 Live from the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas. It's theCUBE, covering VMworld 2016. Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem sponsors. Now, here's your host, Stu Miniman. Welcome back to theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media's flagship program here at VMworld 2016 in Las Vegas. Happy to welcome to the program Venugopal Pai, who's the vice president of alliances with Nutanix and Julie O'Brien, who's the vice president of corporate marketing at Nutanix. Thank you so much for joining me. Yeah, thanks for having us. Hi, Stu, good to see you again. All right, so Pai, I spoke with you at Dotnext a couple of months ago. That day it was 118 degrees, I think, here in Vegas. Something like that. I think it's only supposed to hit about 104 right now, but here in the convention center, the air conditioning's on. I'm kind of happy, usually, that I have a jacket. But from an alliances standpoint, give us the update on where you are. VMworld, we always talk a lot about ecosystems and partnerships and some of the complexities there, so where is that? Absolutely, thank you. It's great to be here at VMworld this time around as well. This is like the sixth or seventh time since 2009, we've been here. So it's always been a great show for us. VMworld has always been a great partner as well, despite certain areas of contention that I think every major industry vendor would grapple through as they grow as a company. But I think we are going through those growing pains as any company does. But VMworld has always been a great partner, continues to be at most levels. And us being here in the testament to what our customers, one of us, partners, one of us, and customers depend on the ecosystem to build the business on, right? So it's an important part of, I think, what they depend on and what they build their confidence on. Yeah, so Pife, people that don't understand these relationships, maybe they, you know, they read the press information and they're like, oh, Nutanix hit out of packs, oh, VMworld Nutanix in an epic war of death because it's BSAN versus your solution. Can you talk to the engineering relationships? Where are their connections? How do you work together with a company like that? Now, great question. So we work closely with VMware on all aspects of the certification and the validation. Because if you look at where we start as a company, and a lot of our revenue as well in terms of where we grow as a company is based on ESX virtualization but we use your platform, right? So we work very closely with VMware, both on the support side, to make sure that any customer situation that do arise, and they do arise more a lot of times, if they do, we want to make sure that the customer is not penalized in any way, shape, or form, right? So that's one side of it. The second side of it is we go through a lot of certification across the spectrum of the applications and the APIs that VMware puts out either through the storage portfolios or the VCR portfolios. As you look at that spectrum, that integration and the simplicity what they want to see when they're choosing ESX is a fundamental element of how we work with VMware, right? And then as you expand that out, customers want to see more from us as two companies, again part of the ecosystem, right? So we continue to build on that but it also depends on how far we want to take that given, like you said, you know, there's a little bit of competition on the VSAN side, and a little bit of competition on the hypervisor side but nonetheless, I think it's a choice for the customer and I think it depends on what customer wants to deploy and what they choose to deploy should be without a confidence on how they want to make sure that if something goes wrong or if something needs to work, that as two vendors that we work together to make sure that it is successful. So that is the fundamental element of why people have ecosystems, right? And that's fundamental to how we treat ourselves and I hope VMware treats us as well. Sure, Julie, perhaps you can share some of the customer perspective. You're working with customers, you have customers presenting here, we're going to have some of theCUBE this week. How do they see this interrelationship? Do they pay attention to something like, you know, some of those, you know, little bit of battles? You know, I think honestly, the vendors are probably the ones who pay the most attention to it, right? Customers are just, they're looking for a solution. They're expecting that the vendors are going to come together and work together to solve the problem. So I think a lot of the heat that you feel or the friction that you feel tends to really be more at the vendor level and the customers are the ones keeping us honest to do the right thing, which we always will. But yeah, so I think Steve Bunch is going to be here on Wednesday from Wabash to talk about some of the solutions that he's rolling out and should be a great segment for you. Yeah, no. I'm looking forward to it. And so you've both been in Vegas a bunch recently. There was the recent Cisco news, maybe you can kind of fill us in and you know, how customers drove that because once again, it's one of those, you know, Cisco's made some news about their position on it but about what you're working with customers. So if you look at our ecosystem as a whole, right? So we grew our ecosystem with the last two, three years since we kicked it off. There was 70 partners in the ecosystem, right? And 100 solutions come in now with 11 to 15 API based integrations with a lot of these ecosystem partners. In addition to that, we have Dell and Lenovo's OEM partners that are leading with the HX platform and the XC platform. But we didn't want to stop there because again, like Julie said, it's about what customers want to deploy and how confident they want to fill in deploying our solution. So towards that end, we announced our capability of our software running on the Cisco UCS platform. Couple of weeks ago, literally in Vegas, as you can tell, right? So, and what that led us is really is based on two things. One is customers that demanded their choice of hardware vendor and the choice of Nutanix on that hardware platform, right? And so we bent rightfully so on those customer demands and partner demands. And the press release that we issued, I think couple of weeks ago again, kind of reflected the fact that, you know, partners like Presidio and customers, that basically said, this is a good thing for the industry because it allows Cisco UCS, which is one of the flagship platforms for Cisco as well, with Nutanix's software, allowing them to really build a web-scale architecture. So when they want to build a true enterprise cloud, this allows them to bring the best of two worlds together. So that's kind of what led us towards doing Dell and Lenovo and continuing down the trajectory but at the same time, expanding the portfolio with Cisco. It's interesting because if we look at kind of the maturity of the hyper-converged marketplace, too many people thought of it as boxes. And from the beginning, of course, we understand it as software. From the first time I talked to Dheeraj, which was actually at VMworld, I believe four years ago, it's about distributed architecture and software. So can you talk through, you talked a little bit about some of the OEMs, but maybe expand a little bit more on the role of software. So like you said, you know, Dheeraj rightfully, you know, and now kind of talked about, you know, the evolution of the company, right? So everything we do is on a software level. And if you start looking at how that evolves from a product perspective, right? We OEM from Supermicro and we sell it as an NX product, but at the same time, being the software company that we are, we're able to extend that capability so customers that choose to have Dell as the primary hardware vendor can then choose to continue down that thread path, as opposed to saying, you know what, I like Nutanix, I like the software path, but now I'm mandated to go down a hardware path that I'm not comfortable with or I choose not to, right? So then Dell and Lenovo becomes options for them to consider so that this software that we build on abstracts all the capabilities that typically a 3D or 4K architecture would have been mandated to build on, right? And if you look at what's happened over the next last four, five years and over the next two, three years, the evolution of what Intel architecture has done to enable the software to really be empowered even more with NVMe and 3D crosspoint brings the application much, much closer to the storage and almost at the dim level, right? So the evolution of software is truly the future of where we see the industry going and the choice of how customers want to consume this software become their choice that they want to make. So that's the reason we pursued down our continued route of having an NX platform, but at the same time, customers' choice of choosing either Lenovo or Dell, or for that matter Cisco, becomes something that the customers mandate and therefore our responsibility to meet that mandate. Yeah. All right, so Julie, the other thing every time I talk to D.R., I was talking about the culture of the company. You participate in an event here in Vegas around diversity. Maybe you can share with the audience how that was. Yeah, yeah, it was great. So it was a cross-industry event, right? So we had panelists from Dell, from Nutanix, we had a representative from Cisco, and also a woman who works in the Oakland school district to help girls who code basically come together as well as Anya Manuel, who is just fantastic. She's with the Rice Hadley Gates Consultant Group. So she's got a lot of experience that she brings to the table as a lawyer, but also working in the federal government as well. And it was a great opportunity for us to get together and talk about a really hot issue in ITN and tech, which is how do we create a more diverse workplace, right? And just coming to share best practices in terms of things that we could be thinking about together in terms of how do you cast a wider net at the top of the funnel so that you're actually not going back to the same place as time and time again or the same school as time and time again, but just thinking differently about the candidates you might be able to bring into your company. And then also taking a look at whatever things that you can do to retain and grow those people once they're in your organization, right? Not just women, but also Hispanics, African-Americans, right? And thinking through different programs that you could be rolling out that could appeal to those groups as well as people who might be on the cusp of retiring that have a lot of value to bring and want to continue to work. So it was a really great conversation, very empowering, and it was just amazing to see the engagement in the room. It's clearly a hot topic across the industry. So we're going to continue to have that conversation. We're going to roll it out quarterly. Time to some of these big industry events. In fact, the next one that we're going to do is at .next in Europe, which is our user conference. It'll be our inaugural event for Europe that's happening November 7th, and I think you'll be there too, so it'd be great to follow up with you on that as well. Yeah, that sounds great. We're looking forward to we're going to have the cube. It is in Vienna. It's the week, actually, the election, so we'll see where that all lays out. But it's great, it's an absolutely hot button issue. The cube, we're hugely supportive of women in tech. As a matter of fact, you've got a big event coming up in the fall of the third year the cube is doing the Grace Hopper event. So we've actually sponsored fellowships through the ground truth, what's called the tech truth. So very supportive. Jeff Frick's kind of our leader of that in the valley, and obviously a hot button in Silicon Valley. So, Julie, it's, you work for a tech company in the valley, anything you took back from the panel that you saw? I think there was a lot of good advice from different experiences, different personal experiences. One of the programs that we're looking to roll out is called New Flex. And it basically is a program to appeal to either employees that may have either aging parents that they need to take care of, or they need to downshift a little bit because they're dealing with some family issues, or again, they could be on the cusp of retiring and don't necessarily want to fully exit the workforce. So we're just starting to pilot that program, but we're really curious to see what kind of talent that's going to bring into the company. For people who maybe thought, you know what, how can I really work at a kind of a fast moving place like Nutanix, right? So it's 20 hours and we'll let you know in three months what that looks like. But a lot of good advice from across the women who we're presenting and sharing. And a lot around really looking for not just mentors, but also sponsors, people who put their social capital on the line to really be invested in you as an individual and to not be afraid to ask. I think that sometimes women in particular, we hope if we do a great job, it's just going to get noticed and great things will happen. And you need to be an active participant in your career, kind of be the CEO of your own career. Great, so I want to give you both just a chance. Any kind of big takeaways from Nutanix here at VMworld as people either that didn't get to see the whole show or that are watching remote, what would you want to share, Pi? I think the big takeaways is I think it was great to see customers time and again come and visit. It was good to catch up with a lot of the customers and partners that are visiting here as well. So I think it was a great event. It continues to be a great event that we continue to foster and be a part of. And as we look forward to the VMworld Europe and the V forums that are coming up, I think it's VMware has really done a great job in bringing all of us together and building an ecosystem that you see around here. And that's something that is hugely applauded. So it's good to be part of this. Yeah, clearly a lot of excitement around the enterprise cloud, which is fantastic. And I was just on the booth a few minutes ago and just the crowds that are trying to learn, trying to engage and learn what this is going to mean for their business are really fantastic. And just to echo what Pi was saying, we're really active in the Vmugs. And I think it's been a great platform to be part of that kind of conversation with other ecosystem members in terms of what that means for solutions for customers. So good stuff. Yeah, great. Julia, Brian, Venegopal Pi, thank you so much for joining us. We'll be back with lots more coverage here from VMworld 2016 in Las Vegas. You're watching theCUBE. Thank you.