Data center software and services company Nutanix Inc. this week announced a partnership with Microsoft Corp. Azure as a new step in the evolution of its hyperconverged infrastructure toward a hybrid cloud infrastructure.

The agreement will enable both companies to deliver a hybrid solution with seamless application, data and license mobility, according to Monica Kumar (pictured, left), senior vice president of marketing at Nutanix.

“Not only Nutanix clusters are going to be available on Azure — and we are jointly developing that solution to bring hybrid cloud solution to customers — we are also working to integrate Azure Arc across on-premises and Azure cloud,” Kuman said.

Kumar and Virginia Gambale (right), board director at Nutanix, spoke with Stu Miniman, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during the .NEXT Digital Experience. They discussed Nutanix’s new product announcements, the importance of the hybrid cloud for companies, especially with the COVID-19 pandemic, and the concerns of business leaders regarding innovation, security and cost optimization. (* Disclosure below.)

Technology is a means to an end

The partnership with Azure and other announcements made by Nutanix during the .NEXT Digital Experience event are part of the company’s vision that technology is a means to an end, according to Kumar.

“The end is business outcomes for our customers; the end is a better customer experience, better employee experience, growth for the company in terms of revenue and profitability,” she said.

Nutanix aims to simplify the use of cloud computing and help customers to build a hybrid cloud environment easy to deploy and to manage. “Definitely one of the big pieces of news coming out of .NEXT is this morphing or, I would say, evolution of hyperconverged infrastructure to becoming the hybrid cloud infrastructure,” Kumar said.

Like other technology companies, Nutanix has also seen an increase in business demand for cloud computing recently, as the COVID-19 pandemic has made workforce and operations more remote and intensified the need for more flexibility to scale workloads up and down at will.

“Talking to various CEOs and C-suite executives, the big issues are: ‘OK, this stuff isn’t so scary … we need [cloud computing] to function in the COVID world, and we also need it because our customers need us to have it,’” said Gambale, who sits on many public boards, ranging from financial services to pure technology and consumer-oriented businesses.

But this journey does not come without challenges. “When we look at our portfolio of how businesses are investing in technology and other areas going forward, innovation, cost management, and also cyber [security] seemed to be sort of the three very important themes of the day,” Gambale said.

IT teams are at the forefront of driving innovation and adopting cloud, for example, but are also tasked with being smart about cost optimization, Kumar pointed out. “That’s exactly what we’re also going to discuss in the .NEXT. [It] is how can technology help our customers innovate and, at the same time, be intelligent about cost optimization and which cloud to use for which workloads, for example,” she said.

Security is a board-level concern

As companies increasingly move operations to the cloud, security concerns have been a board-level discussion, according to Gambale. “It historically has come up at every board meeting, and one of the issues with that has always been the cost growth and escalation that takes place,” she said.

This security concern increased with the COVID-19 crisis, which made the workforce highly dispersed and, therefore, increased the attack surface exponentially. However, the sooner a business moves to more modernized infrastructures, the better the ability to secure its environment at a very cost-efficient model, according to Gambale.

“[This is] because these technologies, particularly like Nutanix, have security built into them,” she explained. “And, instead of having to add constantly to our cyber workforce … we are able to have these embedded sensors and our ability to have the infrastructure talk to us about where our vulnerabilities are, as opposed to us having to go in and try to figure that out either post event or at some point pre any type of event.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the .NEXT Digital Experience. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the .NEXT Digital Experience. Neither Nutanix, the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE