Nutanix Inc.’s clusters for hybrid computing is making software available both on-prem and in the public cloud via Amazon Web Services Inc. Teaming with the reigning champion of public cloud infrastructure, Nutanix Inc. is making an effort to simplify enterprise-grade deployments of applications virtually anywhere and transferring its current skill sets without having to reinvent the wheel.

With these bare-metal services, Nutanix is setting the stage for other cloud vendors who understand the benefit of portable software. The goal is operational efficiency and financial savvy, and that solution is being able to run the same software across multiple environments. 

“I think we are really seeing an evolution while resisting the change, to some extent,” said Gil Haberman (pictured), senior director of product marketing at Nutanix, when speaking about Amazon’s evolution with cloud services. “Multicloud’s an absolute no-no. Hybrid was a no-no. Now hybrid is embraced. I think for hybrid, they really are trying to reach for greater adoption for business admission critical applications. I think with multi there’s still resistance. But it’s absolutely critical.”

Haberman spoke with Lisa Martin (@LisaMartinTV) and Stu Miniman (@stu), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the AWS re:Invent event in Las Vegas. They discussed why and how their software is able to run the same applications on-premises and in the public cloud. (*Disclosure below.)

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

Martin: What does all of the buzz about Outposts mean for you guys?

Haberman: The idea is that you really need to have a consistent way to manage across different environments and ideally the same construct as well, and that’s what they’re doing specifically with Outposts. The direction we’ll be taking is the same where our software can run both on-prem but also in public cloud, in edge, so that the same applications — whether traditional or modern — can run in the same way so that not only mobility is easy but people can use the same skillsets that they have developed over many years across different environments.

Martin: For that portability, what are some of the key use cases that it will enable customers to achieve?

Haberman: Many times now we hear the customers are not looking to manage their physical infrastructure anymore. So in cases where perhaps they acquire multiple companies and they have a dataset they want to consolidate, one option is to consolidate into a single data center. But another option now would be to consolidate into an AWS location near them or region that they need. 

But the key here in the case of clusters is that the same VMs, same third-party integrations they’ve had, daily practices can now work simply managed on AWS as opposed to managing their own data center. So it eases the operational burden, but it does not require a big lift and re-platforming to achieve that.

Miniman: What does that help Nutanix learn when working with customers? That transformation is not easy? The keynote talked about that you need leadership involved, and this just can’t be an incremental thing. You need to make bold moves to move things forward, and Nutanix itself has gone through some of its own transformations.

Haberman: As always with Nutanix we’re very aggressive with execution. We’ve moved from hardware to software and now the subscription. We find that customers absolutely love the notion that they have a lot more flexibility in terms of subscription.

As I mentioned before, we’re evolving this further to support multiple cloud. And because we believe the five to 10 years ahead of us are going to be all about cloud everywhere rather than just on-prem, we need to support that in terms of our model. And so we’re going through that transformation ourselves.

Martin: If you look down the road the next five years, what do you think the state of cloud is going to look like?

Haberman: I think our vision has been, and I really see this materializing, as cloud everywhere rather than thinking about cloud as a centralized place. If you think about even in edge requiring heavy local processing, real compute, real storage, very sensitive in terms of latency for networking — maybe our cars are even going to be little mobile data centers — and so there’s going to be a need to have cloud everywhere while still offloading some stuff for centralized processing. 

We really need to find a way to bring that cloud everywhere, and what we’ve been working on at Nutanix is towards that vision of bringing that platform that has strong resiliency but very good latency-sensitive workloads everywhere we might need it in preparation for that vision. I think it’s going to be very exciting to see how old these vendors and customers evolve their environment over time. It’s going to be very different from what we thought about 20 years ago, for sure. 

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the AWS re:Invent event. (* Disclosure: Nutanix Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Nutanix nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE