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Nutanix Weekly: Modernizing Infrastructure: A C-Suite Guide to Distributed Hybrid Infrastructure · Nutanix Weekly

WEBVTT 1 00:00:03.469 --> 00:00:09.119 Philip Sellers: Hey there, and welcome to another episode of Nutanix Weekly, the, 2 00:00:09.229 --> 00:00:27.549 Philip Sellers: The Zentager podcast focused on the Nutanix stack and ecosystem, and it's one of the many things that we do here we like to call content with context. We call it that because we go out on the internet, we find the best content we can, and we try to bring our real-world context to that. 3 00:00:28.019 --> 00:00:40.919 Philip Sellers: information. We discuss it, and of course, I can't do that alone, because that would be boring. So, of course, I bring along my merry band of brothers, and we try to talk about that. 4 00:00:40.919 --> 00:00:52.129 Philip Sellers: Today, I'm joined with Jairah Cox. Jairra is a principal architect at Nutanix. For listeners of this podcast, you know Jairah really well. I think he's been here since the beginning. 5 00:00:52.189 --> 00:00:55.639 Philip Sellers: So, Jaira, where are you joining us from today? 6 00:00:56.340 --> 00:01:04.319 Jirah Cox: It is a beautiful day here in sunny Orlando, on the last day of the Gartner Symposium, conference, and 7 00:01:04.430 --> 00:01:09.920 Jirah Cox: If we've had a chance to meet you, thanks for that. If we didn't, I'm sorry, and I'll see you at the next one. 8 00:01:11.370 --> 00:01:24.510 Philip Sellers: Yeah, it's, life on the road, you know, principal architect, you're working with customers, you're working with vendor partners and industry analysts in this case, and other customers who are attending the conference, but 9 00:01:24.630 --> 00:01:33.159 Philip Sellers: You stay busy and, almost, play Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego with Jaira most of the time? 10 00:01:33.400 --> 00:01:47.089 Jirah Cox: It's fun, it's a lot of fun. Now, next week, for me, will be 8 years at Nutanix, and the list of people that want to talk to Nutanix in some way, shape, or form is certainly, both long and distinguished, and also growing. 11 00:01:47.230 --> 00:01:49.219 Philip Sellers: Yeah, oh yeah, well, I mean… 12 00:01:49.350 --> 00:02:05.780 Philip Sellers: You've had some favors done in the industry, there's a lot of interest. I know I see that from our conversations with customers and clients. You know, there's a lot of people that are looking for that next right step for their modern infrastructure, and so… 13 00:02:05.780 --> 00:02:17.460 Philip Sellers: Couldn't tee up a better intro to today's blog post. This is out on Nutanix.com in their executive focus area, so Nutanix.com slash executive. 14 00:02:17.460 --> 00:02:27.710 Philip Sellers: And it's a C-Suite's Guide to Distributed Hybrid Infrastructure, which, you know, this is appropriate that you're at the Gartner Symposium, because 15 00:02:27.750 --> 00:02:37.250 Philip Sellers: Basis for this article, or this blog post, is basically the new Gartner Magic Quadrant for distributed hybrid infrastructure. 16 00:02:37.640 --> 00:02:39.669 Philip Sellers: It's a mouthful. 17 00:02:39.790 --> 00:02:47.889 Philip Sellers: And it's a new category, I believe, for Gartner, too, distributed hybrid Infrastructure. What's that about? What's it a recognition of? 18 00:02:48.640 --> 00:03:05.890 Jirah Cox: Yeah, it's, and it's such a wonderful recognition, that we can drill deeper into. You're right, to define it, for folks, it, it does, I believe, the places, what we might think of as before, the HCI Magic Quadrant. Since if we really zoom out industry-wide. 19 00:03:05.920 --> 00:03:17.519 Jirah Cox: basically, HCI is the new virtualization, right? No one even will sells a standalone hypervisor anymore. Everything comes with a solution for both running the VMs and the compute side. 20 00:03:17.520 --> 00:03:31.040 Jirah Cox: And the storage is well aggregated and defined in software. So since that became so commoditized, it required the HCI Magic Quadrant, and now we have the DHI Magic Quadrant for hybrid infrastructure. 21 00:03:31.190 --> 00:03:41.499 Jirah Cox: distributed hybrid infrastructure, which really, I think, is, to their credit, very forward-looking, to think about how would I, as a technologist and a technology leader. 22 00:03:41.800 --> 00:03:58.499 Jirah Cox: get to an operational state where I manage my on-prem, my edge, my COO, and my cloud, all together in a unified platform. So looking forward to that, which companies could help me with that kind of a goal of, I want to have one software cloud platform that I'll give to the business. 23 00:03:58.610 --> 00:04:00.740 Jirah Cox: Right? And who can help me along that journey? 24 00:04:01.340 --> 00:04:03.240 Philip Sellers: Well, it's funny, you know, as you… 25 00:04:03.240 --> 00:04:22.550 Philip Sellers: mention that, the seamless management in the same way that spans from cloud, edge, on-premises, that sounds like something we talked about a few episodes ago on here. And it really came directly from the Nutanix blog, so it really is kind of a recognition of the work you're doing to make 26 00:04:22.550 --> 00:04:30.560 Philip Sellers: It's simple, And a single software stack that spans all those different locations to meet customer needs. 27 00:04:30.560 --> 00:04:45.970 Jirah Cox: it's really, very pleasantly validating, right, around, yeah, the way that we've had, our view of a larger stack, and what it needs to look like, and where you should be able to run it. It's… it's a really fun time to be in Nutanix and having these kind of conversations with our customers, for sure, because 28 00:04:45.970 --> 00:04:50.860 Jirah Cox: a lot of it comes from customer requests, right? Like, I forget the exact 29 00:04:50.860 --> 00:05:01.689 Jirah Cox: average, but a rule of thumb is, like, something like half of the features in our stats, half of the customer requests, half of them we think of ourselves, right? Delivering them both together is what gives the platform the value. 30 00:05:02.580 --> 00:05:12.109 Philip Sellers: Yeah, so let's talk a little bit about why DHI matters. So, DHI is going to be short for Distributed Hybrid Infrastructure for the rest of this podcast. 31 00:05:12.320 --> 00:05:19.030 Philip Sellers: But why is it important as a deployment model, and what is it… Let companies do. 32 00:05:21.860 --> 00:05:37.559 Jirah Cox: it… it lets them, well, first off, simplify, right? Because that's kind of what we're all about in Nutanix, right? So, of course I can do cloud, let's say, without Nutanix, I can do the edge without Nutanix, but why would I want to use Nutanix to do all of these things? 33 00:05:37.940 --> 00:05:44.190 Jirah Cox: Well, now I have one team, right? If they're learning ATX, they've learned all of the things. They can do a workload at the edge. 34 00:05:44.260 --> 00:05:52.059 Jirah Cox: Of course, govern the traditional core on-prem, and of course, also now do cloud, or new clouds, or change clouds. 35 00:05:52.910 --> 00:06:12.140 Jirah Cox: and run all of that. So that's really great, unifying both the technology stack and even the people on the operational side of things. I often say this to customers, right? Like, this is super cheesy, and I acknowledge that up front, and I own it, but, like, we're here to power your cloud, like the Acme Cloud, or the Pintoso, or Widgets Inc. 36 00:06:12.140 --> 00:06:18.759 Jirah Cox: cloud, whatever you want your cloud to look like. Do you want your cloud to contain the data center, contain a cloud vendor to contain the edge? 37 00:06:18.800 --> 00:06:24.910 Jirah Cox: that's all fine. You just, on a whiteboard, choose the shape of your cloud, and now you know how to get there. 38 00:06:25.240 --> 00:06:38.979 Jirah Cox: But that also unlocks other things. That makes it dramatically easier to move workloads across these now… well, we can now make a cloud provider really an availability zone within your cloud. 39 00:06:39.030 --> 00:06:51.120 Jirah Cox: Right, so I can now do production in one cloud, and DR in another cloud, or production in one cloud, and migrate to another cloud, or on-prem, or vice versa. So, mobility, matters an awful lot. 40 00:06:52.060 --> 00:06:55.359 Jirah Cox: I get to include the edge. The Edge is now a first-class citizen. 41 00:06:55.710 --> 00:07:03.640 Jirah Cox: And then lastly, I cannot put all in policy, right? Because policy, policy is almost like, maybe… 42 00:07:04.320 --> 00:07:06.659 Jirah Cox: It's always dangerous to have a new thought on a podcast. 43 00:07:06.690 --> 00:07:25.300 Jirah Cox: But policy is almost like, automation for infrastructure, right? Like, it's one fewer place when I'm doing quick ops, where I have human error, perhaps. If I can get it categorized right, if I can get the right policy associated, now I can have confidence that that policy's going to apply anywhere in, you know, let's say, within my cloud. 44 00:07:26.490 --> 00:07:34.379 Philip Sellers: Well, and you talk about these things, and I think there's a recognition that needs to come out that cloud-native 45 00:07:34.530 --> 00:07:42.160 Philip Sellers: And a cloud is a way of operating, not necessarily a destination. We've often thought of it as a destination, and… 46 00:07:42.240 --> 00:07:45.690 Philip Sellers: If you've listened to us on here before, you know, we talk about 47 00:07:45.690 --> 00:08:03.850 Philip Sellers: you know, it's not a destination, it's really just a way of doing things. It's highly automated, it's providing services that are consumable, generally by API. It is that cloud-native way that meets your developers where they're at. 48 00:08:03.850 --> 00:08:06.330 Philip Sellers: But also, increasingly. 49 00:08:06.330 --> 00:08:18.199 Philip Sellers: meeting the independent software vendors where they're refactoring their applications to run. And so, you know, there's this recognition that as things have kind of changed on-prem. 50 00:08:18.350 --> 00:08:22.790 Philip Sellers: with VMware, by Broadcom, and the acquisition. 51 00:08:23.030 --> 00:08:33.750 Philip Sellers: there are really two choices. There's either a DHI platform or a public cloud as your destination as you map your… your new strategy. And so. 52 00:08:33.820 --> 00:08:49.030 Philip Sellers: Either one of those now operates in a very similar way, with services and with all of the controls that you need in order to stay safe and have choice and manage in a uniform way. 53 00:08:49.670 --> 00:09:03.370 Jirah Cox: And I think there's, yes to all of the above, and that ability to adapt, right? So some customers are… we could be the most, staunchest of, I'm this ArcSight customer, I have a prod data center, a GI data center. 54 00:09:03.370 --> 00:09:23.300 Jirah Cox: I have no cloud, or the opposite. I'm only in cloud, I'm only in one cloud, you know, that's my strategic partner. And that's all completely fine. But, you know, in our day jobs, right, we're all kind of, like, one email away from learning that there's a new acquisition, or a divestiture, right? And the shape of my cloud has to change, really, on demand and as quickly as possible. 55 00:09:23.310 --> 00:09:35.040 Jirah Cox: to accommodate new requirements, right? So, you know, designing for what do we know about from the past, what has the past taught us, and being able to say yes to the unknown as well, right, with where DHI already lives. 56 00:09:35.550 --> 00:09:51.980 Philip Sellers: One, for many of us, there's a two-letter word that I'm sure you've heard zero about this week at the Gartner Symposium, but this two-letter word that's kind of turning us on our head, and it means, you know, we have to go where the technology is present. 57 00:09:52.050 --> 00:10:01.580 Philip Sellers: It's AI. Every business is chasing AI initiatives, and so moving your data around, that portability factor is a huge enabler 58 00:10:01.770 --> 00:10:17.720 Philip Sellers: for us to be able to do more AI things against that data. So, whether that's on-prem, whether that's in a cloud somewhere, just being able to get your data to the place where you want to use AI is a really important goal for most organizations today. 59 00:10:19.640 --> 00:10:27.380 Jirah Cox: Very true. There's been one or two vendors here this week that might have AI in their products. Of course, including us as well, yeah. 60 00:10:27.380 --> 00:10:40.130 Philip Sellers: Yeah, I know, right? Like, you haven't ever heard of this concept of AI, completely new, something new you've learned today. You know, with trends like that, it's kind of hard not to get caught in the hype. 61 00:10:40.210 --> 00:10:56.620 Philip Sellers: And I remember a conversation with my CIO in the past, you know, as he reads trade magazines and articles and things like that. There's always hype around the next big wave of what we're doing inside the industry. 62 00:10:57.100 --> 00:11:10.229 Philip Sellers: how do we separate those things from, you know, what we can actually do from reality, and what's hype, what's reality, is sometimes a difficult thing. So, I'll ask this question, is distributed hybrid infrastructure… 63 00:11:10.530 --> 00:11:11.410 Philip Sellers: Hype? 64 00:11:11.670 --> 00:11:20.509 Philip Sellers: Is it real? Like, this recognition, like, where are we standing, and what does it mean to CIOs in the industry? 65 00:11:22.130 --> 00:11:37.550 Jirah Cox: the… my mind immediately goes to, and with… with mindfulness to my immediate host at the moment, Mike Gartner, that's… that's exactly what things like the Magic Quadrant validate, right? It's where is… where is their reality, right? What is truly achievable here? But, 66 00:11:37.890 --> 00:11:50.009 Jirah Cox: You know, of course, you know, IT leaders would want to be, of course, getting simplicity right at the operational level, right? That's simply, what you have to be betting toward, is that doing more with less. 67 00:11:50.050 --> 00:11:58.129 Jirah Cox: Making tasks more repeatable, reducing human error, on the planning, on the operational side, on the escalations. 68 00:11:58.250 --> 00:12:11.239 Jirah Cox: as always, getting more secure, getting more compliant, you know, that only marches one direction, right? And it's not towards less secure, you know, so how do I enforce that kind of security? 69 00:12:11.460 --> 00:12:14.169 Jirah Cox: You know, and he'll help me get there, right? So… 70 00:12:15.490 --> 00:12:21.469 Philip Sellers: Yeah, I would say it's pretty scary in the industry right now. I mean, just the number of attacks, the… 71 00:12:21.570 --> 00:12:31.569 Philip Sellers: scrutiny at which your business partners, and by that I mean, like, insurance, you know, cyber liability, insurance, and things like that. 72 00:12:31.570 --> 00:12:42.749 Philip Sellers: You're under more scrutiny to do more, to enforce and to show that you're doing the right things. And even when you do it all right, there's still a certain amount of risk that, 73 00:12:42.980 --> 00:12:50.820 Philip Sellers: a bad actor could get in and do something malicious in your environment, and there could be losses, there could be exposure. So… 74 00:12:51.260 --> 00:12:53.970 Philip Sellers: Doing the right things in a simple way. 75 00:12:54.140 --> 00:13:00.329 Philip Sellers: That's a huge enabler for most organizations, because security has traditionally been pretty complex. 76 00:13:01.100 --> 00:13:11.980 Philip Sellers: you're bringing approachability in the Nutanix platform to be secure out of the box, and then to show and enforce, desired state from a security standpoint. 77 00:13:11.980 --> 00:13:24.989 Jirah Cox: Yeah, all true. And of course, you know, we don't exist in a vacuum, right? We have to help replatform, and continue to deliver all the exact same kinds of services, SLOs that the business expects. 78 00:13:25.160 --> 00:13:38.229 Jirah Cox: from the current technology stack, and really, ideally, and I should also say normally, add a lot more value as well, right? Like, simple replatforming is expensive and a lot of work, 79 00:13:38.310 --> 00:13:45.160 Jirah Cox: In a best-case scenario. So what's in it as well, right, that we can also achieve? Can I increase my VM security posture, right? 80 00:13:45.170 --> 00:14:04.870 Jirah Cox: I have a better stance on micro-segmentation or zero trust? Can I, you know, layer on, like, SDM networking to be able to get, you know, simpler DR or IP portability, or… or more visibility into my network packets, what's happening, right? So I can catch stuff earlier when those attacks do happen. 81 00:14:04.920 --> 00:14:22.950 Jirah Cox: You know, can I, can I improve my FinOps game, right? And get, get, you know, walk down that path of, show back, shame back, charge back, right? Whatever the, whatever the right operational maturity is for my organization. You know, cloud's not free, DHI is not free, private cloud is not free. 82 00:14:23.110 --> 00:14:30.829 Jirah Cox: Right, but we can, help with better metering, right, and transparency for that costing, so that the business knows what they're consuming and where that value's going. 83 00:14:31.600 --> 00:14:32.210 Jirah Cox: So… 84 00:14:32.340 --> 00:14:37.709 Philip Sellers: And that drives some really great strategic conversations with your business partners. 85 00:14:38.050 --> 00:14:53.070 Philip Sellers: That may be a little new or foreign to a lot of IT departments, but you're being forced into that situation anyway, because now you have finance scrutinizing what was just an accepted spin. 86 00:14:53.210 --> 00:14:57.510 Philip Sellers: On hypervisors and technology that's now 87 00:14:57.750 --> 00:15:06.930 Philip Sellers: 3X, 10X what it was, and so it's forcing conversations with your business partners on the finance side that maybe you weren't having in the past. 88 00:15:06.980 --> 00:15:19.279 Philip Sellers: So, I think it's also kind of a good thing, because this is an opportunity for IT to get closer to the business, understand what's important to your business partners, and help 89 00:15:20.060 --> 00:15:28.470 Philip Sellers: Create a strategy where your infrastructure is more adaptable to what your business needs, what your business is chasing. 90 00:15:28.680 --> 00:15:44.130 Philip Sellers: And, you know, I always love advocating for IT as a service provider to the rest of the organization. I think it's a great model to think of yourself as an internal service provider. And, you know, that really does 91 00:15:44.570 --> 00:15:52.160 Philip Sellers: drive the strategic alignment conversations with your business partners. That, I think, is an ultimate win. 92 00:15:52.440 --> 00:16:00.010 Philip Sellers: for all IT in the future, as we move forward and mature in… in kind of our practice. 93 00:16:00.460 --> 00:16:07.929 Philip Sellers: When it comes to executives, what should they be considering when evaluating a DHI provider? 94 00:16:09.370 --> 00:16:13.949 Jirah Cox: Well… But maybe perhaps the biggest one, right, which I would say 95 00:16:14.230 --> 00:16:27.650 Jirah Cox: ultimately, if I had to summarize a lot of conversations I've had this week and in these last couple months and years, is just choosing who do I want to be a good faith partner to my business, right? 96 00:16:28.010 --> 00:16:32.550 Jirah Cox: You know, there's almost a cultural fit level of evaluation there. 97 00:16:32.670 --> 00:16:38.090 Jirah Cox: In fact, I was asked… I was asked, one time to help prepare, for a panel interview. 98 00:16:38.260 --> 00:16:55.910 Jirah Cox: And the question was, what's an unexpected skill that, we as IT leaders need to be developing in an AI world, right, that was not needed to date? And I thought about it for a second, and, you know, to be fair, you could… you could answer that question almost anywhere you wanted to, and make it defensible, right? It's pretty wide open. 99 00:16:56.240 --> 00:17:03.119 Jirah Cox: And my thought was, developing a skill around interviewing an LLM for cultural fit. 100 00:17:03.300 --> 00:17:15.060 Jirah Cox: Right? Because, you know, humans have implicit bias, LLMs, therefore, have to have implicit bias, because we're made by humans. You have to go detect it, right? And… 101 00:17:15.180 --> 00:17:24.349 Jirah Cox: If you were interviewing an LLM for a business strategy, and the LLM said, well, I perceive that your customers don't have a lot of choice and they're stuck, you should jack up prices on them. 102 00:17:24.770 --> 00:17:39.420 Jirah Cox: The AI might consider that to be a great business. But not every company wants to do that, right? So, LLM cultural fit, there. But I think that's… that goes to even your business partners, right? And a core platform as well, right? Who's actually investing? 103 00:17:39.420 --> 00:17:54.579 Jirah Cox: in R&D, who's actually investing in customer success, and delivering what we've always really aimed for, right? Customer delight, right? If you're a customer of mine, you've heard me say it, our goal is not just for you to like it, we want you to love it, and we're not done until you do. 104 00:17:54.730 --> 00:18:07.959 Jirah Cox: So that's… that's really the biggest thing I can think about, considering, for a new DHI partner. Of course, we could go on and do several episodes on the technical speeds and feeds and validity there as well. 105 00:18:11.890 --> 00:18:28.180 Philip Sellers: I think it's really important to kind of go back to some of the original things that you pointed out that were the reasons why DHI matters. You've got that unified control plane for hybrid and multi-cloud, integrated security and backup. 106 00:18:28.490 --> 00:18:35.599 Philip Sellers: You know, cloud-native services deployable, and really kind of support for 107 00:18:35.860 --> 00:18:41.150 Philip Sellers: Kubernetes moving forward. That's where the industry seems to be going. 108 00:18:41.270 --> 00:18:48.759 Philip Sellers: All of those… are key reasons why Nutanix fits so well in this DHI 109 00:18:49.270 --> 00:18:54.350 Philip Sellers: definition and the magic quadrant. You know, the result for 110 00:18:54.420 --> 00:19:00.270 Philip Sellers: Gartner's, evaluation, you guys are positioned in the leadership. 111 00:19:00.330 --> 00:19:20.300 Philip Sellers: Quadrant. So, you're… you're up there with VMware, but Broadcom, Microsoft, AWS, you know, and AWS and Microsoft are largely there because they offer some version of their cloud as an on-prem, either AWS Outpost or Azure Local. 112 00:19:20.310 --> 00:19:23.949 Philip Sellers: So, you know, they're there with you, but… 113 00:19:24.240 --> 00:19:30.650 Philip Sellers: there's not a lot of other vendors ranked as high as you in this Magic Quadrant release. 114 00:19:31.460 --> 00:19:45.900 Jirah Cox: Not only that, I won't take credit for this as an original thought. Our global CTO for platforms, Parag, pointed that to me yesterday. We're the only logo in the Navig Quadrant that doesn't have a trillion dollar market cap. 115 00:19:45.900 --> 00:19:46.880 Philip Sellers: Right, so… 116 00:19:47.810 --> 00:20:01.459 Jirah Cox: you know, what an amazing validation of the technology stack itself, right? Not just market presence, not just overall total, customer spend on us, right? So, obviously, we're well-positioned to grow and explode. 117 00:20:01.460 --> 00:20:07.979 Jirah Cox: So it really, truly, actually, for us especially in that quadrant, is a validation of the technology itself. 118 00:20:08.230 --> 00:20:19.740 Philip Sellers: Yeah. Well, and strategy, not just the technology, the strategy that you've been driving, because largely your strategy has influenced your technical roadmap through leases of products like Database as a Service. 119 00:20:19.770 --> 00:20:21.240 Jirah Cox: But that… 120 00:20:21.750 --> 00:20:27.329 Philip Sellers: sometimes… And I've talked to other people, they don't know what to do with that. 121 00:20:27.460 --> 00:20:47.369 Philip Sellers: Because they're like, why is Nutanix doing this? They're not a database company, they're an infrastructure company, but it's the as-a-service, it's the cloud model, the strategy of being able to do these things programmatically with APIs. That strategic choice is a huge reason why you're succeeding today. 122 00:20:47.480 --> 00:21:06.790 Philip Sellers: You know, when we look at the report from Gartner, which you can go to the Nutanix website, sign up and download a free copy of the Gartner report, mandatory features for a DHI platform include, you know, an integrated platform with a hypervisor, storage, and virtual networking services. 123 00:21:06.790 --> 00:21:11.329 Philip Sellers: Vendor-engineered hybrid cloud infrastructure was resource management. 124 00:21:11.330 --> 00:21:27.410 Philip Sellers: Management of distributed infrastructure that's supported by a set of APIs. Centralized management portal that provides secure, automated, full-stack solutions for operating and supporting distributed infrastructure. Support for virtual machines. 125 00:21:28.170 --> 00:21:29.100 Jirah Cox: You know… 126 00:21:29.100 --> 00:21:34.550 Philip Sellers: It reads like a, line card for who you are as an organization. 127 00:21:34.550 --> 00:21:35.190 Jirah Cox: Obviously. 128 00:21:35.310 --> 00:21:49.040 Jirah Cox: at the risk of sounding like a one-man echo chamber, really my mind goes back to, you know, our simple tagline of running any app anywhere, right? All more detailed, right? 129 00:21:49.110 --> 00:22:06.559 Jirah Cox: more diligent ways of saying whatever your application is shaped like. Is it, bare metal and needs, intelligent, performant, secure data services? Is it virtualized? Is it in a container? Does it use a lot of these together and, sort of apply LLMs and become an AI-powered application? 130 00:22:06.560 --> 00:22:10.010 Jirah Cox: And of course, what's not powered by a database. 131 00:22:10.010 --> 00:22:19.150 Jirah Cox: You know, that is exactly what we do, is build infrastructure that is great at running today's and tomorrow's applications. 132 00:22:19.960 --> 00:22:33.500 Philip Sellers: Well, and I had a great conversation with a customer earlier today, and we were talking through different solutions, and the aha moment for the customer was, oh, so it's in the software. 133 00:22:33.680 --> 00:22:39.080 Philip Sellers: The value is in the software, and yes, that's exactly what we've been saying 134 00:22:39.280 --> 00:22:50.130 Philip Sellers: as HCI was launched, as it was created, is that we've shifted from purpose-built hardware, purpose-built arrays. 135 00:22:50.250 --> 00:23:04.980 Philip Sellers: the true value is in the software, and every release, there's more value in the software. There's performance enhancements, there's new capabilities, there's optimized code, things to go faster, things to do more. 136 00:23:05.320 --> 00:23:10.159 Philip Sellers: And so that's the beauty of this design, is that your secret sauce is in the software. 137 00:23:10.330 --> 00:23:20.719 Jirah Cox: I mean, we should… we should, we should get… it's in the software, put on shirts. If you can connect us with your customer for… we can arrange for royalties for that, I'm sure. That, that is, yeah, absolutely a valiant summarization. 138 00:23:22.020 --> 00:23:35.440 Philip Sellers: Yeah, and there's no end in sight. There's tons of new innovation and things coming. You know, Gartner points out, over the last 12 months, you've added support for PowerFlex, you're working on support for Pure Storage. 139 00:23:35.710 --> 00:23:55.390 Philip Sellers: You're working on cloud-native AOS, all of these things, if you're not familiar, we've done podcasts and episodes about these topics, so flip back through and listen in more depth, but all these are great innovations that are very customer-centric. They're allowing customers to do more on their terms and have more choice. 140 00:23:56.200 --> 00:24:04.439 Philip Sellers: Choice is a key component of the Nutanix DNA. You know, it's no end in sight, so… 141 00:24:04.960 --> 00:24:07.439 Philip Sellers: How exciting is it for you as… 142 00:24:07.600 --> 00:24:12.190 Philip Sellers: Your company's announcing some pretty significant changes? 143 00:24:12.190 --> 00:24:12.850 Jirah Cox: Excuse me. 144 00:24:12.850 --> 00:24:16.310 Philip Sellers: Adaptations that recognize, kind of, where the industry's going in the future. 145 00:24:17.680 --> 00:24:20.989 Jirah Cox: Very exciting, and the biggest one that I really, 146 00:24:21.110 --> 00:24:38.539 Jirah Cox: feel often is partnerships, right? So new partnerships, around workloads, around availability, around alerting. I won't give it all away, it's public, but we should keep some powder dry for future podcasts, around some of this stuff. But, you know, hey, pick your favorite product in this area and that area. 147 00:24:38.580 --> 00:24:57.130 Jirah Cox: there's now probably new ways we can use that with Nutanix for our Better Together kind of outcome. So it's really… I've been representing Nutanix to customers in one way or another for almost 11 years now, and the partnerships that we have now are just unprecedented, right? So that's really what I find the most exciting. 148 00:24:58.010 --> 00:25:07.999 Philip Sellers: I agree with that. You know, we talked about the loan holdout, that one application that wasn't certified to run on a new TNX AHV. 149 00:25:08.110 --> 00:25:12.500 Philip Sellers: Cisco Call Manager. That's coming. It's coming very, very soon. 150 00:25:12.720 --> 00:25:27.490 Philip Sellers: all of your major industry software applications are now certified to run on Nutanix, and you've announced new partnerships with Google Cloud. You have Nutanix Kubernetes platform after acquiring D2IQ, 151 00:25:27.660 --> 00:25:39.780 Philip Sellers: But you also have first-party support for Red Hat OpenShift. It's even in a orchestrated form inside of your app library, inside of Prison Central, so… 152 00:25:40.010 --> 00:25:43.989 Philip Sellers: You embrace the ability for the customer to make the choice. 153 00:25:44.150 --> 00:25:49.040 Philip Sellers: really wholeheartedly. And it's great because… 154 00:25:49.230 --> 00:25:55.389 Philip Sellers: we need that choice. At times, the default doesn't fit our use case, or we may have a different opinion. 155 00:25:55.620 --> 00:26:11.059 Philip Sellers: Choice is always a great thing in the industry. So, we really do enjoy partnering from our standpoint as a reseller, working with the Nutanix team. We love the technology, we love the technologists we get to work with. 156 00:26:11.680 --> 00:26:13.130 Philip Sellers: But we also… 157 00:26:13.240 --> 00:26:28.409 Philip Sellers: drink our own champagne. We run this day-to-day in our managed services practice, and we've done that for the last 6 years because it's technology we can count on day-to-day. It's something where we can do a lot with a relatively 158 00:26:28.640 --> 00:26:37.080 Philip Sellers: thin, staff, I guess? You know, we don't have to have tons and tons of people to maintain 159 00:26:37.260 --> 00:26:54.800 Philip Sellers: this stack of infrastructure, and that's one of the brilliant points for us, because people are expensive, and we are asked to do more with less, and it helps us stay very cost-competitive in our product offerings based on the Nutanix platform. 160 00:26:55.240 --> 00:27:06.959 Jirah Cox: Yeah, I can think of, one customer that the last stat I heard from them was they run, I think a VDI environment of about 3,000 Nutanix nodes, which you can think of as 3,000 Nutanix servers. 161 00:27:07.030 --> 00:27:24.800 Jirah Cox: powered servers, delivering virtual desktops across 2,000, servers with about 1.5 FTEs, managing it, right? Including, even the OS, image wrangling. So that, it does speak to the, 162 00:27:25.460 --> 00:27:38.770 Jirah Cox: Well, you know what? One of our earliest taglines a decade ago, get your nights and weekends back, right? Requiring less time from those practitioners, right, to deliver the same quality of service. 163 00:27:38.770 --> 00:27:39.430 Philip Sellers: Yeah. 164 00:27:39.750 --> 00:27:41.319 Philip Sellers: Yeah, you know. 165 00:27:41.990 --> 00:28:01.219 Philip Sellers: I remember that inflection point. I ran really hard early in my career, and at a certain point, it's like, I want a vacation. I want to be able to go away without the pager going off. Now I'm showing my age pager. But, you know, those vacations are important. Having continuity, having someone feel confident when 166 00:28:01.350 --> 00:28:12.319 Philip Sellers: you know, someone else is away, that's a huge bonus to an organization, to be able to not be reliant on one person, and… 167 00:28:12.700 --> 00:28:14.899 Philip Sellers: Not be kind of, you know… 168 00:28:15.210 --> 00:28:25.900 Philip Sellers: in a degraded state when that person's on a vacation. You know, we're all people, too, and we deserve those, so I love that… that tag phrase, and I love that throwback. 169 00:28:26.470 --> 00:28:39.079 Jirah Cox: Some places, some places talk about, you know, having a bus factor of one, you know, cheerier places to work, call it a lottery factor of 1, but whatever, however you think about it, right? 170 00:28:39.120 --> 00:28:49.079 Jirah Cox: And another cheesy, gyroism here that I usually chart out is that we don't just hyperconverge, of course, to the compute and storage, that we did 15, 16 years ago. 171 00:28:49.130 --> 00:29:05.640 Jirah Cox: we hyper-converge your teams, right? If I can have one cloud team, right, that can do… touch any workload, manage any deployment anywhere, well, now each person on that team is on call less, compared to if I'm on the CloudX team and there's two of me, or even one of me. 172 00:29:05.730 --> 00:29:21.100 Jirah Cox: it's always me, all the time, I can't route that ticket anywhere else, right? So even democratization of ticket routing, and more universal tooling and processes for those teams, it even helps out even the folks on the keyboard. 173 00:29:21.510 --> 00:29:28.919 Philip Sellers: Absolutely. You know, as we kind of close out this whole topic, I really like 174 00:29:29.270 --> 00:29:43.829 Philip Sellers: the second paragraph of the Magic Quadrant report from Gartner, it says this, by 2028, 55% of enterprises will initiate proof of concepts for alternative distributed hybrid 175 00:29:43.830 --> 00:29:51.979 Philip Sellers: infrastructure, DHI products, to replace their VMware-based deployments and embrace hybrid cloud infrastructure delivery. 176 00:29:52.340 --> 00:29:55.920 Philip Sellers: Up from 15% in 2025. 177 00:29:56.320 --> 00:30:03.759 Philip Sellers: So… I know that it's just talking about proof of concepts, which, here at Zentegra, we like to call them proof of values. 178 00:30:03.880 --> 00:30:04.880 Philip Sellers: But… 179 00:30:05.710 --> 00:30:12.639 Philip Sellers: I think that's actually a low statistic. I think it's a low estimate. I'm seeing a lot more interest 180 00:30:12.770 --> 00:30:21.600 Philip Sellers: from customers of all sizes as they're searching for solutions. What's your thought on that 55% of enterprises? 181 00:30:21.780 --> 00:30:25.280 Jirah Cox: Let me just check my calendar real fast. Yep, I agree, that does sound low. 182 00:30:25.280 --> 00:30:31.289 Philip Sellers: You're living proof, you're meeting with them, you're talking with them. Yeah. 183 00:30:31.290 --> 00:30:34.040 Jirah Cox: You and I are both, we're pretty busy these days. 184 00:30:34.040 --> 00:30:47.840 Philip Sellers: Yeah, we are, for sure. Well, this has been fun. So, DHI, something new. Thank you, Gartner, for a new, term, because we love our acronyms, in this industry. So, DHI is here to stay. 185 00:30:48.320 --> 00:30:54.029 Philip Sellers: It is different than HyperConverge because it is a unified cloud-to-edge 186 00:30:54.190 --> 00:31:03.740 Philip Sellers: strategy. And this is really important for organizations to be on top of and to be thinking about, because it's a strategic advantage for your organization. 187 00:31:04.120 --> 00:31:12.450 Philip Sellers: So if, myself or Jyra can ever help, I know we'd love to engage, we'd love to have a conversation around DHI. 188 00:31:12.450 --> 00:31:25.709 Philip Sellers: We'd love to unpack this with your CIO. If you've got questions about how this could help, please do reach out. If no other way, you can always get in touch by sending an email to info at Zentagra.com. 189 00:31:25.840 --> 00:31:35.940 Philip Sellers: But, we appreciate you listening. Jaira, thank you for joining me for this conversation, and, look forward to catching everyone on our next episode.