Hyper converged vendor Nutanix has announced its Enterprise Cloud Platform will now have term-based license for deployment on Hewlett Packard Enterprises ProLiant machines and Cisco UCS blade services.
For channel partners, this move will enable them to offer more flexible subscription pricing for customers and may put an end to IT projects needing to be locked into the traditional three to five-year IT refresh cycles.
Also, the Enterprise Cloud Platform will soon be available either as an integrated Nutanix- or OEM-branded appliance from Dell EMC or Lenovo or can be installed as software-only on qualified third-party x86 unit.
HPE provided a statement to CDN regarding this announcement: “While it’s nice that Nutanix recognizes our leadership in the server industry, there is no relationship between HPE and Nutanix. Customers looking for a supported hyperconverged solution on our DL380 are better served using our HPE SimpliVity product.”
To support this offering, Nutanix has introduced a new program named Nutanix Go, which will offer enterprise cloud infrastructure using operating budgets and allow for flexible scaling up or down of infrastructure.
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According to Nutanix, this program will align the purchasing experience of public clouds, allowing customers to break free of long-term capital budget commitments.
The strategy behind Nutanix Go is that cloud builders need flexibility and choice of hardware platforms while maintaining a consistent and agile operating environment. Customers, meanwhile, have been demanding deployment options on Nutanix software-only entitlements on qualified HPE or Cisco servers while also retaining the option to transfer their software-only entitlements to another qualified third-party platform, including additional x86 servers anticipated to be validated later. This flexibility, the company believes, mitigates the risk of hardware commoditization while maximizing the value of their Nutanix software-only licenses.
The company added, Nutanix go-to-market channel partners require a complete abstraction between the operating system and underlying hardware, enabling fast qualification and testing of new server platforms. Nutanix plans to support an expanding portfolio of partner and third-party hardware platforms and are telling the channel there will be a payoff from its substantial investment in an advanced one-click hardware qualification package, named Metis, that automates the deployment, testing and scaling of Nutanix software for off-the-shelf x86 platforms.
From a CIO perspective, Nutanix is saying that CIOs across industries struggle to make accurate long-term IT investment decisions when their business is increasingly unpredictable because of digital transformation. The rigidity of purchasing critical infrastructure via traditional capital budgeting is giving way to more flexible methods that can leverage quarterly IT operating budgets. Opex, as opposed to capex, can reduce overall financial risk and provide CIOs and CFOs with much needed business agility.
Nutanix Go pricing will come with highly flexible terms some as short as six months. This will enable customers to acquire Nutanix infrastructure when they need it – scaling up their data centre to meet peak demand, while scaling down the infrastructure to reduce expenses.