'Moments of crisis give you an opportunity to reinvent yourself': Nutanix CEO

Nutanix CEO Dheeraj Pandey joins Yahoo Finance’s Alexis Christoforous and Brian Sozzi to discuss how people can effectively use the cloud as they work from home.

Video Transcript

BRIAN SOZZI: I want to welcome in the co-founder of Nutanix, Dheeraj Pandey. Dheeraj, good to see you this morning. Thanks for taking a-- taking a few minutes here.

I remember you were founded in 2009 during the-- pretty much the grips of the Great Recession. Compare and contrast this situation, when you found the company to the current situation right now where the economy is pretty much closed down in the US.

DHEERAJ PANDEY: Yeah, thank you so much for the [? opportunity, ?] Brian. First and foremost, our hearts go out to all those families affected by the pandemic. And, like everyone else, we hope to see this end very quickly.

I think in recessions is when creativity is at its best. And, in 2009, when we started, the purse strings were still tight. And, over the course of the next two years, the purse strings of Main Street really opened up. So it was the best time to really have started the company.

And, at 10 years, I feel like this is a year 0 again. I think people are going to hunker down, but, in the course of the coming couple of quarters, the purse strings are going to open up again.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: And, Dheeraj, talk to me about how COVID-19 has impacted your business. I mean, you have clients ranging from public companies, private companies. You have government agencies. How are they using your solutions? And-- and have you seen a substantial tick up in demand?

DHEERAJ PANDEY: Yeah, Nutanix is a cloud software company solving business' biggest IT challenges and how to simplify and integrate their multi-cloud, multi-location computing needs. In fact, through this COVID crisis, we were able to help our customers' employees stream their entire office environment to their homes, their applications, their data, and their complete desktop experience.

So I think it's been really fascinating to watch that. You know, there's been a significant increase in demand for any of the computing solutions for work-from-home employees.

BRIAN SOZZI: Dheeraj, you were one of the first big tech giants to come out in late February and suggest that things might be slowing down in Asia and China. But, now that China has started to come back-- the manufacturing facilities have kicked back into gear-- have you seen that part of your business come back?

DHEERAJ PANDEY: It's early to say, Brian. I think China and South Korea were not a big part of our business. You know, there's been a much bigger presence in Japan for us. But I would say that it would probably take another couple of months to really figure that out.

Also, we're in the middle of our [? end ?] quarter. So we can't tell you what we're seeing exactly, but there's a significant increase in demand for end-user computing for sure.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Dheeraj, you actually took the s public in 2016. And, during that time, we had Brexit going on. We had the oil crisis going on. What would your advice be to other companies in a similar position, those who are-- are newly public, those who are thinking about going public in this environment?

DHEERAJ PANDEY: Yeah, I read a really good article the other day in "The Times." It introduced me to a new word called catastrophize. You know, everybody is saying the world is going to come to an end. And it really said how do you cope with all of this.

And my advice is for CEOs to focus on your three things when the market is uncertain-- your people, your product, and your customers. And we have thousands of employees around the world. And their well-being is at least my number one concern.

It's moments of crisis like this gives you an opportunity to really reinvent yourself, reinvent your jobs, your careers. And, I mean, our company, we are thinking about all those things. And, as any CEO knows, now is the time to double down on your customers' needs. At Nutanix, we have always been focused on customer [? as well. ?]

BRIAN SOZZI: Dheeraj, I do want to talk about areas of opportunity. IBM Red Hat, a real focus there on the-- on the hybrid cloud, is that an area of opportunity to work closer with them?

DHEERAJ PANDEY: Oh, absolutely. I think, you know, as a company, you know, we really help [INAUDIBLE] the hybrid and-- and private cloud computing needs of our customers. Our technology has built in automation to manage, you know, apps with reduced staff and, you know, delivering the best IT experience for managing operations remotely.

There's a lot of work that we do on disaster recovery and business continuity, just a few clicks, and all of this by preserving the inherent security challenges these changing work circumstances actually demand. So there's immense opportunities for us to work with companies like IBM and Red Hat in the future.

BRIAN SOZZI: All right, let's leave it there. Dheeraj Pandey, the Co-Founder of Nutanix, good to see you here. I'm sure a very interesting time to be leading a business, but we appreciate your time. Thank you.

DHEERAJ PANDEY: Thank you.