The diverse amalgamation of interfaces, environments, and experiences that comprise the modern IT ecosystem continues to plague operations with unnecessary complexity. According to the Enterprise Strategy Group research report “Navigating the Cloud and AI Revolution: The State of Enterprise Storage and HCI,” 68% of organizations agreed that overall complexity is slowing down their IT operations and initiatives. And, in the digital age of business, nearly anything that will move the needle for business success requires IT.
The quest to simplify IT operations continues to fuel hyperconverged infrastructure adoption, but growing concerns about lock-in and a desire to choose infrastructure means that flexibility has also become a prime consideration.
The drive to deliver the simplicity of a hyperconverged infrastructure while also providing choices in deployment was the central theme of Nutanix’s Next 2025 conference in Washington. Nutanix, a hyperconverged infrastructure and application platform provider, announced multiple new capabilities, partnerships, and solutions designed to help enable users to “run anything anywhere.” To that end, the announcements enable Nutanix to increase its breadth of deployment options while also simplifying the integration of Nutanix technology into existing, competitive environments. Recent announcements included:
- An integrated Pure Storage and Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure solution in which Nutanix compute connects to external Pure Storage FlashArray(s) over non-volatile memory express/TCP. The solution features integrated management enabling users to manage core Pure Storage functionality, such as provisioning, from Nutanix Prism.
- General availability of the integrated Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure solution with Dell Technologies that leverages external storage with Dell PowerFlex technology, which was announced last year.
- Cloud Native AOS (Acropolis Operating System) solution, which extends Nutanix enterprise storage and advanced data services to public cloud Kubernetes services and cloud-native bare-metal environments, without requiring a hypervisor. Cloud Native AOS is currently in early access on Amazon EKS, and it will be generally available this summer.
- New version of Nutanix Enterprise AI offering Nvidia integration designed to support emerging agentic AI applications.
Nutanix’s integrated solutions with Pure Storage and Dell Technologies—along with its cloud-native offering—extend Nutanix’s strategy to expand beyond the confines of hyperconverged infrastructure to provide increased infrastructure flexibility to users. The integrations also greatly simplify Nutanix’s ability to integrate into existing production environments, likely using alternative hypervisors such as VMware.
Nutanix’s increased flexibility is a welcome addition because an increasing number of businesses are embracing alternatives in the hypervisor space. According to the aforementioned Enterprise Strategy Group research, 89% of organizations said the ability to use/evaluate multiple hypervisor/orchestration options is strategic.
While Nutanix has the desire and the technology to take a larger share of the market, application platform decisions cannot be made in a vacuum. Nutanix must scale its partner ecosystem to elevate its leadership position. And in that regard, Nutanix has already made progress. For example, Nutanix’s 2023 Next event had 30 sponsors, the 2024 event had 55, and this year’s event had 85.
Nutanix’s architectural adjustments to support external third-party storage from Dell and Pure Storage is an excellent start, but Nutanix will need to expand integration with other storage players, such as Hitachi Vantara, HPE, IBM, and NetApp as well. While Nutanix did not specify any future plans at the event, additional integrated solutions would be the next logical step.
The ability to deploy AOS as a cloud-native solution also provides a key strategic proof point for users. It highlights Nutanix’s commitment to support cloud-native and cloud-only Kubernetes environments. Application platform options must provide a modernization path to support not only where the application environment is, but where it is going (i.e., virtual machines and containers). While the announcement calls out AWS EKS, I would expect Nutanix to take Cloud Native AOS to Azure and Google Cloud as well.
Based on everything I saw and heard at Next 2025, I believe that Nutanix has the technology and people to deliver on its “run anything anywhere” vision. In conversations with its executives, it became clear that Nutanix is hyperfocused on delivering both simplicity and flexibility in its offerings.
Working in Nutanix’s favor is that it isn’t some new startup. Founded 16 years ago, Nutanix has been a key player in both hyperconverged and hypervisor technology for some time. And in conversations at the event, multiple customers complimented its services and support groups in helping to ensure the adoption of Nutanix was a success.
While Nutanix has multiple points in its favor, rapid scale, specifically when adding breadth to the supported environments, can be a difficult undertaking. Vendors can often lose focus and often sacrifice simplicity to support broader functionality. How Nutanix navigates the path of increased flexibility while delivering on simplicity will be something to watch over the next couple of years. Ultimately, businesses need a provider that can help simplify increasingly diverse and distributed application environments, and one that can span across multiple public clouds as well as data centers and edge environments. This strategic trajectory augments Nutanix’s ability to both compete and win against competitors like VMware, Microsoft, and Red Hat. And in a space in which IT decision-makers are seeking alternatives, Nutanix’s focus on flexibility should be very welcome.
