Invisible infrastructure and Cloud, Visible IT was the theme of the 5th Nutanix .Next conference held in Anaheim, California last week.

6500 clients, potential clients and partners (including us) gathered over 3 days to learn about the Nutanix technology, hear new announcements and get certified on the technical side.

Nutanix, celebrating 10 years since its inception delivers hyperconverged solutions to over 12,000 clients in 45 countries and has over 4700 employees and annual sales of $1.2 billion.

Why has Nutanix had such impressive growth rate and success? 

IT environments are become increasingly complex and unmanageable and companies want new and improved ways to consume IT. They want to make IT rooms and cloud invisible so that is does not get in the way of business but rather enhance it.

There were many customers that spoke at the event and the benefits they experienced can be summarized in 4 key points:

Simplification: Reduce the many software to manage and monitor down to 1. You also get to now focus on apps and not infrastructure.

Risk mitigation: Fewer moving parts inevitably means less risk of unplanned outages

Agility: It is key for businesses to be able to thrive and grow as they need, and IT cannot be in the way of that. Hyperconvergence allows for that at the same level that cloud does. 

Productivity: Enhanced agility, scalability and performance leads to productivity gains. There’s a common issue of alert fatigue

Cost Structure

When you look at a Nutanix solution compared to a traditional 3-tier infrastructure, you must look beyond the upfront cost and calculate the TCO.  The advantages on the cost side are then undeniable. The customers that spoke about their Nutanix solutions mentioned 4 main areas of cost savings:

Licensing costs: AVH, the Nutanix hypervisor AVH is included in the solution therefore no more licensing cost for your hypervisor. The AVH adoption rate is currently at 40%.

Maintenance costs: there’s a significant reduction in IT hardware and software maintenance costs  

Footprint: Lower power consumption and cooling costs and reduce the datacenter floorspace required

HR: a simplified infrastructure means two areas to gain in people costs. First, a reduction in the actual amount of resources required to manage an HCI versus a traditional infrastructure

Secondly, you no longer need specialists for each area but can hire generalists that can cross over the various departments.

Why Nutanix?

It’s clear to us that the question is no longer why HCI but rather why Nutanix.

Nutanix don’t care what platform their solution is put on. Whether that be Lenovo, IBM or the recently announced strategic partnership with HPE. They even announced at .Next that Nutanix is available on AWS. You can create clusters in new or existing accounts in just one click.

Announcements 

There were several announcements and tech previews made at the event, in 3 areas:

Secondary Storage

Nutanix Mine allows customers to integrate secondary storage operations with the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform. Through native integration with industry-leading backup vendors such as Veeam, you can manage your HCI environment and backup operations from a single console to reduce the cost and complexity of storage management. 

Multi-Cloud Solutions

Nutanix is extending its Xi Frame desktop-as-a-service solution from the public cloud to the private cloud, enabling the delivery of apps and desktops in a true hybrid cloud environment. In addition, the company is announcing new functionality and additional planned availability zones for its cloud-based disaster recovery (DR) service, Xi Leap.

IoT Application

The Xi IoT platform now offers new capabilities to develop and deploy IoT and AI applications in the cloud or at the edge. Streamline the development of IoT and AI applications with seamless connectivity to AWS, Google, and your own datacenter resources.

Conclusion

The Nutanix vision, based on their three Ds of success is exciting. As explained by Dheeraj Pandey, Nutanix’s founder and chief executive officer, the first D is an emphasis on data.The second D is an emphasis on designing software and products that are as simple, effortless and as timely as possible for the end user. The third D for success is seamless delivery. Nutanix’s has been able to deliver software through all different forms — through appliance, software, subscription, and Cloud.

Nutanix has retained the ever-important start-up mentality but is a well-oiled machine with an ever-impressive hybrid cloud offering.

We are impressed and excited to continue to work with our clients to help them transform their technology approach and see the capabilities and benefits of Nutanix HCI.