The lift-and-shift cloud migration approach isn’t gaining much steam in the enterprise world, mainly a result of infrastructure complexities.

Nutanix Inc. and Microsoft have teamed up to address this roadblock with Nutanix Cloud Clusters on Azure, putting hybrid cloud environments on the same core stacks used to run workloads in Microsoft Azure, on-premises and at the edge.

During the recent “Accelerate Hybrid Cloud” event on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, Nutanix and Microsoft executives discuss how moving any on-prem application as-is to any Azure region has become a possibility, as well as how NC2 on Azure eases process complexities. During the special broadcast, theCUBE analysts Dave Vellante and Lisa Martin led sessions highlighting the NC2 approach to hybrid cloud.

“We pushed and got the answer that with NC2 on Azure, you get the same stack, same performance, same networking, same automation, same workflows across on-prem and Azure estates, realizing the goal of simplifying and extending on-prem workloads to any Azure region, to move apps without complicated refactoring, and being able to tap the full complement of services available on Azure,” Vellante said in his analysis of the event.

Experts guests included Nutanix’s Thomas Cornely, senior vice president of product management; Induprakas Keri, senior vice president of HCI and chief product security officer; and Michal Lesiczka, vice president of the cloud and database partner ecosystem, as well as Microsoft’s Eric Lockard, corporate vice president of Azure Specialized Workloads, and Alvaro Celis, vice president of global ISV commercial solutions. (* Disclosure below.)

In case you missed it, here are three key insights from the  “Accelerate Hybrid Cloud With Nutanix and Microsoft”  event:

1) NC2 on Azure: An identical on-prem and cloud experience?

Having both cloud and on-prem environments is often a necessity in the enterprise world, because the latter is favored for regulatory and data reasons. Enter hybrid cloud with the promise of agility and elasticity.

By extending the Nutanix operating model to workloads running in Azure using the same core stack utilized on-prem, a similar experience is realized in the cloud and on-prem, according to Cornely.

“Once you have a cluster deployed in NC2 Azure, it’s going to look like the same cluster that you might be running at the edge or in your own data center using the same tools, using the same admin,” he noted. “All of that becomes the same. So, now you get the best of both worlds and we bridge them together … you get seamless access of those services between what you get from Nutanix and what you get from Azure.”

A similar on-prem culture is taken to the cloud, which is also made possible with NC2 on Azure. This can be done for any application, making the cloud journey smooth sailing, Cornely pointed out.

“They’re looking to go and move applications wholesale from on-premises to public cloud … we make this very easy because, in the end, they take the same culture that was around the application and we make it available now in the Azure region,” he said. “There’s no change to the application; no networking change; the same IP constraint will work the same whether you’re running on-premises or in Azure. The app stays exactly the same; managed the same way; protected the same way. So that’s a big one.”

Enabling enterprises to think of on-prem and public cloud networking in similar ways is part of the secret sauce, according to Keri. NC2 make this a reality because it’s an infrastructure layer that takes the network complexity away.

“There is a lot of secret sauce that we have had to develop as part of this journey,” he pointed out. “But if we had to pick one that really stands out, it is how do we take the complexity, the network complexity, off public cloud — in this case Azure — and make it as familiar to Nutanix’s customers as … the virtual private cloud.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with Cornely, Keri and Lockard:

2) The ultimate vision: a cloud journey free of app rewrites

Properly leveraging cloud is vital to success, Lockard pointed out. Simplicity is possible if applications or workloads don’t need to be retooled or refactored.

“[We want] to ease a customer’s journey to the cloud, but to do so without having to rewrite their applications or retrain their administrators and/or to obviate their investment that they already have,” he said. “So the work that companies have done together here is to allow folks to come to the cloud in the way that they want to come to the cloud and take the best of both worlds — leverage their investment in the capabilities of the Nutanix platform, but do so in conjunction with the advantages and capabilities of Azure.”

Simplifying cloud migration and offering Elastic Disaster Recovery is at the heart of NC2 on Azure, according to Cornely. Taking advantage of elasticity provided by public cloud models is also of the essence.

“Migration and doing that in a simple fashion in a very fast manner is a key use case,” he explained. “Another one, and this is classic for leveraging public cloud force, which we’re doing on-premises — is IT disaster recovery and something that we refer to as Elastic Disaster Recovery, being able to go and actually configure a secondary site to protect your on-premises workloads.”

One of the primary objectives of the Nutanix-Microsoft partnership is to speed up the journey to the public cloud, which is sort of like remodeling a house, according to Keri. NC2 eliminates the need to refactor applications as they are lifted and shifted to the public cloud.

“When you start remodeling your house, you find that you start with something, and before you know it, you’re trying to remodel the entire house,” he said. “And that’s a little bit like what the journey to the public cloud sort of starts to look like when you start to refactor applications. NC2 allows you to flip that on its head and say that ‘Take your application as-is and then lift and shift it to the public cloud,’ at which point you start the refactoring journey.”

3) Doing more with less should be the norm

By merging the Nutanix and Microsoft capabilities, the cloud journey becomes seamless, saving valuable time, especially in the modern enterprise world, where cost and efficiency are paramount, according to Celis. As a result, this accelerates the doing-more-with-less culture.

“The Nutanix Cloud Clusters are often the fastest way on which customers will be able to do that journey into the cloud, because it’s very consistent with environments that they already know and use on-premise,” he pointed out. “And once they go into the cloud, then they have all the benefits of scale, agility, resiliency, security and cost benefits that they’re looking for.”

Things will evolve, assured Celis. This collaboration has played an instrumental role in ensuring cloud migration is smooth for NC2 users.

“So how do we combine our capabilities between Nutanix and Microsoft to be sure that that hybrid cloud journey that everyone is going to take can be simplified?” he asked. “You can take away the risk, the complexity on that transformation, and that’s what our customers are asking us today.”

With the NC2 on Azure preview being oversubscribed, this product intends to offer businesses an easy way to migrate, adopt and modernize their applications, according to Lesiczka. Plus, NC2 on Azure makes the hybrid cloud concept a reality.

“Like you mentioned, we’ve had a great preview, oversubscribed,” he said. “We had lots of, not only customers, but also partners battle-testing the solution. We’ve been working with partners like TCS and Citrix. So they’re going to be leveraging NC2 on Azure to really provide those hybrid cloud experiences for their solutions, building on top of the work that we’ve done together.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with Celis and Lesiczka:

And here’s the complete “Accelerate Hybrid Cloud With Nutanix & Microsoft” event video:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the “Accelerate Hybrid Cloud With Nutanix & Microsoft” event. Neither Nutanix, the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

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