 Five from New Orleans, Louisiana. Hit the Cube, covering Dotnex Conference 2018. Brought to you by Nutanix. Welcome back to the Cube's coverage of Nutanix Dotnex 2018. We're here in New Orleans, Louisiana. I'm Stu Miniman, joined by co-host Keith Townsend. And while this is the North America show, we've seen the expansion of it. We actually have two guests coming in from the Asia Pacific region. Happy to welcome Rod Lappin, Rod SVP with Lenovo. Thank you so much for joining us all the way from Singapore. Yep, absolutely, nice to be here. And we have Deepu George, who's the Senior Director with Capgemini Group IT, in from Bangalore. One, thank you also for joining us. Yeah, thank you for having me. All right, so Deepu, let's start with you. We always love, you know, conferences like this. We get to talk to the users. Tell us a little bit about your group inside Capgemini. Some of the challenges that your IT team's been tackling. Yeah, so I'm part of the group IT responsible for handling all the data centers, group data centers within Capgemini. And we are responsible for delivering data center services, infrastructure services, et cetera. So one of the key areas we started last year was DC modernization and consolidation. And one of the key strategies we were looking at was hybrid cloud, then SDDC stack, complete SDDC stack, support for that, and plus, you know, automation. So these were the three areas where, which was a key strategic areas for our data center modernization and consolidation. And when we looked at, you know, the various options available, one thing which stood out from Nutanix side was the, I mean, it checked all the boxes and they had a very much, very good roadmap on certain areas which were not available at that particular point of time. So then we chose, okay, let us have a POC done, we did a POC along with Lenovo, and which was successful, and then we went ahead with this relationship with Nutanix. Great. Rod, just what I want to bring in here, we've been talking about really the growth and expansion of Nutanix. One of the big pieces is the OEM. Lenovo been hearing good growth rates. Absolutely. Give us a little bit of the customer viewpoint what you've been seeing Nutanix in general and the Lenovo HX specifically. Yeah, I think obviously Stuart, the very exciting thing is Nutanix is the leader in the industry, right? And with them, Lenovo this last year, we grew about 197% year on year, so it makes us their fastest growing partner. And in the North America channel environment, for example, we grew 280%, actually. So we're growing very, very rapidly with them and there's real reasons. Customers are seeing the value, obviously in the solution, the consolidation of the data center footprint, and obviously as customers are being pushed more as Deepu just mentioned to the hybrid cloud or what we're calling really the multi-cloud these days, right? Because customers are really looking at and choosing their cloud solutions based more on the workloads and what they're actually trying to do longer term. You know, I think we're best positioned to do that with Nutanix, it's a great solution. I think CAP General is really one of our great global, strategic global systems integrator partners that's taken a choice to run with Lenovo and Nutanix. It's been a great HX solution for us. So Rod, before we get too deep, let's ask a basic question. Lenovo tier one server provider, you guys consistently in one of the leadership positions and in number of units shift, obviously you guys have the chops to build a similar solution. Why partner with Nutanix? You know, I think Nutanix firstly from a software perspective, I think that's definitely where we're seeing, you know, if you go back sort of 10, 15 years, that three tiered architecture was where everyone was going sand and all that sort of stuff. Now, when you're seeing the solutions that Nutanix and the hyper-converged market is growing so rapidly at, you're really seeing customers recognize that they get a lot more value out of the software suite, data center consolidation, data center footprint consolidation and really the ability to manage on-prem and off-prem workloads seamlessly, you know, with the Prism solution and we integrate that with our X-Clarity offering, our management suite and as a result, it's a real match made in heaven. It's actually doing really well. So, the pool... Yeah, to add on to that, if you look at software defined, right? I mean, that is a key area where we are going right now. Most of the organizations for data center consolidation, they are looking at software defined and when you look at the network stack, you have SDANs and all those things. So, when you have Nutanix with an HCI with the complete STD stack, it all ties up together. It's pretty easy for us to, you know, completely scale out the data centers, flexibility we have with software defined. I mean, it's a good match. It's a good fit. Deepu, can you walk us through a little bit at the application side of what you're doing? What did you start with? What have you rolled out? What haven't you touched yet? Yeah, so once we started our POC, once we know that it was successful. So, what we did was, we had our first data center consolidation exercise, modernization exercise, which has happened in Brazil. We had around three data centers which we wanted to consolidate into one as part of our consolidation and modern strategy. So, we had a mix of workload there. We had SAPs, we had normal applications, we had VMs running, we had physical nodes running. And what we did was, we consolidated everything into a single data center on 10 nodes of Nutanix and we closed down all the other data centers. And it was a pretty good experience that we had the support we ever see from Lenovo and Nutanix. And most of this work was done completely from offshore. So, we had a couple of our engineers posted in Brazil for the coordination activities, but the physical work was completely done from offshore India based, our support engineer. So, it was a pretty good exercise. We got very good support from Nutanix. We got very good support from Lenovo to get the consolidation done in the correct time. So, the Pooh Capgeanai has a pretty capable consulting firm. I'm sure you guys got plenty of advice internally as you set out to select the vendor. Let's talk about that selection process. How did that conversation initially go when you guys kind of threw out Nutanix and Lenovo as a potential solution? Yeah, so if you look at the virtualization world, right? I mean, it's already pretty much standard. So, when we looked at the key modernization initiatives, I already talked about SDDC and stuff like that. We came out with a list of parameters that we wanted to look at. We just like, there cannot be any compromise on that. And then what we are looking for in the future, when we, so modernization cannot happen in a day or two, so it is a journey. So, we have a two to three year window in which we wanted to consolidate all of our data centers, modernize everything. So, the Nutanix roadmap on the various automation, SDDC, as well as the complete hybrid cloud journey was pretty strong. And we had the complete management commitment from Nutanix that they will stick to this particular roadmap and these features will not be compromised in any way. So, that is one of the key decisions for us to go with the Nutanix. Well, let's talk about performance. You guys have been Nutanix customers for a while. How has the roadmap matched with the promises? Yeah, so from a performance point of view, so if you look at only the pure play HCI performance, I mean, wherever you have a high performance workload, we have an option to go with the complete full SSD stack where the IOPS is not, absolutely not a challenge or anything, there's no huge throughput available. So, from a performance point of view, we don't think that's not an issue as of now. Even with the traditional storage performance there's never been an issue. But the actual issue is, how do we make it the complete software aware? How do we make it completely controlled from a software point of view? So, there is where we found that HCI use it very good, challenging, you know, what do you call, you said it gives you a complete, you know, flexibility in how you want to define your data center strategy. So, actual performance, that's really great. But I meant from the promises Nutanix made from a roadmap saying this feature will be available on what day, you know, three months for now, a year for now, where are they actually able to deliver based on your own internal roadmap of the capability you need? Let me put it this way. So, if you look at the kind of investment that we have been making in Nutanix and Lenovo, so you can pretty much assure that these promises are kept. Otherwise, we would not be making that. So, Brazil was just a start and we are just going ahead. We are looking at different workloads now. We have already looked at exchange workloads, which is currently in delivery and getting installed now. We have looked at VDI workloads, one of the largest in Capgear and I, where we have 42 nodes of Nutanix running for around 10,000 VDIs. So, based out of Bangalore and Mumbai. So, if it was the performance, I mean, if the commitments were not met, I don't think we would have expanded the way we have it. I think, really, ultimately, as Deeper mentioned, they started off with a pilot, as he mentioned, obviously, in Brazil, and he's ended up taking this globally, which has been a great success for a story for both of our organizations. Right, could you give some more color on the partnership? Yeah, sure. So, I think Capgemini is a great global systems integrator for us, both to sell to, obviously, as well as sell through, and they're doing some pretty amazing things with their customers. And I think one of the great things that we're seeing in this particular instance, as we mentioned, Nutanix, leader in the hyper-converged space, and Deeper's made a call on them based on their performance and their basic feature set in their suite. And then, ultimately, Lenovo, who's number one customer service, number one reliability, number one quality in industry on independent service. So, you put them together, we ended up having a great relationship from that point. And then, it's built confidence inside Capgemini now for us to be going out to their customers and driving this solution out into their customer base. So, it's once again a great outcome for both of our organizations. Lenovo has been a traditional partner for us. It's not that they are new to us. So, one of the major reasons is that they've got a global reach, and we have global data centers, and we have got global footprints, and it's a pretty good tire. It's a partner thing. How are you measuring the relationship? Any success metrics from either the application deployments, or how do you measure internally and share that with your teams? So, we have timelines on our consolidation and modernization. So, as long as that is met, together with Lenovo as well as Nutanix, we are pretty good. So, I'd love to hear about day two operations. What are some of the benefits you've seen from a people resource count? Have you seen resources freed up to do other projects? What are some of the interesting projects that you've done as a result of freeing up time? So, currently, as we are progressing through this particular journey, so this year we have a huge focus on the automation piece of the data center. So, we are in the beginning stages of getting automation. So, automation in the sense that the normal provisioning, et cetera, is all are given. So, we are not talking about that. We are talking about the repetitive task, which is as part of the data center. And that we have started. So, basically, we are looking at around 20% each reduction in our ticket volumes, our, you know, the normal work which is being done by the normal engineers so that they can be freed up for these kind of modernization projects. So, that's what we are looking at. So, let's see how it goes. Yeah. Deepu, one of the things that we're talking about at this show is beyond just the HCI, it's cloud, even edge. What kind of futures do you see for Capgemini in general and maybe with the Nutanix satellite relationship? As I said in the beginning, Hybrid Cloud was one of the requirements for choosing the correct partner for our data center modernization. So, currently, as we are beginning this particular journey, so moving the data seamlessly into the cloud is one of the key requirements of Capgemini from an application standpoint, from a visibility standpoint, et cetera. So, we will be looking at which applications is the target for moving into the cloud and we will be moving that. And we believe that the Nutanix Hybrid Cloud technology will be able to help us in achieving that. And I think, Stu, that's a really good point because I think what Deepu is just describing is effectively what we see happening in the industry. You know, we go back 20 years in the industry, a few of us have been around that long and we remember like a homogeneous environment. Everyone would say, I'm this vendor shop. They've got network administrators, patching servers when we're getting hardware put on site and customers are doing all of the integration on site themselves. That's just what the industry did back then. Now, as we see workloads changing, it's a little bit like cloud. Three years ago, everyone was like, I'm going to be this cloud vendor. That's it. That's my cloud vendor solution, right? However, now it's become really acquiring the workload infrastructure and the software suites in line with customers' specific workload requirements. And so now instead of going after one cloud provider, now you've got a cloud provider in marketing, you've got a cloud provider in ERP, you've got a cloud provider in IT. So that's what this whole multi-cloud hybrid cloud type scenario is really starting to proliferate through our customer base. And you really find that, as Deepu just mentioned, they're starting, customers are really looking for how do they manage cloud, multiple clouds in multiple ways with different workloads? And they're really going out and looking and exploring how to best address that. And I think, once again, the Nutanix Lenovo solution is fantastic for that. I mean, you're going to see that proliferate more and more in the industry over the next couple of years. So one of the, sorry, Stu, one of the comments throughout the show has been, you know what, and this is not a pick on Nutanix or anyone else. Just, both of you guys are not from North America or Western Europe. Is that the focus, a lot of vendors' focus has been on Western Europe and America from a cloud perspective. How do you feel the Nutanix relationship from both a customer and as a partner has been on expanding capability beyond North American and Western Europe clouds? I want to go first, Deepu. Yeah, so if you look at your traditional Amazon and Azure, so we have their clouds which are already available in India. So, I mean, we have been checking that one out. We have been looking at various options for various workloads, but predominantly we have been, our predominant workloads have been on the European and the North American cloud for whatsoever reason. So because if you look at Amazon or Azure, they've come in recently into the Asian footprint in Chennai as well as in the Phu Nui, I'm not mistaken. Yeah, but I mean, I think we'll get there. So I think from our perspective, we break the world into five different geographies. So China, Asia Pacific, Europe, North America and South America. And when you look at our earnings this last quarter, I'm only about two weeks away from our next earnings, so I can't say anything about Q1, but the Q4, calendar Q4, we grew about 17% year on year, but we grew double digit growth in every one of those geographies consistently. So in Nutanix with our HX solution, which is really what we're talking about today, my Asia Pacific team is growing just as fast, if not actually a little bit faster than my North America team. So we see that this technology actually being a real worldwide phenomenon and it's really growing everywhere. Japan is fantastic, India is fantastic for me. Obviously Western Europe, Deeper is a great example because he's deploying this globally across all of the geographies. And I think we're seeing a lot of our G2000 customers really addressing that way, but we see a lot of local companies as well, driving in across the geographies. Asia Pacific's a great example. So if you look at again, to add on to that, I mean, it's here in Nutanix, we know it's 10 point, we have been growing even in India also. We have recently done around 16 nodes within Bangalore and Mumbai itself. So it's a pretty good story. All right, well, Deeper George, thank you so much for joining us. Rod Lappen, always a pleasure to catch up with you, for Keith Townsend, I'm Stu Miniman. We've got a full day of day two coverage here of theCUBE at Nutanix dot next 2018. Thanks so much for watching theCUBE. Thank you. Thank you.