>> Live from Washington, DC, it's TheCube,
covering AWS Public Sector Summit 2018,
brought to you by Amazon Web Services
and its ecosystem partners.
>> Welcome to TheCube,
Silicon Angle Media's
Production here at the
NWS Public Sector show
in Washington DC, I'm Stu Miniman,
my host for this week will also
be Dave Vellante and John Furrier,
doing a day-and-a-half
worth of programming,
I've covered lots of
Amazon ecosystem shows,
happy to welcome to the
program first-time guest,
and first-time on the program Dan Fallon,
who's the director of Public
Sector Systems Engineers
at Nutanix, Dan, great to see ya.
>> Thank you, Stu, happy to be here.
>> Alright, so you know, you and I
have known each other
for a number of years.
I've been at every .NEXT actually
that Nutanix has has,
really most of the time
at Nutanix, you know, we're talking
about people's data centers, but you know,
we've been watching how Nutanix
really went from, you know,
that hyper-converged term
that we through out, but now you know,
the messaging is around Enterprise Cloud,
the portfolio has definitely expanded,
as have the partnerships.
Give us, Dan, why Nutanix is at the show,
and a little bit about
your role at the company.
>> Yeah, yeah.
So, I lead our public
sector technical groups
systems engineering, so we have all
our government business, state, local,
and federal, rolled up into one group.
So, local show for me in the DC area,
and this is our second year attending
the Public Sector Summit, so you know,
last year it was after
our Calm acquisition,
we're really starting
to step into the space
of, I'd say, solving the cloud problem
for organizations, and blending
your on-prem environment
into your public cloud.
So, that was you know, kind of our focus
last year when the marketing team
and we kind of get
together, and figure out
what shows we're at, we're like
"Let's do, you know, AWS", it was kind
of a new one, we're like
"Alright, we'll be good."
I would say it was a hit last year,
and then this year, you know, we made
some additional acquisitions, and now
it's at our large .NEXT conference,
and really focusing on
Beam and cost optimization.
>> Dan, I remember back a couple
of years ago, people would, you know,
knock on Nutanix, they're like
"Ah, they're just VDI, and really,
they only work on the government sector."
You know, it's like federal
is like a big thing,
cause they can get to
a certain price point
that, you know, some
person can sign off on,
and we're like "Um, government's pretty,
you know, pretty impressive segment."
You know, you look at this show,
I hear we're expecting
about 10,000 people,
which is typical for these regional shows,
but this is more than
that, the Public Sector,
so tell us a little bit
about your customers,
and love to hear you talk
about what use cases they are,
and how they think about cloud,
and look at Amazon, and look at Nutanix
and how that fits for them.
>> Yeah, and I actually just heard
from our director of marketing here
that it's approaching 14,000, so they're
blowing up the attendance.
Yeah, and I mean, definitely government
is unique, that's kind of why we have it
divided into a vertical, and Nutanix
was very early on in the federal,
and unlike a lot of
startup small companies,
instead of running away
from the additional
security burden, the
compliance requirements,
the leadership, Dheeraj, leaned into it.
They said "Alright, let's
build out our federal team,
let's go our and do common
criteria compliance.",
some certifications that
cost a lot of money.
So they really, you
know, leaned into that,
and helped the organization
grow in federal,
and that kind became our beach head,
and then obviously Nutanix has just grown
around the world since then,
but across public sector,
really a couple different verticals.
They actually combined
the government units
about a year ago, now, so I'm getting
more and more familiar with the state
and local business, as
well as the education,
and you can kind of look at those
as three separate verticals, and then
my kind of background is
federal, I've been here
doing contracting consulting work
for the federal government,
and now Nutanix.
So, they all kind of
have a different spin.
In the federal government, since we're
in DC, start there first.
Really big focus on data
center optimization,
and Cloud First mandates, so you know,
I get into discussions,
cause there's really
a larger conversation to be
had on, like, what is cloud.
A lot of people see it as a destination,
but really they have scorecards
that they need to close,
consolidate data centers,
and part of that involves
moving to the cloud,
part of that involves just refactoring
their on-prem, and you know, could
be hyper-converged, just really getting
to a better optimized state
in their on-prem data centers.
>> Yeah, and one thing I like is when
you talk to customers, they don't
get into these arguments over, like,
"Well, what is a private cloud?
How do I measure these public clouds?"
They're like "Yes, I
have a cloud strategy",
and you're right, the government
has certain, here's the criteria
we need to follow, here's
the services you can buy,
you know, I'm sure
they've got GSA contracts
for lots of different things that they
can buy off of, but Nutanix has a tool
that you're talking about at the show
called Beam, why don't you explain
how that fits into helping customers
understand, you know, what applications
they put where, and how they
manage their entire infrastructure.
>> Yeah, and I think whenever I get
into those conversations with cloud,
I always like to understand "Alright,
why cloud, why are you
moving into cloud?",
and a lot of times it is
higher-level mandates,
you know, that there's
a presidential memo,
there's a new, you know, so there are laws
they have to follow in
terms of optimization
of the data center, but
if you peel it back,
there are, you know, agility, and getting
rapid time to market, but the cost
is a big thing, and a lot of times
because of those mandates, the cost
kind of has to be a second factor,
and so it might end up
being more expensive
because they're not really
taking that into consideration.
Cause, they're being told to go,
so when Nutanix launched Beam at .NEXT,
I really see it as a very good play
in the public sector space, because
I hear agencies kind of get the bill
after the fact, and then
they have this shock
of like "Well our budget
for cloud spend this year
is going to be eaten up in our first
couple months, you know,
based on this first bill."
So, with Beam, we have a lot of governance
and cost control, but
also the budgeting aspect,
which I think will be huge in government,
cause they have a fixed budget,
they're not as used to doing things opex,
they're very capex minded,
so the cloud spend,
they kind of have to change
how they're thinking,
and beam gives them that budget analysis
so they can say "Alright, I'm going to
spend this much a month", and do
the allocation and break it down.
>> Yeah, it's funny, for people that don't
work with the government,
they always hear like
"Oh, well they've spent, you know,
$100 for a hammer, they're overspending",
and on my career, I've
worked with government,
and you get the calls at the end
of the quarter, which is like "Oh my gosh,
I haven't actually used up my budget,
and I better use it now or I won't
get it next quarter, or next year",
so, you know, cost
absolutely a key concern.
Maybe drill us in one down level
as to, you know, what kind of things,
how does Beam help them,
you said understand,
optimize what they have, as
well as plan for the future.
>> Yeah, yeah, so you know, Beam hooks
into the public cloud providers,
as well as your on-prem staff.
There are a couple different views,
we've already refactored it into the nice
Nutanix UI, so that you
have the same look and feel.
But, you have a couple different views,
you have the cost visibility view,
so your spend per day,
per month, per year,
and then you have an analyze view.
So, there's a spend efficiency view,
so you can actually get
a quick visualization
of "Am I getting the best value
out of my cloud contract?", and this
is, you know, really common in government.
They'll cut some type of
ELA or longer-term contract,
but if you're not using all those credits,
or taking the best benefit,
you're not getting your RLI.
So the spend efficiency
will help in that aspect.
You know, Beam goes
beyond just visibility,
so you have ability to do
one-click cost controls.
So maybe, you know, change things
from spot to reserve instances.
You can also drill down
into the sub-services,
so "Oh, that's costing
more than I thought,
you know, is it my NAT service
or my load balancer service, like which
exact spot is taking all that cost?"
And then, the budget allows you to
build cost centers within your org.
So, build out and you know, charge back
is hit or miss in government, sometimes
it's way up at the top of the command,
but you know, we are
seeing more and more orgs,
and especially on the service provider
and fed integrator side, you know,
common scenario is government contract
awarded to a fed integrator, and they
build out a private cloud
and need to do charge back.
So that's another big aspect.
>> Yeah, it's so funny.
Remember, you know, just a few years ago
it's like "Oh, public
cloud, it's super easy
and super cheap, and like well,
when you actually dig into
it, well it's different.",
is I guess what they would say.
Simple isn't necessarily what I would say,
and cost depends on what you're doing
with it and how you do it, so we talked
a little bit about federal.
You were telling me off camera
that you were seeing a lot
of SLED customers here.
Give a little insight as to what
are some of the concerns, what are some
of the real things that, you know,
that segment of public sector are looking
for at this show in the ecosystem.
>> Yeah, it's one reason we love
doing this show, and it's a great spot
that brings together,
cause state and local
is so regionalized, you know, 50 states
and then all the different counties,
and cities, and a lot of them attend here.
I, you know, kind of just
gotten into public sector
when this show happened last year,
and I met a lot of our SLED customers here
for the first time, so you know,
bring them all to one spot, which is rare
in state and local, it's a
lot more regional conferences.
So, the challenge of staying local
is because it's so regionalized,
and then you really have four verticals
within state and local, you
have the state business,
which kind of mirrors federal
in more large enterprise.
Some states are adopting
Cloud First strategies,
some states are kind of
still figuring it out.
So, some states are
mirroring fed government,
and they have this kind of Cloud First,
and trying to figure out
how to make that work.
And then, at the local level, you have
the county and cities, and they're
very scattered on their approach.
We have some significant size counties
that are using Nutanix with
things like CloudConnect
to backup into AWS, and then I would say
higher ed is probably
the most forward leaning
in terms of their cloud usage.
A lot of higher ed pushing
aggressively in the cloud.
Actually, where I used to work, Maryland,
University of Maryland,
aggressive push there.
So, they still have a lot of fragmented
IT on-prem though, they
have different orgs,
business school, engineering school
with their own kind of little IT fiefdoms,
and then you have central
IT trying to standardize
and make more public cloud usage.
So, they have a lot of the same challenges
of a big enterprise, where they
need to kind of get that visibility
and cost control across, not only,
the on-prem, but also as
they move into public cloud.
>> Yeah Dan, one of the things I've loved
when I dig into, you know, whether
it's the federal government
or even the local government,
how technology and IT are
helping drive innovation.
You know, we often think of, you know,
you think about government, you know,
just mired in bureaucracy, wonder
if you have any, you
know, customer stories
you can share about, you know,
fun and interesting things people
are doing, you know, on
top of the infrastructure
transformational type of activities?
>> Yeah, I mean, I think you know kind
of the buzzword maybe of this year
seems to be a lot around the
IOT and machine learning,
so it's still a lot in the pilot phases,
but Nutanix, we announced Project Sherlock
at .NEXT, so kind of our approach
to really a PAS IOT at the edge,
so PAS machine learning at the edge,
and we actually just
deployed our first customer
on the commercial side a week ago.
So, still early days, but I would say
the interest at the state and local level
is huge, you know, Smart City initiatives,
self-driving car initiatives, and just
the data is overwhelming.
So, they're planning ahead, some of them
are pretty far along, but there's
obviously starts and stops on where
these initiatives are
going, but the amount
of data, and it's all dispersed, and just
how to get their arms around that,
how to control that, and then in federal
there's a lot of requests
for machine learning
out at the tactical edge, so we
have our, you know,
soldiers forward deployed,
how do they take their imagery
and analyze that, and not have to wait
24 hours for someone to come back
from the main data center, and that's
real lifesaving, game changing.
For them to be able to analyze it
right then and there, and also big
in disaster relief scenarios, so you know,
being able to analyze.
I was talking to one customer we had
at a CXR round table last week
at our local .NEXT event, and they
were talking about after the hurricanes
in Puerto Rico, just how to analyze
like, where's there even power,
where's the water good, and
overlaying all that on imagery.
But, right now, that's
like 15 different sources
that they were trying to pull together
into one system, so a lot of challenges
like that, that people
are trying to address.
>> And I love that, Dan.
I think you hit right on it.
It's data at the center of it.
How can I leverage it?
How can I get new value out of it.
I've talked to some government agencies
that are like, you know "How do I
transform how we do parking in a city?
I have the data, the have some sensors,
oh wait, we can actually make an app."
Sometimes it's partnering
with the commercial side
and business, but other times
it's government just driving these.
Dan, want to give you the final word,
you know, we're just
kicking off the event,
but you know, give us a final takeaway
for Nutanix AWS here at
Public Sector Summit,
what you want the takeaways to be.
>> Yeah, well I mean,
we're here both days,
I encourage everyone to stop by
and talk to Nutanix, and really,
Beam was just launched, so the great thing
is it's our first SAS offering,
which is obviously a mind shift for us,
but you can demo it just by signing up.
But, it's kind of you know, traditional
where we've been in the
infrastructure market,
where we get customers that are like
"Oh, I want to try it out", and you
have to ship them a system, or they
have to download software.
Now, it's just "Oh, go sign
up on the SAS offering",
so I think that'll be a great new delivery
vehicle for Nutanix, and I think
as we kind of shape our ecosystem
of not only different ways to consume
with Xi Cloud Services, Beam being SAS,
but also different capital models
in terms of way the customers purchase.
I think that's another big driver
around cloud is how the finance side
consumes IT, so I think it's great
to see, you know, we're kind of expanding,
blending into the AWS ecosystem as well,
but tying it all together, so people
can manage everything from one spot.
>> Alright, well Dan Fallon, pleasure
chatting with you this morning
helping me kick things up, and absolutely,
the diversity of technologies,
the how we are going to purchase things
changing quite a lot, everything
from, you know, modernizing our
data center to SAS application.
You know, I remember at .NEXT I said
"Modernize the platform, then we
can modernize the
applications on top of it",
so working through its
customers through changes.
Alright we have, just like Dan said,
day-and-a-half work of coverage here
on TheCube, of course,
check TheCube dot net
for all the recordings, as well
as all the shows we'll be at.
I'm Stu Miniman, and thanks
so much for watching TheCube.
(techno music)
