Nutanix Launches 'Groundbreaking' New Solutions, Including Software To Combat 'High Costs' Of Public Cloud

Nutanix's innovation engine is roaring as the hyper-converged infrastructure pioneer launched three new solutions for channel partners to drive recurring revenues, including software to manage public cloud costs and security.

"As companies of all sizes have made the leap to public cloud infrastructure, and many people and groups within organizations take advantage of public cloud services, that sort of uncontrolled, undisciplined use of public cloud results in, at times, exceedingly high costs," said Greg Smith, vice president of product marketing for Nutanix, in an interview with CRN. "[Nutanix] Beam breaks it down and shows you exactly what cloud services are being used, who's using them, how much of those services are being consumed, and how much it costs. … It provides cost optimization and security compliance for public clouds like AWS and Microsoft Azure."

At Nutanix's .NEXT Conference in New Orleans Wednesday, the company unveiled Nutanix Beam, its first-ever Software-as-a-Service offering that provides multi-cloud governance so customers can manage their spending, security and regulatory compliance across almost any cloud platform. Beam provides in-depth analysis of exactly how organizations are consuming public cloud services.

[Related: 5 New Nutanix Software Products And Features Launched At .NEXT That Partners Need To Know]

Clive Anthony, senior partner and business manager, software defined datacenter, for Merrimack, N.H.-based national solution provider Connection, ranked No. 22 on CRN's Solution Provider 500 list, said Beam will help customers truly understand the costs around public cloud, which can sometimes be higher than clients initially believe.

"For some companies looking to just say, 'I'm just going to dump everything into public cloud,' I think the Beam tool really helps shine a bright light on some of the gaps, for lack of a better word, that the public cloud may pose for potential customers that they would not be aware of," said Anthony. "Nutanix will help fill those gaps, then supplement the customer with some really good tools and resources."

Beam is based on Nutanix's Minjar Botmetric service, which the company acquired in March, that is already managing more than $1 billion of cloud spending across AWS and Microsoft Azure.

Anthony said Beam enables partners to better manage and secure customers' costs associated with public cloud workloads and applications. "The fact that it helps customers understand their costs of, 'I'm paying for workloads, for apps that I'm not even using as well. By the way, how is it being governed and controlled?" said Anthony. "This is a phenomenal tool. We're looking at potentially having Beam used for our internal operations as well."

AWS and Microsoft Azure did not respond to comment by press time.

The San Jose, Calif.-based vendor also unveiled Nutanix Flow, the company's new software-defined networking offering designed for multi-cloud environments. Flow provides application-centric security to protect against internal and external threats that are undetected by traditional perimeter-oriented security products. As enterprises are turning to cloud-based infrastructure for modern business applications, protecting the application requires Flow's micro-segmentation capabilities, according to Smith.

"It includes automating network provisioning and managing, but most notably native micro-segmentation services that govern traffic between individual applications to protect those applications against both internal and external threats," said Smith. Flow is built into the company's Enterprise Cloud OS, so there is "no separate product to install, manage, upgrade – it's completely built-in," he said.

The third new offering Nutanix launched at .NEXT on Wednesday is a new set of enterprise cloud Platform-as-a-Service offerings: Nutanix Era. The PaaS system provides automated database provisioning and lifecycle management, extending Nutanix's Enterprise Cloud OS software stack beyond core Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) capabilities for private cloud environments to platform-layer services that the company says bring one-click simplicity to database operations.

"This is a native built-in service that allows Nutanix operators to easily provision a new database instance using the database engine of their choice, then manage that database throughout its lifecycle. So this goes beyond provisioning to restoring the database, upgrading it and scaling it," said Smith.

All of the new offerings are now available for channel partners to sell. The new products give partners the ability to move up the stack with Nutanix, said Anthony.

"Nutanix is coming out with some really game-changing, groundbreaking technologies. They're making their customers rethink how they buy, procure and utilize IT," said Anthony. "At the end of the day, if you can have the end-customer look their infrastructure and how they consume it, buy it and utilize it from a different spectrum is eye opening. Nutanix today, more than anybody else, does that for customers."