 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, co-hosting alongside of Stu Miniman. We're joined by Bala Kuchibatla, he is the VPGM Nutanix Era and Business Critical Apps at Nutanix. Thanks so much for coming on the show, Bala. It's an honor to come here and then talk to you guys. So you were up on the main stage this morning, you did a fantastic job doing some demos for us, but up there you talked about your data, your data is gold. And you said there are four P's to the challenges of mining, the mining process. Do you want to go through those for our viewers? Definitely. So for every business critical app, data is gold, like it's unambiguous for a lot of people or anyone. Now the question is like, similar to how the gold gets processed and there's a lot of hazardous mining that happens and process, finally you get this processed gold. To me, the data is also very similar for business critical apps. The database systems need to be processed in a way to get the most efficient, elegant way of getting the database back, data back. Now, the four P's that I see for managing databases starts with provisioning. Even today, some of these biggest companies that I talked to, they take about three to five weeks to provision a database. It goes from infrastructure team, the ticket passes from infrastructure team, compute, networking, storage to database team and then database administration team. That's number one, siloed. Number two is like proliferation. And it's very consistent. Pretty much every big company I talked to, they have about eight to 10 copies of the data for analytics, QA, development, staging, whatever it is. It's like you take a photo and put it on WhatsApp and your friends download it. They're basically doing a copy data, essentially. That 4MB becomes 40MB in no time in our WhatsApp. It's the same thing that happens for databases. Database gets cloned, refreshed all the time, but the seemingly simple operation of our clone copy, copy-paste operation becomes the most dreaded, complex, long-running, error-prone process. And I see that there are dedicated DBAs just to doing cloning. That's another thing. And the lineage problem, that someone is cloning the data to somewhere, I don't know where the data is coming from, kind of stuff. And the third pain that we talk about is the protection. Actually, to me, it's like my number one and number two problem, but I was just putting it in the third. If you're running databases, and if you're running it for mission-critical databases, your ability to restore the database to any point in time is an absolute must, right? Like, otherwise you're not even called as a database. Question is, are the technologies, don't they have this kind of protection technology, they already taken care? They did, already. But the question is, on our Nutanix platform, or on Cloud platform, can they be efficient and elegant? Can we take out some of the pain in this whole process? That's what we are talking about. And the last one is a big company problem. Anyone who has dozens of databases can empathize with me how painful it is to patch, how painful it is to get your compliance going to it. How do you manage your end-state-driven database services, kind of stuff? So these are the four things that we actually think that if you solve them, your databases are one step or much, a lot steps closer to database service. That's what I see. Yeah, Bala, it's interesting. You spent a lot of time working for the big database company out there. There is no shortage of options out there for databases. When I talk to most enterprises, it's not one database they now have, often dozens of databases that they have. So explain why now there's still an unmet need in the marketplace that Nutanix is looking to help fill there. So you're absolutely right on the dot that there are lots of database technologies. Actually, that compounds the problem because for all these big enterprise companies, there are specialist administrations for Oracle, Postgres, MariaDB, MySQL, SQL administrator. Now there are new breed of databases in NoSQL, MongoDB. It's like, how do you manage MongoDBs? How do you manage the Marklogics and stuff like that? So now, I personally think that databases need to be consumed like LXCT, right? So most of these banks and telcos, all the companies that we talk about, database is just a means to name for them, right? So they should focus on the business logic, creating those business value applications. And databases are more like, okay, I can just manage them with almost no touch kind of stuff. But whether these technologies that were created around 20 years back are there, they're at kind of stuff. So that is what we are trying to talk about. When you have a powerful platform like Netanix, that actually abstracts the storage and solves some of the fundamental problems for database upstream technologies to take advantage of, we combine the database APIs, the vendor APIs, as well as the strength of the Netanix platform to give that simplicity, essentially. So that's what I see. We are not inventing new databases. We're trying to simplify the databases. And Paula, help make sure we understand that Netanix isn't just building the next great lock-in. From top to bottom, Netanix can provide it, but optionality is a word that Netanix talked about a lot. We live and thrive by choice and freedom for the customers. In fact, I make this as one of the fundamental design principles even for era. We use APIs provided by the database vendors. For example, for Arman, we just use Arman APIs. We start the database in the backup using Arman APIs. Where we take the advantage is the platform. Once the database in the backup mode, we are taking the snapshots of the database. So this result is pretty much like Arman begin backup with image-based backup, essentially the outcome is. So the customer is not locked in. The second one is if the customer wants to go to the other clouds or even other technologies kind of stuff, we will provide APIs to kind of migrate. So that's one of the things that I want to kind of emphasize that we are not here to lock in any customer. In fact, our choice is to avoid. In fact, I emphasize if the customer has the compute environment on ESX, we're more than happy. We can support ESX or AHP. They both are equal for us. All we need is the AOS on era because AOS is something that will leverage a lot of platform patents of Netanix technology that we are passing on the benefits kind of stuff. Down the road where we are trying to see is, we'll have ZY clusters and AWS and GCP and Azure and customers can move databases from on-premise private cloud platform through hybrid cloud to other clusters and then they can bring back the databases. That's how we kind of protect the customer's investment. Yeah, I mean, I'm curious your commentary. You know, when you go listen to the big cloud player out there, it's, you know, they tell you how many hundreds of thousands of databases they've migrated. When I talk to customers and they think about their workload, migrations are going to come even more often and it's not a one-way thing. It's often moving around and things change. So can we get there for the database? Because usually it's like, well, it isn't it easier for me to move my compute to my data. You know, data has gravity. You know, there's a lot of, you know, physics challenges. No, no, no. It's a great question. See, what is happening with hyperscalers is they are asking the applications to be written against cloud native databases. Obviously, if you are writing an application against cloud native database, say there are Aurora or even GCP big table, you are pretty much logged in, technically. Because for that application to come back to on-prem, there is no way. There is no big table on the on-prem. There is no Aurora on the on-prem. Whereas what we are trying to say is the mode one apps, the oracles, the sequels, we are trying to cloudify them. We're trying to bring the simplicity to them. So if they can run in the cloud, they can run in on-prem. So that's how we protect the investment that there is not much new engineering that needs to be done for your apps. As is, we can move them. Only thing is we are taking out the pain of mobility, leveraging our platform. So obviously, we can run your apps as is, oracle applications on the public cloud like oracle. And if you feel like you want to do it on on-prem, we can do it on on-prem too, kind of stuff. And to protect the investment for the customers, we do have brownfield investment. That means that you can have databases running on your Exadata. And you can do capacity remediation, means tier two, tier three environments on Nutanix, using our time machine technology. So we give the choices to customers. So thinking about this truly virtualized DB, what is, what are some of the things you're hearing from customers here at .next, Copenhagen? What are the things that, they're pain points. I mean, in addition to those four Ps, but what are some of the next generation problems that you're trying to solve here? So first of all, for the customers, come and acknowledges that this is a true database virtualization. Until now, what happened is, virtualization is all about compute. And when you solve the compute virtualization problem you throw in database server and then try to run the databases here, you're not really solving the problem of the data. Now with Nutanix, our DNA is in data. So we have started, or pioneered the storage virtualization and then extended it to the files and objects. Now we are extending it to database, making that application native virtualization, database virtualization, leveraging the storage virtualization. Combining that with compute virtualization, we think that we have made an honest effort to virtualize databases. Now the trend that I see is, everyone is moving or everyone wants cloud-like experience. It's not like they want to go to cloud, but they want the cloud-like agility, the one-click simplicity, consumer-grade experience for the databases. I would like to kind of manage my databases in self-service manner. So we took both these dimensions. We made an honest effort to make the databases a truly virtualized, that's the copy data management and all that stuff. And then coupled with how cloud works, ability to do provision self-service way, ability to manage your backups in self-service way, ability to do patch self-service way. And customers love it and they want to take us to new engines. One of the other things that we see, big advantage with ERA is cloud is all about new databases, generally, are the Postgres and that kind of stuff. But there's a lot of data on CyBus. There's a lot of data on SAP HANA. There's a lot of data on DB2. Why don't we enjoy the same kind of experience for those databases? What did they do wrong? So can we give those experience the cloud-like experience and then true virtualization for those databases on the platform? That is what customers ask for it kind of stuff. Obviously, they will have asks for more and more DR kind of facilities and other stuff that they are in the roadmap that we will be able to take care of. Yeah, Bala, one of the questions we've had this week is as Nutanix builds out some of these application software, not just infrastructure software pieces, go-to-market tends to be a little bit different. We had an interesting conversation with Wipro. They're wrapping a service for ERA, so that seems like a really good way to be able to reach customers that might not even know Nutanix. Tell us, how is that going? Is there an overlay sales force? Is it some of the strategic panel and partnership engagements? Because this is not the traditional Nutanix. Yeah, yeah. So obviously, Nutanix is known and it made its name and fame for infrastructure as a service. So it will be a challenge to talk about database language for our salespeople. But contrary to that, I had the doubt when I kind of started my journey at Nutanix. Okay, we will build the product, but how are we going to GTM with this kind of Salesforce? But believe me, we are making multi-million dollar deals mainly led by the application nativeness or application centricness. So I could talk about federal governments in the US. She made purchase because ERA was a differentiation for them. We're talking about big telco company in Europe trying to replace their big engineered appliances because ERA made the difference for us. We are providing almost two X value at almost half the price. So the pain point is real. The question is, can we translate that or can we connect with the right kind of customer? So we do have a sales overlay for my division. They speak database language. Obviously, we are very early in the game, so we will have selected few people in highly dense, important geographic regions who go after that. But I also work with channels, work with partners like GSS, like VPRO, HCL and other kind of stuff. And they are the best people to leverage and take this whole thing and package this as a solution. In fact, companies like GSS, GSS like VPRO, they can offer managed database service, right? So we have a product. People can build a cloud with it. But with VPRO, they can offer, you know what, why do you want to go to public cloud? I can provide the same cloud managed database service, more an Apex model kind of stuff. So we are kind of firing on all cylinders in this sense, but very selectively, very focused. And I really believe that customers will understand this message that Nutanix is not just the infrastructure, but it's a cloud. It's a cloud platform where I consider eras like Microsoft Office Suite on Microsoft operating system. Think about that. That's the power of full power that we think that era can make it happen. Yeah. And who are, you know, you said you're going in very tight. Who are these target customers without naming names? But what kinds of businesses are they in? How big are they? What kinds of challenges are they facing? Looking at all the early customers, we are hardly in the third quarter of the business, but financial sector is big. The pain point of database management is so acute there. Capacity remediation is a huge thing. They are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on these big vendors kind of stuff. And can they run, can they extract efficiencies out of this whole, all their investment? Second thing is manufacturing and telco. And obviously, federal is one of the biggest strength of Nutanix. And I happened to pitch in ERA, and the federal agencies loved it, and they said, is this real? Let's do a real demo, and then let's make it happen. They actually tested the product, and they're upticking it. So the ERPs, wherever they run Oracle, wherever they run big sequels kind of stuff, this is what we are seeing. It kind of, all right. I want to make sure there was a bunch of announcements about ERA 2.0. Just walk us through real quick, kind of where we are today, and what should we be looking for directionally in the future? We started ERA with four or five engines, basically. And you know that Oracle SQL and MySQL Postgres kind of stuff. And we attacked on the four problems, this provisioning, patching, copy data management, and then production. But when we talked to all these customers, and I talked to CAOs and CTOs, they love it. They wanted to say that, hey, can I have ERA on more engines? So that's one we'll do. But more importantly, they do have prod clusters, they have dev clusters, queue clusters. They want to have single pane of management of ERA, managing databases across. So the multi-cluster capability, what we call that's like equivalent of prism central, which manages multiple clusters. They want ERA to manage multiple clusters that manage databases, right? That's number one. That's big. For a product which in one year that we got to that stage. Second thing was obviously people enterprise customers expect role-based access control. But this is data. So it's not a simple privilege and role, you would define the roles and privileges and then get it over kind of stuff. You do want to know who is accessing the data, whether they can access the data, and where they can access the data. We want to give them freedom to create clones and kind of give the access to data, but in a controlled manner. So they can clone on their queue clusters. They don't need to file a huge big ticket, wait for two weeks. They have that flexibility, but they can manage the data at that particular queue cluster. So this is what we call D.A.M. data access management. It's like a dam on the, like you construct on the river, control the flow of the water and then channelize it to the right place and right person's kind of stuff. So that's what we are trying to do for data. That's the second big thing that we look for in the error 2.0. Obviously, there's a lot of interest on engines. Expand both relational engines as well as NoSQL. We are seeing huge interest in SAP HANA. We are going to do it in couple of months. You'll have tech preview. MongoDB is the big guy in NoSQL space. We'll expand that from MongoDB to MarkLogic and other stuff. But even DB2 and Cybiz, there's a lot of interest. I'm just looking for committed customers who are going to pay the dollar, willing to put the dollars on the table and we're going to roll it out, kind of stuff. That's the beauty of fairer that. We are not just talking about cloud native databases, just Postgres and kind of stuff. But all this innovation that happened in 30, 40 years, we can renew them to the new age, basically, kind of stuff. Great. Well, Bala, thank you so much for coming on theCUBE. It was a pleasure talking to you. It's my pleasure. I'm Rebecca Knight for Stu Miniman. Stay tuned for more of the Cube's live coverage of Nutanix.next.