From the complexities of cloud computing emerged hyperconverged infrastructure, a software-led method for information technology departments to virtualize the many elements of conventional hardware systems. The fully integrated approach is gaining popularity, scooping up market share from the hardware-defined technique of converged infrastructures. As business opportunities emerge, Nutanix Inc. takes the macro perspective on its hyperconverged pipeline.

Brian Cox (pictured), director of product marketing at Nutanix, spoke with Rebecca Knight (@knightrm) and Stu Miniman (@stu), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Microsoft Ignite event in Orlando, Florida. They discussed Nutanix’s role in pioneering hyperconverged infrastructure, how the company continues to influence businesses as large as Microsoft Corp., and where Nutanix is heading in the future. (* Disclosure below.)

[Editor’s note: The following answers have been condensed for clarity.]

Knight: Nutanix really pioneered hyperconverged infrastructure. But, the vision is bigger; Nutanix is about more than hyperconverged.  

Cox: Yeah, and we’re very glad to see here at Microsoft Ignite that Microsoft, in the next version of Windows, is touting the whole hyperconverged concept. So, we are seeing validation from one of the most established computing companies in the world.

We were really thinking of something, I think, bigger and beyond, which is, how can we simplify IT, because at the end of the day, all the business cares about are the services that IT delivers.

IT, finance, marketing and HR, they’re all just means to an end. When we looked at this we said, “What can we do to just deliver those services and apps and simplify everything else?”

Miniman: Help explain Nutanix in the Microsoft ecosystem and how that fits in the overall view of Nutanix’s value in the marketplace.

Cox: Sure, the larger vision that Nutanix had is, “Let’s simplify everything below the app layer.” So we said, “The first thing we need to do is eliminate that complexity.” We brought that down into a single building block appliance, which ultimately got termed hyperconverged infrastructure, but that wasn’t our destination. That was just, we needed common building blocks like LEGO pieces that can snap together without any fuss and allow the companies to build that up.

We can then raise the level of simplification all the way between the physical infrastructure to the app. So, no longer do you have that long hop from the compute with the servers all the way out to the external storage arrays. It all collapses; performance gets better; we eliminate points of failure. And, in fact, even when you have multiple of these LEGO blocks, this cluster, we try to always associate the data and the compute onto the same node, so there’s very little latency at all. Microsoft SQL, Exchange performance goes up, the up-time goes up, and then to manage it, is also simpler.

Miniman: We hear from Microsoft, it’s a multi-hypervisor and multicloud world. How does Microsoft fit in with the Nutanix story?  

Cox: Well, we realize that customers want to have a choice. So, if you look at really the three pillars that come from our founding, we want to be able to make it simple, we want to make it scalable, and we do want to give you choice.

Whatever is your standard, we’ll go ahead and work with that. We’ll give you choices, [such as] different clouds. The software to manage and optimize is not only just for your on-premises environment; you can use this if you’re in a distributed environment, whether it’s [remote office/branch office] or edge sites, like oil rigs and other [internet of things], we can give the same interface, and then the same interface out to the public cloud as well.

So we give you the choice of different clouds, different platforms, different hypervisors, and then different operating systems. We support everything from a Windows server environment to Linux and even IBM’s [Application Integration Suite]. All are supported on the platform, so you get to have it fit the way you want to work, versus the other way around.

Knight: How closely do you work with customers in making these decisions? How do you walk them through the process, and is it ever analysis paralysis, because there are simply so many options?

Cox: For some customers struggling with that choice, we do offer our own branded appliance. It’s very simple. You have the computing framework, the Nutanix software’s there, it’s one single support line to call, and that’s a very simple model. Other customers, though, have chosen who their platform of choice is, whether that’s on-premise, as a physical server, or it’s a public cloud.

Miniman: Tell us, what are you hearing from customers, what are some of the challenges, what are they looking for, and what’s different about the customers who are here at the Microsoft show?

Cox: For the C-suite, they want to see, “On my capital that I’m investing, what is the return on this?  And do I have to over-commit capital now because I can only buy it in big chunks?” We address that by having what we call fractional consumption. Basically, you’re buying one LEGO block at a time, so you’re not consuming capital that could elsewhere be used in the business.

Then you look at the system administrators, and they are overwhelmed with all of this complexity of infrastructure; it burns all of their time. If we can give them back hours in their day, they’re going to be more productive. They can actually do higher-level tasks.

And even for the folks on the dev team, if we can simplify the infrastructure and spin up new instances, whether it’s containers or [virtual machines], and they can even do it through self-service, that makes them more productive. So, we try to address the needs of all those audiences.

Knight: The customers you are referring to; they are different groups of customers, but they’re all essentially the same company, so, are they talking to each other? I mean, are the tech people talking to the business people in terms of what are the overarching goals here?

Cox: Yeah, they do talk to each other. Granted, probably the audience we talk to the most frequently are the system administrators because we’re very operationally tied, and we’ll then arm them with arguments to talk to the C-suite.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Microsoft Ignite event. (* Disclosure: Nutanix, Inc. sponsored this segment, with additional broadcast sponsorship from Cohesity Inc. Nutanix, Cohesity, and other sponsors do not have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE