
did you have misconceptions about Nutanix,
or was that just marketing,
when you were kind of ...
>> No.
Nutanix basically created the HCI category.
They've been at it now for seven and change years.
You know, great technology,
very happy customers.
I'd say out of the
6,200 or so Nutanix customers,
roughly around 2,500, 2,700
are XC customers,
so I've gotten to know them really well.
They tell me pretty clearly what they like about Nutanix
and what they like about XC.
>> All right, so Chad, I'm looking at my notes here,
and there was a guy Chad Sakac who said,
"Niche corner case for VDI only,"
you know, that was Nutanix. >> Love it.
>> You know, you're singing a little bit of a different story
than we might've heard a couple of years ago.
>> You know, I would say that it's important to acknowledge
when you're wrong, Stu.
You know, and
I think that HCI in general
has moved absolutely out of
any corner case segment whatsoever.
I met with a customer this morning
that is basically a hospital that is running
the bulk of all of their mission-critical
customer healthcare records, packs, all on XC.
And again, you know, I don't want to get us in trouble
here at the .NEXT Conference,
but we have an HCI portfolio,
we see customers deploying HCI
for every workload under the sun
at this point.
And frankly, I've said it publicly now,
firmly and as clearly as I can,
SDS and HCI models
are ready for the majority of x86 workloads.
That's not just my opinion,
it's the company,
it's Dell Technologies' point of view overall.
>> You know, Joe Tucci was the master of
sort of building an ecosystem with quasi-competitors,
coop-etition, whatever you want to call it,
and certainly the Dell/EMC relationship
of many years ago was epic,
one of the, probably the most successful
storage relationship ever.
So and, Sudheesh, you get a lot of concerns of
Wall Street, when's this going to end?
You guys used to get that all the time with Cisco and VC,
and yet you continue to ...
>> Still do. >> Yup.
>> Chad: Still do.
>> Valid questions, you know,
it's the obvious place for analysts,
snarky analysts to go.
But in retrospect ...
>> Chad: Is there such a thing as a non-snarky analyst?
>> There're a couple, there're a couple out there.
>> They're sitting here, right here.
(Chad laughs)
>> It is, getting paid ... >> After the comments
that I've already gotten!
>> It's getting paid to be snarky.
>> That's what's fantastic, by the way.
That's what's like watching Charlie Rose and Bill Clinton.
Hard but smooth.
>> So, if I go back into history, though ...
I wish Michael were here,
and I'll ask Michael,
I know you watch, I'll you next time I see you.
I wonder if he had to do it all over again,
if he knew then what he knew now,
if he would've just said, "You know what?
"I'm going to do better just staying with the EMC partnership,
"instead of going out and buying Equallogic or Compellent,
"and we would've done better for customers,
"might've made more money."
I wonder if you've learned anything from that experience.
I mean, you were biased,
'cause you were on the EMC side of that,
obviously you didn't want to see Dell end that relationship,
but are there similarities here?
>> You know,
I think that there's similarities,
but there's a notable difference.
When the Dell/EMC merger occurred,
and the first time I came out to visit headquarters,
I mean, lots of discussions with Sudheesh and with Dheeraj.
There's a core thing here that's important to understand.
The market is not in a zero-sum game.
So if,
if there's
6,200 Nutanix customers,
2,500 XC customers,
roughly 3,000 VX Real customers,
roughly 8,000 VSAN customers,
you know how many VNX customers there are?
300,000.
Do you know how many power-edge servers there are out there?
27 million.
We're on the earliest days
of the software-defined and HCI journey,
and frankly, that's just the first step
towards building hybrid clouds on-prem and off-prem
that bridge one another,
which has been a big part
of the announcements from this week.
>> Yeah, look, I think
the first part of the question you asked,
you got to be honest that,
you know, when you flip sometimes TV channels,
let's say you come across National Geographic, right?
And then there's a cheetah chasing a deer.
You stop, you want to watch.
You know what's going to happen,
the cheetah's going to eat the deer,
one way or other, that's going to happen.
You know it, but you want to watch it.
The way we think of our industry,
status quo is the cheetah.
The deer is all of us, the moment you stop innovating.
That is particularly true for companies like ours,
young companies.
The partnership that we have
is not built on anything but the fact
that we are adding more value for customers
than what we would individually do.
That's it.
The sum of the parts of this should be
higher than the individual parts, right?
So what we have learned,
for example, last quarter,
you're absolutely right,
financial analysts, they'll always ask us about
the Dell EMC overhang.
Last quarter, for example,
we for the first time publicly talked about the fact that
Dell EMC business was around eight to nine percent
of our overall revenue.
And it is not because that didn't grow.
It is growing,
but the overall business we are able to keep growing.
Our destiny's in our hands,
and it comes down to couple of things6:
our ability to really accelerate innovation,
because as a younger company, more agile,
we are expected to do more,
and you saw this morning.
Number two, make sure that we are playing fair.
There are rules of engagement that we are,
because we know that they have
tremendous amount of portfolio,
and some of them will overlap,
and that's okay.
But you have to clearly define the rules of engagements,
and be very fair in how we treat the partner.
And if you do those two things right,
we know that this is a relationship that'll last long time.
>> And just a quick little add, I mean,
the things that we bring
is extending the platform's scale and reach.
There's no question that you're a younger company,
there's no question that we're a larger company.
The number of customers that say,
"We want the better together thing,"
and we give them that choice,
it's very important for us to do that,
but also add value.
So whether it's integrating data protection,
whether it's what we've done around
running Cloud Foundry on top of XC.
Home Depot talked about it. >> Classic example, yeah.
>> It's a great example,
where they want this, that, all together.
Now I can't emphasize enough
that what we've been trying to emphasize is
be transparent,
be consistent about those rules of engagement,
and telling our customers,
you know, driving that choice and giving them that benefit
is something that we have to sustain.
>> And it's also important to understand that
you know, if you spent this morning watching the keynote,
you clearly saw that we did not talk about hyperconverged.
What we talked about were two things.
One is pushing that cloud intelligence to the edge,
and then building a hyper-cloud experience
that is totally transparent.
And the second thing
was about building a multi-cloud environment through Calm.
We did not talk about hyperconverged.
Those things are not built
on a platform that is not built for ...
Those things are built on a platform
that is ready for web-scale architecture.
So the foundation that we have built in the last seven years
is on which we are building,
and as long as we continue to add value like that,
and partner, for example,
on PCF,
you know, Pivotal Cloud Foundry,
that's a classic example,
a Home Depot example, right?
They need that same experience
that they're getting from Edibus.
And Edibus is not just doing IAAS.
They're doing PAAS, they're doing the entire thing.
To do that,
there is no shame in figuring out what we do well,
what we don't do well,
understand their strengths and weakness,
come together,
and deliver something that is better for customers.
>> Sudheesh, I'm curious, actually,
'cause Home Depot is a, you know,
lighthouse account for Pivotal,
on Google Cloud platform.
Talking to them about it for the last six months.
How does that fit in?
We know that the Dell family is a multi-function,
so I'm curious to want to hear
the Nutanix piece of how that fits in.
>> Look, I think the Google thing
is a relatively new thing for us.
We are expecting two different
areas that we are going to partner with them.
>> No, no, but Home Depot specifically,
is that related? >> No.
>> Because they're a big GCP customer,
so maybe Chad needs to fill it in.
>> This specific project is all on Exceed with PCS.
>> The thing that I think is fascinating,
and to watchers, I would say,
for the intellectually curious
that are willing to double-click
and go a little bit further,
it's a little more of a complex, nuanced story,
but everyone's looking for a soundbite,
whether it's in politics, as we're here in DC,
or whether it's in news, or whatever.
Home Depot, like a ton of customers,
is using GCP.
They're using XC, they're using vSphere,
they're using NSX, they're using PCF.
It's not like there's
some singular thing.
Another fascinating example is,
I talked to a customer
who's a fantastic ScaleIO, VxRack FLEX customer,
vSphere, enormous scale and scope,
and when I asked them,
they want a hybrid cloud to this point.
HCI is just a foundation for hybrid cloud use.
When I asked them, like,
what are their hybrid cloud targets, they're like,
"AWS, but we use GCP because we depend on TensorFlow."
It is, we live in a world
which you need to expand your mind
and not naturally create this, like, binary A/B thing.
>> Stu: It's a multi-cloud world, Chad.
>> It's a multi-stacked, multi-cloud, multi-use case world.
>> An inter-genius mess in IT that we've been dealing with.
>> So another thing that analysts do a lot
is give unsolicited advice.
(Chad laughs)
So I want to do that and maybe get your reaction.
So, Amazon's operating profits
are roughly almost double what EMC's were,
Amazon Web Services,
when EMC was a public company.
Massive change and disruptive force in our industry.
And frankly, if it weren't for AWS,
we wouldn't be where we are today as fast as we were,
so I see your joint challenge
as fulfilling the vision of what we call true private cloud.
Substantially mimicking the cloud experience on-prem.
And you're behind, and you know you're behind at that,
because Amazon's by definition in the lead.
So your challenge as we see it
is to create that experience
and create that automation
and allow people to shift their labor costs
to the fun stuff.
>> By the way, I agree, and I accept that advice.
You can answer for you,
but I'll tell you, we've been trying to ...
So we started with the first enterprise hybrid cloud efforts
almost three and a half years ago,
and they're enormous,
and at the time we said,
"And deploy it on anything you want."
And you know what?
We had very limited success with that.
And the reason we had limited success
wasn't because we didn't get the customer going,
"Yes, I want to have a hybrid cloud,
"where I can bridge and connect to
"multiple different public cloud targets."
That idea, dead right.
The idea of you can build it any way you want?
Wrong.
Then we said, "Okay, you know what?
"CI is a simplification."
What we realized is that life cycling CI stacks
along with a CMP layer,
whether it's inside an integrated thing,
or whether it's directly adjacent,
still too complex.
The latest is basically all of our hybrid cloud,
whether it's destined towards enterprise IAAS
or PAAS on prem,
runs on HCI.
When? Always.
Because HCI is fundamentally orders of magnitude easier
to symph, to deploy,
to scale, to version, etc., etc.
What I've been seeing over the last 24 hours
about basically the Calm acquisition
becoming part of Acropolis,
is the example where Nutanix is taking it,
where they're trying to build it into
the Calm and Acropolis stack.
I think that's a common vision between the two companies.
>> What you will hear from HP or Cisco or EMC or Nutanix,
the picture isn't going to change much,
because we all know what the blueprint looks like.
I think the real question is,
how do you get there?
How you do that is where the difference is going to be,
and the advantage we have is that
because we built every stack
with that clean architecture in mind,
the North Star being,
we have to deliver a fully-automatable stack,
we have an added advantage
of building every step connect naturally to the next step.
So for example, our metadata structure,
our storage fabric, our virtualization fabric, AHV,
our automation fabric on Calm,
and how we are introducing Xi,
that's a hybrid cloud service,
it is all controlled from Prism.
And that Prism itself and Prism Central
are fully distributed.
So that ability to deploy this at scale
across multiple continents and manage it,
that is very similar to how Amazon ...
The reason why Amazon can deliver
millisecond billing on Lambda stack
is not because they are taking ten different products.
They have technology that is built to deliver
that level of granularity.
>> So again,
I agree,
but there's an element that I disagree.
Calm was an acquisition.
Calm was an acquisition of people and talent
to basically extend up
into the IAAS, chargeback, billing,
self-service portal domain.
No disrespect of the decision, technology, architecture.
You've done, obviously, great progress
that you've shown to the market
the last two days
about how you're integrating that into your stack.
We've been at this now for four years,
and we've looked at,
how do we need to keep evolving
our own Dell Technologies stacks?
Again, it's not an either/or.
So for example, we do multi-site PCF deployments
directly on top of a HCI target
that has total life cycle, completely distributed stack,
and the Pivotal/Google work around Kubernetes
coming as part of Pivotal,
which echoes a lot of the Kubernetes
becoming part of your stack as well.
Kubo highlights what we're all trying to do
towards that target.
Again, I think that the natural tendency
because people like to see car races to watch for crashes,
cheetahs chasing lions ...
>> Or something like that.
>> I think we're all striving to do what you said.
The customer demand for simple-to-operate,
simple-to-deploy, simple-to-scale,
turnkey IAAS, PAAS, and even SAAS stacks
that're a hybrid deployment model,
that is a fact.
How customers need to evaluate
all the choices in the marketplace
is again, who does it best?
>> And if you don't, you're the deer, is your point.
>> Chad: You're the lion or the deer.
>> I wish we had more time, guys.
I'll give you both the last word.
Chad, you're everywhere this week,
and everywhere every week,
but final thoughts.
>> Final thoughts, I mean,
customers can know that we're committed to customer choice,
we're committed to this partnership.
The number of customers in revenue continues to grow.
Our point of view is that we've got a portfolio approach,
but no one should be confused about what that means.
That means that we're committed to the partnership.
Customers, I've talked to a lot of them here,
they're happy.
Never punch your customer in the face,
and never punch yourself in the face.
Simple strategy from Chad Sakac.
>> Sudheesh,
put a capstone on it. >> My point's very simple.
I think this is a partnership that is working.
The company's run by really smart people.
I don't think we are interested in doing anything
that is going to make our customers' decision
a wrong one for them.
And we are committed,
we are committed to innovate,
and are committed a service to join customers together.
Thank you.
>> Guys, you know, you guys make this job fun.
Thank you so much for coming on the Cube.
Really appreciate it. >> It's our pleasure, guys.
Remember, Happy Canada Day!
>> All right, July 1st. Love it.
All right, keep it right there, everybody.
We'll be back with our next guest
right after this short break.
(electronic music)