Nutanix Partners Rejoice: Bare Metal On Azure ‘Strategically, A Great Thing’

‘Nutanix is the only vendor who can orchestrate on premises and into the public cloud. They can allow workloads to move back and forth, which other vendors can’t. Other vendors are dependent on VMware. Nutanix is not. Strategically, it’s a great thing,’ says Tim Joyce, president and CEO of Roundstone Solutions, a Nutanix partner in Orinda, Calif.

Partners are praising Nutanix’s move to extend its Nutanix Cloud Clusters in its hybrid cloud environment to Microsoft Azure dedicated bare metal nodes, giving them opportunities to win deals within the second largest public cloud.

“It is appealing,” said Rick Gouin, chief technology officer at Winslow Technology Group in Boston. “Part of the reason is because of the success of VMC [virtual network manager] on Azure. Those initiatives from a VMware side were really successful. Nutanix had to have the ability to match that architecture to solve the problems they need it to solve.”

Azure increased its market share against AWS in August, capturing 21-percent of the public cloud market, with cloud revenues of $25 billion in the most recent quarter, up 28-percent year over year, accordign to Synergy Research Group.

Tim Joyce, president and CEO of Orinda, Calif.-based Nutanix partner Roundstone Solutions, said given Nutanix’s success with NC2 on AWS, he’s glad to see it come to Azure.

“Nutanix is the only vendor who can orchestrate on premises and into the public cloud. They’ve been able to do it with AWS for a while, now they can do it with Azure. They can allow workloads to move back and forth, which other vendors can’t. Other vendors are dependent on VMware, Nutanix is not. Strategically, it’s a great thing.”

With the extension to Microsoft’s public cloud, Nutanix customers can now run workloads on NC2 on Azure and manage Azure instances from Nutanix‘s management interface. This lets customers run workloads through both private clouds and Microsoft Azure without needing to redesign the software they use to run their business.

“Organizations are embracing hybrid multicloud to easily scale from on-prem to the public cloud, optimize costs for performant and secure workloads, and tap into a flexible subscription model,” said Rajiv Ramaswami, president and CEO of Nutanix, in a statement. “NC2 on Azure gives our customers a frictionless on-ramp to Azure with consistent management of apps and data across their hybrid multicloud environment.”

He said the result is a simplified and consistent IT operation across clouds, and a lower cost than other cloud deployment solutions.

“While public cloud has solidified as a crucial investment for businesses, many customers need to run and manage workloads across public and private cloud environments,” said Scott Guthrie, Executive Vice President, Cloud + AI Group, Microsoft, in a statement. “NC2 on Azure provides consistent management for businesses’ infrastructure across on-premises and cloud, reduces network latency, and increases cost efficiency.”

Nutanix customers can now access Azure Hybrid Benefit as well as Extended Security Updates, which are security and efficiency bolt-ons, according to a statement. Nutanix said its customers will be able to port their existing term licenses to NC2 on Azure or get on-demand consumption of Nutanix software through the Azure Marketplace to help movement between private clouds and Microsoft Azure.