Nutanix Inc., a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Integrated Systems in 2015 and 2016, recently hired a new VP of EMEA. Chris Kaddaras has been with Nutanix for three whole weeks, but he has a solid 24-year background in infrastructure technology business. Originally from the U.S., he’s been living and working in EMEA for the past seven years.

Kaddaras joined Stu Miniman (@stu), co-host of theCUBE*, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during the Nutanix 2016 .NEXT Europe event, held in Vienna, Austria. They discussed Kaddaras’ new position at Nutanix, what potential customers are looking for and the challenges of selling in EMEA.

Courting service providers

After a discussion about Kaddaras’ industry experience, the discussion moved to current and potential customers. Miniman asked what areas Nutanix would like to pursue.

Kaddaras sees service providers as an emerging market for Nutanix. “The thing is, a lot of the service providers have built out their control layer already; for the most part, they’ve home grown it, or they use VMware. … So it’s very difficult to unseat a control layer, because they spent a lot of time customizing it to their billing applications,” he explained

He does see a huge opportunity in service providers that are starting up new or ones that are standing up new use cases in their business. “We’ve been verticalizing in those markets that are heavy service provider oriented, and provide the best possible options for those customers,” said Kaddaras.

He went on to say that one thing most customers have been asking for, including service providers, is a ‘pay-as-you-grow’ model. “The architecture that’s been built here facilitates that…the underlying architecture [of Nutanix] is already built that way. I think that will help customers out,” said Kaddaras.

The unique needs of EMEA

Miniman asked about his take on EMEA, the many different cultures and economies, and what a business needs to take into account to successfully sell there.

“Economic conditions don’t particularly have an effect [on us] because we’re a smaller company, and there’s a lot of market, a lot of runway to go. So I don’t see it as a major concern. … Currency devaluations sometimes hurt — not only us and how it effects our revenues, but how it effects the customer. Because the customer has to pay more, based on the fluxuation … that’s a real concern,” said Kaddaras.

*Disclosure: Nutanix Inc. and other companies sponsor some KubeCon 2016 segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE. Neither Nutanix nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of Nutanix 2016 .NEXT Europe.

Photo by SiliconANGLE