Drama may make for good television, but it certainly doesn’t make for good business. Microsoft is working to eliminate drama out of its customers’ lives as much as possible, according to Jeffrey Snover, technical fellow at Microsoft. Hyper-convergence is one way it is accomplishing that.

“It allows you have a uniform substrate where you can scale up and down without drama,” he said.

Snover and Sunil Potti, chief product and development officer at Nutanix, Inc., spoke to Stu Miniman (@stu) and Dave Vellante (@dvellante), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during the Nutanix .NEXT Conference.

Scaling with ease

This agility to scale down or scale up is immensely important for businesses in this ever-shifting environment. It’s also becoming increasingly important to have the agility to switch platforms. Many of Microsoft’s competitors don’t offer this flexibility, Snover added.

Once you choose whether to use the cloud or not, you’re often stuck there. But Microsoft has worked intentionally with Nutanix to offer a smooth transition so customers aren’t stuck on a platform that isn’t a good fit. “You need the optionality to be wrong or right,” Potti said. Sustainability is key.

Partnerships and looking ahead

Also key are the partnerships. Vellante pointed out that Oracle has offered up criticisms to Microsoft because it partners instead of doing everything in-house. Snover replied that with these partnerships, Microsoft can come up with joint-engineered solutions that result precisely from those collaborations.

“We don’t have much to lose, so we have a lot to gain by partnering,” Potti summarized.

As for the future, both Snover and Potti are optimistic. Potti noted that the cloud could become a lifestyle thing for IT and actually be the humanization of IT. The cloud is a journey, Snover added. He, too, is excited for the future as Microsoft changes leadership and direction. It is breaking out of its old way of thinking, and, “It’s great from a business perspective and a personal perspective,” he said.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the Nutanix .NEXT Conference 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE