Nutanix .NEXT: 5 New Mulicloud Services For Xi Frame, Leap And Beam

From disaster recovery services now supporting VMware ESXi to revamping Xi Frame for private clouds, here are five key features in the new Nutanix Multicloud Services unveiled at Nutanix .NEXT Conference today.

Nutanix Revamps Xi Frame, Xi Leap and Xi Beam Services

Nutanix is taking its cloud services capabilities to a new level with the launch of Nutanix Multicloud Services, which includes significant enhancements to Xi Frame, Xi Leap and Xi Beam.

Unveiled at Nutanix .NEXT Conference on Wednesday, the revamped cloud services create new opportunities for partners to generate recurring revenues as customers move towards a hybrid cloud environment, said Greg Smith, vice president of product marketing for Nutanix. “Hyper-converged infrastructure represents the next modern era for data center infrastructure, and as customers replatform their applications to run on Nutanix HCI, it opens up new opportunities for partners,” Smith said in an interview with CRN.

Here are five new services features in Nutanix Multicloud Services that partners and customers need to know around desktop-as-a-service (DaaS), disaster recovery services for VMware and software-as-a-service (SaS).

5. Xi Frame For Private Clouds

Nutanix is extending its Xi Frame desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) solution from the public cloud to the private cloud to enable the delivery of applications and desktops in a hybrid cloud environment. With the latest Xi Frame update running on the Nutanix AHV hypervisor, customers can now extend desktop delivery to their private cloud, integrating virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) services with the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud platform.

Xi Frame DaaS was launched in November 2018 to enable enterprises to deliver virtual desktops from public clouds such as AWS and Azure. Xi Frame is a secure cloud platform that can run client software in any HTML-5 capable browser with no proprietary client and no data center maintenance. The born in the cloud solution is aimed at simplifying the complexities around VDI by offering a one-click setup and deployment.

4. ‘Seamless’ Single Console Control

One of the most important factors in Xi Frame’s new private cloud capabilities, is that channel partners can now simultaneously deliver desktop solutions in both private and public cloud managed through a single console. As now a hybrid service, Xi Frame lets organizations pick the best cloud environment for each VDI project in order to optimize costs, security and geographical reach, according to Smith.

“Partners can now simultaneously deliver desktop via multiple clouds managed through a single console. So seamless administration control. That means IT teams can now select the right cloud -- public or private – for their VDI initiatives,” said Smith in an interview with CRN. “So Xi Frame is now available to thousands of Nutanix customers worldwide, adding yet another service to Nutanix private cloud environments.”

Nutanix says Xi Frame is the easiest and most secure way to centrally deliver manage enterprises applications.

3. Xi Leap Support For VMware

Nutanix is a fierce competitor of VMware. However, the hyper-converged pioneer is now allowing Xi Leap to provide disaster recovery services for enterprise workloads running VMware ESXi.

ESXi is VMware’s enterprise class hypervisor for deploying and serving virtual computers which can accommodate applications of any size. The hypervisor is installed directly into the physical server providing access to and control of the underlying resources. Xi Leap is Nutanix’s turnkey cloud-based disaster recovery as-a-service (DRaaS). The offering converges provisioning, replicating data, defining a disaster recovery runbook and configuring security and networking into a single service. Xi Leap protects the applications and data in a Nutanix environment without the need to purchase and maintain a separate infrastructure stack.

Nutanix said Xi Leap support for VMware ESXi makes it even simpler to transform existing applications into a hybrid service.

2. Xi Leap New Availability Zones

At part of the Nutanix Multicloud Services, the company is expanding Xi Leap beyond its current availability zones in the U.S. and U.K. Over the next few months, Xi Leap will be generally available in Italy, Japan and Germany.

1. Security Compliance Added To Xi Beam

Nutanix has injected a real-time security compliance module into Xi Beam to identify critical cloud infrastructure vulnerabilities and recommend specific remediation.

Launched in May 2018, Xi Beam is a multi-cloud cost optimization and governance software-as-a-Service (SaaS) tool aimed at helping customers reduce cost and enhance cloud security across platforms. Organizations leverage the solution to identify and fix cloud security issues in real-time before it affects their business. Xi Beam is based off technology Nutanix acquired from public cloud cost optimization specialist Minjar last year.

With the new security and compliance functionality in Xi Beam, Nutanix says IT administrators can fix security risks before they impact the business.