 Live from Nice, France. It's theCUBE, covering God Next Conference 2017 Europe. Brought to you by Nutanix. Hi, I'm Stu Miniman and you're watching SiliconANGLE Media's production of theCUBE here inside the Acropolis Conference Center in Nice, France. Beautiful location. Happy to welcome back to the program off the keynote stage this morning. Soudi Schneer, president with Nutanix and a first time guest. Someone I've gotten to know through the industry. Dan McConnell, vice president of the CPSD group inside Dell EMC. Gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for having us. All right, so Soudi Schneer's no introduction, but Dan, why don't you tell us a little bit about your background, your role inside of Dell EMC? Sure, I guess Bennett Dell for about, I don't know, 18 years. Various forms, engineering, CTO, product management. Nowadays, I've got a collection of the CPSD businesses. Chattel will refer to it as the horizontal businesses, but basically all the things that are multi-hypervisor in nature. XC series, clearly one of those products, one of the long relationships we've had with Nutanix, very successful. Matter of fact, coming off Q2 was our strongest quarter ever. It's so close in Q3, so I can't talk about that, but safe to say these last six months will be six months of the strongest we've had with Nutanix and the XC series, so I've got a collection of products from Block to Flex to XC series. Yeah, so you come from what was the Dell side of Dell EMC? Yes. And through, of course, the Dell EMC relationship, been a strong one, driven a lot of joint revenue for the companies, yeah. Yeah, absolutely, it's been great. Good getting to know Siddish over the years. We've had to spend multiple years at this point, but it's been a great relationship. Yeah, Siddish please. Yeah, I mean, first of all, thank you for having us. It's always nice to see you, and I still am amazed by all this equipment and how professional you are when it comes to doing these sort of things. It's very nice to be here with Dan. He's one of the nicest guy in the company and I'm not just saying because he's sitting here. Very good human being. It's always been a pleasure. It's almost four years that I've been working together. Siddish, our audience loves when they're looking forward to this session because come on, Dell EMC, Nutanix. Wait, they're friends, no, they're competitors, no. Yeah, they're, you know, it's a mixture together. Wait, they say it's like the macaroons. It's, you know, a couple of pieces go together. Some of the flavors you like, some maybe you don't as much. Probably a bad analogy, but it's, bring us up to speed as to kind of the Dell relationship. You know, how important is it to Nutanix? I know it's something that I talk to customers that are running Dell EMC and say, does it concern you at all? And it is something that at least, you know, is on the radar for most customers. Yeah, yeah. So I'll try to give a shorter answer. It's a long answer question. The first thing is, this is a relationship that is built to last. I know that it is not an easy relationship, but let me also be honest about, look inside the industry and tell me a single relationship that is absolutely black and white. I mean, it's not that long ago when, in one of the VMWare's, I don't remember who exactly, but someone from VMWare actually said, we are not going to lose to a bookseller. Right? And then in the last... Yeah, he's a VC now. So he did quite well for himself. Yeah, no, he's a great guy. I mean, it is Carl, yeah. Again, it's not, it's a point in time opinion. And I would do the same thing because we all compete with our heart and mind. It's not about that point. The fact that the company evolved, and in the last VM world, I think the CEOs of both AWS and VMWare are hugging it out. Does that mean they have built a relationship that will not have conflicts? Absolutely not. I fundamentally don't think that the relationships in IT industry specifically will no longer be black and white, and it will always be a shade of gray. The question is, should we be focused on customers who wants us to stop bickering and deliver what's right for them, and continue to focus on the overlaps of interest as opposed to focus on the conflicts that could arise? Absolutely, well said. You know, it's clear, and Dell's always been focused on a strategy of customer choice and flexibility. One of our key strengths at Dell EMC now is the portfolio, the fact that we've got multiple offers, the fact that it's a focus on the customer, what the customer wants, giving them flexibility, as opposed to always trying to pigeonhole a specific product. Yeah, it's interesting because I've been watching since the first days of the relationship. Dell's goal is to be leader in infrastructure. Nutanix's goal, be an iconic software company. Well, you're not going to be a server manufacturer. There's room there. So Dan, why is Nutanix best on Dell? It's a great question. So one, the long relationship, right? So we actually have teams of people who focus on integrating the platform and the software. We have a, there's a software stack in there. We call Power Tools internally that long story short manages all of the firmware stacks as well as essentially life cycle management of the hardware up underneath Nutanix. So one piece is the hardware integration. Second piece, which we talked about a year ago at .next that we would be focused on integrating the broader Dell EMC portfolio, namely data protection. So you'll see in upcoming weeks, we've already announced it formally. It gets turned on here in a few weeks. Tight integration of data domain in Avamar with the XC series. Not just to reference architecture but actual integration into the management. So full life cycle integration of data protection leveraging data domain, Avamar, tightly integrated into XC series. Keeping that focus of ease of use, life cycle management, not only around the infrastructure but also from data protection. So hardware integration as well as tight integration of other pieces of the ecosystem. One other piece there, not to take too long but not only data protection but we're also leveraging our relationship with Microsoft and you'll see us integrate XC series into Azure with things like OMS with their log analytics solution. So building out that ecosystem around the infrastructure. Yeah, Siddish, I mean the Microsoft relationship is an interesting one. Of course Dell's very long, strong relationship. I remember Satya Nadella up on stage with Michael Dell at Dell World a year or so ago. Seems like a good opportunity for even deeper partnership. I think it's not just Microsoft. I think Dell EMC is the single largest vendor in this space and ecosystem for example Pivotal. The innovative things that Pivotal is doing, Nutanix has an opportunity to partner with that because of the ecosystem. The global support, the global reach that Dell has. We have access to that. Customers get choice if they're already pretty much every customer who's buying anything in this industry probably have a contract with Dell. We have access to that. So it requires a level of maturity for the business to sort of turn off the noise and listen to the music. We have been able to do that. And I know that people would love to see fight. And yes, sometimes we have friction and I think that is healthy. But by and large, both companies are figured out. The most important thing is to focus on customers do right by them. Yeah, so Siddish, I think it'd be fair to say that both companies have a sales culture that many outside call a bit aggressive. And especially where it's been interesting and sometimes challenging to watch is when it hits the channel. I know a number of channel providers, love Dell, love Nutanix, have felt pressure sometimes from the Dell side to move to some of the other products. Many have stuck. How do you balance that to kind of keep the channel happy, keep them working on that? You're absolutely right. I think both companies have a sales driven culture. No question about it. And Nutanix, even though we are a younger company, much smaller in size, I don't think our aspirations and the fighting spirit is any less. In fact, in some cases it might even be out there. However, what we have done is we've always focused on partners as part of the customer in the same ecosystem. That is do right by the customer, do right by the partner. And I think that applies to both companies. What we have done early on is actually put together some guardrails between companies. How do we approach when those sort of conflicts arises? Number one. Number two, we put together processes in the field when it comes to deal registration, which is somewhat convoluted on the backend, but extremely delightful in the front end. Now that doesn't mean there won't be friction. What we have done is we made sure that the number one, the frictions are exceptions, not an example always. And second, when it comes up, we talk. So he's on my WhatsApp. When something really blows up, he will say, Swish, what's going on? It's less and less now because the people have actually done a pretty good job of managing it. But ultimately, the one thing that will continue to sustain and grow this relationship would be trust and communication. In the last four years, we know the people. We have built the communication, we speak the language, and because of that, we are able to overcome all those problems. Yeah, the key is when those arise, getting the right people involved and ultimately doing right by the customer. So there's always going to be conflict, this, that in the field. It's getting the right people involved early, managing it and making sure we're putting customers first, not getting them in the middle of it. Absolutely. So Dan, one of the things we heard from Nutanix today and I've been here in Allleague, Intel Skylake. You've got 14 G's available. Since it's not announced yet, as the day, what kind of guidance can you give and how's that rollout going to look for customers? Especially, I love your viewpoint as you know the server world forever and you've got a broad portfolio. How does customer adoption across the various buying modes happen? Yeah. So I'll dance around this a bit and say, stay tuned, very soon you'll hear some announcement around the 14th generation power edge. If you're watching the replay, call your rep now, it might be right. Yeah, exactly right. So yes, stay tuned, very, very soon. When we've already talked about it back at Dell EMC world, but so you can expect us to fully embrace the 14th generation power edge. So we've already having some conversations with folks in the field. Obviously we've got the power edge line out there already, it's actually, you know, the adoption of 14G has been very, very strong. So we expect that to pick up here on the XC series very shortly. So like I said, stay tuned. I have to dance around it a bit, but it'll be very, very soon. But one point, it's available, you know, it's not available any later on the XC than it is on the other hyper-converged offerings that you have, correct? Correct, correct. Yeah, so that's, I think, kind of the main thing. But that also tells you that we don't just take the same server and ship it out. We actually go through a different process to make sure that this can actually run mission-critical applications. That's part of the problem as far as we've had to do this right. Yep, take a lot of time hardening that what we would call standard server. So that's what's in process now and almost done. Okay, I'd like to give you both the last word. Talk about, you know, customers. Talk about anything we should be looking at, you know, down the road from the partnership. Dan, we'll start with you. Sure, you'll see continued, what I'll say, tight integration, focus on the ecosystem. I think big steps with data protection integration, focus on Microsoft. You'll see more integration in that vein filling out that overall ecosystem. Partnership continues to be strong. I think it's a very good combination of software, hardware and ecosystem. So on the Dell side, Dell EMC side, you'll see us bring that ecosystem focus and continue working with these guys. Obvious integrations on the hardware side with some exciting technologies like NVMe and RDMA. So we'll continue to leverage the hardware technology to promote HCI and to drive HCI, make it stronger and continue to focus on the overall ecosystem. So we're excited for the relationship and I'll hand it over to Siddish. Yeah, I think, you know, Tynix, we always were a software company, but taking a product like this without the help of an appliance form factor would not be feasible because any problem happened will be our problems. But now that we have last five years behind us, we know how to make it work. What sort of products do we need to build to support the installation process, the upgrade process, lifecycle management, all of those things are done. Now starting next year, you'll see Nutanix making a conscious decision to become a truly software company without the reliance of being pushing through hardware. Our sales organization will be retooled and restructured to become an incentivized to focus more and more on software and less and less on appliances, which will bring companies like, you know, Delhi, MC and Nutanix closer because they have the footprint. Some of the conflicts used to arise basically because we had our own appliances as well. And once the sales organization is differently incentivized, you will see the trust building faster between the resellers and the companies. So I am very optimistic because of not just the technology vision, Nutanix with Hyperconverged and the Calm and XI and everything else that we have laid out. We know that for us, Hyperconverged is just the foundation and there's a bunch of things that we're building. That fully aligns with the Delhi MC's aspirations on how Nutanix should proceed. So we're pretty excited, but always cautious about what could go wrong, focused on those things. As long as we talk and communicate and we focus on customers and partners, I am pretty confident in the future. Siddish Nair, Dan McConnell, thank you so much for catching up. Welcome to the CUBE alumni group dance. We'll be back with lots more coverage here from Nutanix.next in Nice, France. I'm Stu Miniman, you're watching the CUBE.