Much of the chatter and news emerging from day one at this week’s Nutanix .NEXT conference in Washington, D.C., centered on simplification, eliminating the heavy lifting and reducing information technology’s labor pains.

“… Digital transformation is something that the customers here are embracing. The hybrid multi-cloud, maybe not as much yet, so Nutanix is a little bit of ahead of their customers there. … So some real good customers that are embracing change and building that platform for the future,” said Stu Miniman (@stu), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s mobile livestreaming studio.

Miniman and his co-host Dave Vellante (pictured, left) (@dvellante) assessed day one of the .NEXT event, including the use of Nutanix Acropolis, a data fabric for storage, virtualization, server and networking, and why Nutanix is marketing itself as the “invisible infrastructure.”

Acropolis becoming a viable option

Noting that many of the guests spoke about using Nutanix Acropolis, Vellante wondered if there was a deliberate signal “to make sure there was a level playing field with regards to not only right workloads, but also just sending a message to VMware that we (customers) have options.”

One interview on theCUBE earlier in the day that Miniman took note of occurred when the head of information technology infrastructure didn’t discuss infrastructure until at least 10 minutes into the conversation. This appeared to complement the central marketing message of Nutanix as the “invisible infrastructure” and that it is making a difference for users.

“Customers are embracing change, embracing that platform for the future, and Nutanix as a partner,” Miniman said.

As Nutanix approaches $1 billion in annual revenue, it’s clear that it needs to remain on the growth side of the enterprise business and not stagnate.

“If you look at infrastructure as a service, software as a service and true private cloud, those are the explosive growth areas,” Vellante said. “Virtually everything else in the enterprise is in flat or declining mode.”

The conference attracted a crowd of approximately 4,500 to the nation’s capital this week. “It’s a good-sized show for a company that just went public,” Miniman said.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s independent editorial coverage of the Nutanix .NEXT US 2017 event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Nutanix .NEXT US. Neither Nutanix Inc. nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE