Microsoft was the only other big one. Amazon Web Services is slightly different so I wouldn't put them in the same category, but they are playing in the same level right now.

Definitely Nutanix for vSAN is on our shortlist. ACI and NSX, like everybody else. They're the only two players in this space.

Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix.

We tried Microsoft Hyper-V as a proof of concept. We found VMware to be more stable and adopted in the industry.

VMware is the king among these types of solutions.

If you add virtualization to and HCI solution then VxRail is more stable than this solution. However, VxRail is more difficult to upgrade and patch because it is more complicated.

When you install a Nutanix system then you never have to touch it.

This solution is being sold more often than competing solutions by Dell and HP.

We had HPE in there but a lot of our hardware is HPE. So, we looked at just VM and HPE.

The reason why we ended up choosing VM is the reputation in the industry; for the last twenty years, VM has been there.

Licensing is the most important criteria while selecting a vendor. We were going to go with Citrix Systems but due to factors such as cost saving, one vendor doing everything, tons of VDI, etc. are why we decided on this solution. VM was a better solution.

No, we started with VMware very early. We're looking at Hyper-V, but it's just not where VMware is.

Nutanix certainly is a big competitor. Also, SimpliVity is another big one of those competitors in terms of the software-defined and hyper-converged aspect of this environment.

Whilst looking for a vendor, a deep and trusted relationship with that vendor is very important for us.

No, to be quite honest, at that point in time we had done proof of concepts but were swinging to VMware.

We looked at some Cisco products.