MIAMI – It was approximately a year ago when Nutanix forged two partnerships with industry heavyweights Dell and Microsoft. At the .Next conference, Nutanix took a step forward in its Microsoft alliance by announcing an extension to the arrangement with the Redmond, Wash.-based software powerhouse.
The original deal was to build a private cloud program for Microsoft Fast Track that would go on top of Nutanix Xtreme Computing Platform (XCP).
According to Vijay Tewari, Microsoft’s principal group program manager, the Nutanix partnership has been “meaningful” but in the future they would like to see Hyper-V on the Nutanix appliance along with disaster recovery capabilities on Azure.
Sudheesh Nair, vice president of worldwide sales for Nutanix, told CDN that Microsoft was looking for a good partner who could elevate infrastructure quality to improve the bridge to the public cloud and looked to Nutanix for that.
When Nair analyzes the Microsoft/Nutanix partnership he puts into three phases:
- Before Bill Gates stepped down as CEO;
- After Gates’ departure as Chief Software Architect; and
- Satya Nadella leadership of Microsoft.
Nadella’s background is one of infrastructure and cloud and they are expanding the company’s profile, he said.
Marketplace wise, Amazon Web Services has the approach of looking outside to get inside, but with Microsoft and Azure they have the approach of being on the inside and looking out, Nair added.
“Azure and the enterprise is stuck in tier-3 architecture. What Microsoft saw in Nutanix is an innovator who is also a young and aggressive partner. We can also execute and improve the overall quality of the experience in the enterprise.”
Nair revealed that one of the new items in the partnership will be moving containers to Azure. He said the two vendors have a collaboration project in the works and there will be more announcements coming on the Microsoft/Nutanix partnership in the next few months.
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Nutanix also announced Native iSCSI for Microsoft Exchange at the .Next conference and the San Jose, Calif.-based hyper-converged vendor plans to release Native Scale Out File Server tool during the fourth quarter of this year.
“With friends like Microsoft we feel really confident,” said Sunil Potti, Nutanix senior vice president of product management. Potti added that furthering the Microsoft partnership helps to ensure that Nutanix and hyper-converged isn’t just a rest stop for customers but keeps them ahead in the journey.
Sanjay Terakanambi, the vice president of infrastructure services at Best Buy, said that his organization has taken a “further leap” with Nutanix because they can virtualize Microsoft SQL. “I do not believe that there’s a workload that can’t be virtualized. This is critical for stability, deliverability and it helps us to manage licensing costs. The possibilities are endless,” he said.
Best Buy is working towards moving away from traditional servers to more of an automatize structure, Terakanambi said.