 Live from Copenhagen, Denmark. It's theCUBE. Covering Nutanix.NEXT 2019. Brought to you by Nutanix. Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of Nutanix.NEXT here at the Bella Center in Copenhagen. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, alongside of my co-host Stu Miniman, analyst. We have two guests for this segment. We have Angie Cusworth. She is the COO, Hardy Fisher Services. Thank you so much for coming on, Angie. Hi. And we have David Cusworths. SVP Sales at Hardy Fisher Services. Thank you so much. Thank you. And a husband and wife team. I believe we have done it before. I know we've had twins on the program. Right, yes. But yeah. Couples who work. I like it. We'll get into how you make it all work. But David, I want to start with you. Describe Hardy Fisher Services for our viewers who may be unfamiliar with your company. Yeah, so we own and operate a large data center based in Leeds. So it's a 400-accapacity data center previously built for BT. How's NHS patient records in the UK? We operate that as a reseller-based data center. So we have very clear go-to-market. We have our co-location. We have managed services. And then obviously cloud, which is based on Nutanix. So, Angie, what are some of the biggest business challenges that you face in your world? So I think it's trying to convince customers to move to the cloud. Obviously, we've been doing cloud for some time now. Don't know how. Yeah, so David, we're talking about that move to cloud. Help put where your services built on Nutanix fit into customers' overall picture. Because, you know, you've SAS, you've got public cloud. People are building private clouds off Nutanix or other type of hardware. So how do you play with some of those other components and position yourself? A lot of the challenges that we've seen is people are comfortable with Azure. So a lot of resellers that we deal with, Azure's a safe bet. Nutanix is still quite a new name in the marketplace. There's people who don't want to move to the cloud because they don't understand it. So a lot of the time, we show them the cloud platform in our data center so they can touch and feel it. They can actually see it, which gives them a bit more confidence. And then from our side, it's the service wrap. So it's holding the hands on the journey to the cloud. So it's given our technical ability to say, you know, we'll do it for you. We'll hold your hands, we'll get you working. At the end of the day with cloud, it's people's businesses. So if the cloud doesn't work, it affects their business and we're trying to put our hats on as a customer. Yeah, it's funny. Reminds me, we used to have the joke. There is no cloud. There's just, you know, your computer somewhere else. Angie, bring us inside a little bit. Your customers, it sounds like there's still a little bit of trepidation about them making changes there. Yeah, I think one of the reasons that we've been so successful is that we follow IT service management very well. So we help our customers through the whole journey. So people that are new to cloud, we have excellent technical people that can help them. And we, you know, we have a fantastic data center as well. So they know that their kit's safe with us. Yeah, bring us inside a little bit. You talked about how many racks there. What differentiates your data center? There's, you know, most companies, you know, we tell the average, you know, enterprise out there, you know, friends don't let friends build data centers. There's other people that know what they're doing. So give us a little bit of a virtual tour, if you would. Yeah, so our data center, like I say, it was originally built for BT, for the NHS. And as they moved to cloud, the need for their data center shrunk. Leads as a city is a growing city, and there's not many data centers in Leads. So we took the opportunity to really relaunch the data center. We knew it was a very high spec data center. It cost a lot of money to build. And then it gives the customers confidence that when they're going in there, it's very secure. It's very high resilience. And from a cloud platform, we've gone completely Nutanix. So it is literally, you can come in, you can touch Nutanix, you can play with it. And it's just a whole journey really, to make sure they're in a safe pair of hands. Talk a little bit more about how Nutanix comes into play with your organization. So we went with Nutanix because we were looking for something to be different. So there's a lot of people who've got us your AWS in that reseller market. So we want something that was focused on SMEs. So we've got a very, very much SME focus. And cost comes into it, having that support. So being able to bring somebody up and not be in a big core center in Asia or in Europe. And somebody who can actually talk them through what the issues are, but also be very responsive and put the customer first. Yeah, it's interesting when I think about kind of the traditional service provider, it's like they've built out their management stack. They build something at a scale so that they can do something that their customer couldn't. Sounds like Nutanix is a different type of offering. We've been talking about all week. It's not thriving in that complexity, but you just have a simple offering. And of course, price and easy to manage is something that service providers need. So it sounds like if you'd built this 10 years ago, you might've had to do something very different than how you do it today. It's giving us a market that really, that hasn't been there in the past. It's a, you know, we can help resellers on the journey. We can give them a bit of a lift up. So if they're too small or they've just got going in cloud and they can't afford to get their own Nutanix platform, then we can get them going and then they can start going into Nutanix. But it's a real differentiator. So like I say, a lot of people, it's the safe bet is Azure or AWS. It's, you know, it's a Microsoft name. So no one ever gets sacked for buying Microsoft kind of conversation. I think one of the other compelling things is the cost of it as well. A lot of people think it's cheaper to go as your AWS. Actually it's Nutanix is very cost effective for our customers and that's why it appeals for, you know, the kind of smaller resellers that we deal with. Yeah, are you starting to do any connection? I think about Azure or AWS have their direct connect. When you have people's environment, sometimes they might want to access those services or are you starting to look at that environment or some of the Nutanix hybrid solutions? So what we do at the moment is we back up mainly to Azure. So we have a central core platform with Nutanix and then we back up as a failover to Azure. But again, customers don't like the complexity of even doing that as a backup. So it's been great coming to the event and see the Nutanix back up and the options there because our customers love Nutanix. So are you interested in the mine solution that's been rolling out? Yes, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. That's one of the things that we're really looking forward to going back to explore and that'll be next on our roadmap. Are you starting to look out as to which solution with mine you're going to use or are you still under discussion? We'll lead that to our technical director. I'm sure her point is in the right direction. One of the things we hear a lot about at this conference is Nutanix's culture. It's people first culture. It's humble, honest, hungry. How does that come into play in terms of your interactions with the company? That's, I think for us that's a culture that we have as well in our own business and that really does shine through for every person that we've ever dealt with at Nutanix. They're always customer first. Just, yeah, I can't fault them, they're amazing. I think for us it doesn't feel like you're a big company because it's such a personal relationship. So it doesn't feel like you're talking to a big corporate company where you're not heard, you're not, if you're not a big customer, the relationships we've got are with people where I can just pick up the phone. They might be in a really senior position and they'll help us. And that's something that's really good with Nutanix. I'm wondering if you've had any experience with Nutanix support. So we know uptime must is super critical. So what is your experience? Yeah, fantastic. I mean, for me, from an operational perspective, I love the self-healing that's built into the platform anyway. I love the fact that my technical guys don't have to be uber-technical to be able to operate. That's one of the other benefits of Nutanix for us. So it ticks all the boxes from an operational perspective. I think from our side as well, the technical guys. So our first and second line guys can understand Nutanix, they can get their head around it. So it's very easy to train them up with Nutanix as opposed to other platforms where it can take up to a year to really understand how the platform works. It is very, very simple for our support desk, which means it's less demand on the support desk on Angela. Training in the skills gap is a hugely important issue in the technology world, in the United States and also in Europe. How are you finding it? What is it like to be a leads-based company? Are you finding the people you need to fill the roles you have open? Well, we're really lucky actually because our technical director is an ex-trainer. So we can do a lot of the training on site, but Nutanix training is something that we're definitely going to be tapping into. I've been speaking to the guys here and that's another useful thing for us to take back to the UK. Okay, give our audience a little bit of insight. What you get out of coming to the Nutanix conference you came last year to London, you came here to Copenhagen. What were you hoping to accomplish? What are the conversations been? Give us a little bit of a flavor. I think it's been good to network with other Nutanix customers to understand their journey. Definitely to learn about what Nutanix is doing now and in the future. When you're running a business, it's kind of head down sometimes around you don't get time to really sit and look at what the market's doing. So for us it's just, and it's also to be part of that journey. We went to events four or five years ago when it was much smaller, much newer name and to see how fast Nutanix has gone is amazing, absolutely. I think it's given us clarity on what we need to do next year. Like I say, you've helped us by coming here today and yesterday seeing the presentations on how we can implement that into our own business and how we can really take Nutanix forward. In terms of the future, you said you are gonna, you're looking into mine, you're thinking about using some of the Nutanix training capabilities. Right, beam. So there's a lot, there's a lot there as I. So yeah, we've really honestly taken so much back and I can't wait now, I think for me personally, it's re-energized me. I'm excited about going back and just working out where we can really take, you know, take Nutanix forward. And what's next for Hardy Fisher? It's just growth, we're at an early journey now. So we're at the kind of start of our journey. Over the next five years, it's all about growth. We see Leeds as a bit of city that's growing itself. We've had a lot of change in Leeds as a city. Still quite small as a digital city, but it's got massive focus on growing and we're a big part of that because we're one of three data centers in Leeds so it's not a heavily populated area for data centers. And we're all about helping local resellers get on that ladder for Nutanix. So that'll be a big driver for us, help the smaller MSPs, let them touch and feel Nutanix in our data center and then hopefully give them the leg up for them to buy their own boxes and then co-locate that in the data center as well. So as devoted Nutanix customers, any advice for Dearage Pandy? He's under a lot of pressure. It's a competitive landscape. You love Nutanix, what's the... He nailed it. I think just keep doing what they're doing. Stick to your knitting. Yeah. I think don't get sold to one of the bigger boys and keep the... Yeah, absolutely. Keep the culture. And everything that you're doing technically wise, it's just unreal. We're blown away. I think the culture as well, to grow as big as you are now and keep that culture, which has been very hard. I mean, we try to, in our businesses, we have a very hard working ethic, but we want people to enjoy where they work. We want to have a good work-life balance and it's very difficult to do in a big company. Is it, do you like working with each other? Your husband and wife team is a big... Yeah, it has its challenges. No, it has its challenges, but we've worked together for 12 years now, so... Met at work, yeah. Yeah, all right. It's very hard because I sell it and I'm just a sport, so unless I sell it properly, I get in trouble. Right. It's a dog out. Have to rein him in. Exactly. David and Angie, thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure having you on the show. Thank you so much for having us. Thank you. I'm Rebecca Knight for Stu Miniman. We will have more for Nutanix.next in Copenhagen, coming up in just a little bit.