When it comes to being an Infrastructure Architect, “the roles are definitely converging now,” explained David Quinney, infrastructure architect at Swedbank. “You need to know network … storage … compute” and have a “design methodology that is going to go toward goals that you have for your infrastructure,” Quinney told theCUBE’s Dave Vellante and Stu Miniman at the Nutanix .NEXT Conference 2015.

Eliminating silos

Swedbank is a Nordic bank based in Sweden with 8 million customers. The company has been a Nutanix customer for a year and half. When Dave Vellante asked about Swedbank’s infrastructure, Quinney described a “98.5 virtualization ratio running on top of VMware, legacy-free tower, storage, [and] compute.” For future goals, Quinney mentioned, “We want to eliminate silos.”

Swedbank’s Nutanix integration began with the NX-1000 series, gradually moving into the data centers as well. Quinney called it an “easy process to grow infrastructure in an organic way” by “add[ing] blocks as our legacy infrastructure lifecycles.” Currently, Swedbank is operating seven blocks, but it is “looking to expand.” Quinney said Nutanix is “very easy to scale,” which is “one the the reason we chose it.”

In regards to Hypervisor, Quinney said the transition is “mainly [an] operational challenge.” However, Quinney sees the advantage of Nutanix in lowing costs, especially “licensing costs of VMware,” which would lower operational costs overall. Quinney is a Nutanix Technical Champion — one of 20; these individuals are customer advocates that blog about Nutanix and discuss the benefits of the software with their peers.

“Start small and scale incrementally,” advised Quinney. Nevertheless, Quinney counsels starting the transition with “better communication” and “getting the right people, the right decision-makers … on board early would be a big advantage.” In addition, Quinney commented that “getting the application people on board” is important, as a company can “lower application costs on Nutanix as well.”

The challenges of developing a public hybrid Cloud

Developing a public hybrid Cloud is the next step for Swedbank. Quinney noted public Cloud would need to be a European-based Cloud provider because of compulsory regulations on where the data is located. “One of the main barrier’s to Cloud adoption” will be privacy laws in Sweden, he explained.

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