WASHINGTON — Nutanix intends to take a chunk out of VMware’s data center share by expanding its platform’s scalability and capabilities for the largest and most demanding enterprise customers.
The latest capabilities arriving for Nutanix’s data center software offerings include a deeper storage integration and partnership with Pure Storage, a Cloud Native AOS for Kubernetes portability and updates to Nutanix Enterprise AI services. The platform updates were shown today at the Nutanix Next conference.
These headline capabilities aren’t reinventions of existing features, tooling or administrative strategies for virtualization, but show Nutanix is looking to make its software catalog more accessible and performant, according to industry analysts.
Enterprises want to see mature data center platform capabilities like running workloads running on familiar hardware and in a variety of hybrid cloud deployments before considering adoption, said Scott Sinclair, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group, now part of Omdia.
These updates show Nutanix is deliberately attempting to chip away at VMware’s market share and customers, who have expressed an interest in alternatives since the virtualization giant’s purchase by Broadcom several years ago, Sinclair said.
There’s a difference in how you have to behave when you’re a market leader versus a boutique vendor. Scott SinclairAnalyst, Enterprise Strategy Group
Rather than strictly out marketing Broadcom, Nutanix is attempting to meet customers specific needs for hybrid cloud through more portable technology and a larger partner ecosystem, he said.
“There’s a difference in how you have to behave when you’re a market leader versus a boutique vendor,” he said. “If Nutanix is going to capture a large share of the market, they have to behave like a market leader and capture a wide array of market capabilities.”
Storage capabilities
A new integration between all-flash storage vendor Pure Storage and Nutanix enables the former’s hardware to provide disaggregated, scale-out storage for the latter’s HCI software, according to Nutanix.
Specifically, Pure Storage’s FlashArray hardware can now connect with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure, which uses the Nutanix AHV hypervisor and the Nutanix Flow networking and security software. Pure customers can scale up to 10 storage arrays and 20 storage controllers without needing to scale compute or networking resources, as with traditional HCI, according to Nutanix.
The capability, available in preview today, is akin to a storage integration Nutanix and Dell Technologies made last year. The Dell integration is now generally available today as well, the vendor said.
Before adopting any new platform or technology, enterprise buyers want to make sure their infrastructure and applications can migrate without interruption, said Matt Kimball, an analyst at Moor Insight and Strategy. Dell and Pure are both popular enterprise vendors, so the partnerships will likely attract more interest to the Nutanix catalog.
“To get into large enterprises, you need partnerships,” he said. “[These integrations] enable them to ride to that adoption on platforms that are already accepted.”
Cloud capabilities
A new set of capabilities for the Cloud Native Acropolis Operating System (AOS) will launch this year, according to Nutanix.
Cloud Native AOS now enables the AOS Software to deploy as Kubernetes containers in cloud or bare-metal environments without the need for a hypervisor, be it Nutanix or others. The capability, available in early access today, supports AWS EKS at launch. Support for on-premises bare metal arrives by the end of this calendar year with additional Kubernetes services and orchestrators planned for the future, according to the vendor.
Most enterprises today choose to operate with a hybrid cloud model, which requires infrastructure software to operate in a variety of environments, said Dave Pearson, an analyst at IDC.
Containerized workloads, initially designed for cloud computing, are now moving on-premises, he said.
“The ‘Run Anywhere’ phrase is something [Nutanix] aspires to, as deployment decisions are rarely one and done,” Pearson said. “Just because a workload has gone to public cloud doesn’t mean it will never be migrated or redeployed, possibly requiring refactoring or rearchitecting.”
Nutanix has also updated its Nutanix Enterprise AI inferencing platform with new models for reasoning, embedding, reranking and guardrails through a partnership with Nvidia.
At the conference Nutanix also unveiled a partnership supporting Omnissa on AHV, VMware’s former end-user computing business; support for Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) for Google Cloud, Citrix integrations with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI); and a new partnership with Canonical.
Enterprise adoption
Despite customer grousing, VMware by Broadcom remains the dominant virtualization platform for the enterprise, Kimball said. A key reason for its sticky nature is the number of partnerships, integrations and interconnectivity with other enterprise applications.
Announcements around hybrid cloud capabilities, scale-out storage and AI all show Nutanix is looking to become an option for new workloads, rather than a wholesale replacement of VMware, he said.
“Organizations have said there’s no short-term path off VMware, but if you think for a second they’re not thinking about how to transition off this in the future, you’re crazy,” Kimball said. “Nutanix is playing the long game.”
VMware’s presence in highly regulated industries or mission critical applications won’t be replaced anytime soon, he said. But Nutanix could find its platform being adopted and accepted for those core functions as it develops partnerships and technology bundles with common enterprise vendors.
Pearson said these new capabilities indicate Nutanix is maturing the platform intended to broaden their reach, but that expansion will take time.
“The goal of Nutanix is obviously to grow, but they understand they’re not going to [do this] immediately or easily replace VMware for every customer in every location,” he said
Tim McCarthy is a news writer for Informa TechTarget covering cloud and data storage.
