Delivering to next-generation standards is the eternal quest of technology companies. Fortune-tellers and industry analysts alike predict cloud computing to explode into a diversity of public, private, edge and distributed clouds. It all creates a multicloud environment where the ability to move software applications and data between clouds will be key. Evolving to anticipate the needs of the future means “changing the crux” of the company for Nutanix Inc., according to Binny Gill (pictured, right), Nutanix’s chief technology officer of cloud services.

“Even though it looks like we’re doing a lot of things, it’s all guided by one vision,” said Rajiv Mirani (pictured, left), chief technology officer of cloud platforms at Nutanix. “We want to provide a true hybrid cloud experience to our users.”

Gill and Mirani spoke with Stu Miniman (@stu), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, and guest host Joep Piscaer (@jpiscaer), technical pathfinder, cloud and infrastructure, at Jumbo Supermarkten and blogger at VirtualLifestyle.nl, during the .NEXT Conference in London. They discussed Nutanix’s move from a focus on hyperconverged infrastructure appliances and software-defined storage to hybrid cloud services. (* Disclosure below.)

Nutanix’s map to the future

The path to true hybrid cloud is to start by building the best private cloud, according to Mirani. Nutanix’s private cloud builds out with the newly announced platform services of Era and Karbon, as well as the basics of networking compute and storage. Hybrid cloud is the next step, and Nutanix’s Xi Cloud Services, announced for general availability during the .NEXT EU event, layer on top of this foundation.

Moving beyond hybrid, Gill sees a need for an operating system that “makes it possible for you to run on any cloud with the same sort of applications.” Recalling the situation 20 years ago when Linux gave developers independence from underlying hardware, he said: “Today, you have to write applications for Amazon, for Google Cloud Platform, for Azure. Who can build an operating system that actually commoditizes all that?”

Providing a single pane of glass for seamless movement between products is part of Nutanix’s commitment to simplicity. User experience, both for the client and the developer, is key. “As much effort we put in building architecture for the product design, we have to put the same amount in terms of how is it going to be consumed by the customer,” Gill concluded.

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

Photo: SiliconANGLE