HPE, Nutanix Launch Nutanix Era On ProLiant Servers, HPE GreenLake

‘GreenLake is the most mature cloud as-a-service model that’s out there. So Nutanix being able to get further up the application stack in GreenLake is a really great thing,’ says Worth Davis, president of the solution provider business at Computex, a top HPE and Nutanix partner.

Nutanix and Hewlett Packard Enterprise continue to double down on their partnership by launching a new Database-as-a-Service offering that combines Nutanix Era with HPE’s ProLiant servers. The new offering will be sold as a service through HPE GreenLake.

“GreenLake is the most mature cloud as-a-service model that’s out there. So Nutanix being able to get further up the application stack in GreenLake is a really great thing,” said Worth Davis, president of the solution provider business at Computex, a top HPE and Nutanix partner. “Era as a service will be a good solution. I’m looking forward to working with both of them on this one.”

Nutanix Era is a multi-database operations and management offering that will now be bundled with HPE ProLiant servers and be sold as a service via HPE GreenLake. The new joint cloud service allows customers to deploy applications and databases in minutes and benefit from pay-per-use capabilities while gaining the governance, visibility and compliance of an on-premises environment. The new offering enables customers to modernize, consolidate and automate tasks across their databases and gain support for multi-database operations management such as Oracle Database, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, PostgresSQL and MariaDB.

[Related: Nutanix CEO Happy For ‘Friend’ Becoming VMware’s New CEO]

Nutanix and HPE, which both made CRN’s new 50 Coolest Software-Defined Data Center Vendors of 2021 list, are investing heavily in their tight technology partnership, which was established several years ago.

The successful partnership has benefited both companies, with Nutanix and HPE sales witnessing an 80 percent year-on-year increase in annual contract value (ACV) bookings during the first calendar quarter of 2021, including wins for HPE ProLiant DX servers and HPE GreenLake with Nutanix.

“It’s good to see Nutanix and HPE continue to invest in enterprise cloud offerings with GreenLake and their products,” said Computex’s Davis.

In fact, Nutanix CEO Rajiv Ramaswami recently said HPE is his company’s fastest-growing and most strategic partnership.

“HPE clearly is the one that’s been growing the fastest for us overall in terms of the OEM relationships for us,” said Ramaswami in May. “I would say Dell is more a fulfillment [relationship] as we partner together and customers want to land our solution in Dell hardware—Dell supports that. So I would say HPE and Lenovo, to the extent that they are in markets where they are strong, continue to be, from a server perspective, very good partners for us.”

Nutanix is forming new or enhanced partnerships with the world’s largest hardware vendors, many of which are striving to offer more consumption-based, as-a-service offerings. In April, Nutanix and Lenovo launched a new joint as-a-service offering for hosted desktops through Lenovo’s TruScale as-a-Service portfolio of hardware—such as hyperconverged infrastructure and PCs—to drive remote workforce opportunities.

In terms of Nutanix and HPE’s new hybrid cloud services offering with Era and ProLiant servers, Keith White, senior vice president and general manager for HPE GreenLake Cloud Services at HPE, said customers can transform database management now with one cloud platform.

“Customers want to simplify database operations and management to move away from IT silos that can often lead to higher maintenance costs, security risks and lack of flexibility to deploy and run solutions,” said White in a statement. “HPE GreenLake and the Nutanix Era database operations and management software solution will increase agility, simplify operations and cut costs by delivering a fully managed cloud offering.”

HPE’s GreenLake cloud services business is growing with over $4.8 billion in total contract value and more than 900 channel partners selling HPE GreenLake. HPE GreenLake has more than 1,200 enterprise customers across 50 countries.

Nutanix is striving to push its channel partners to sell more of the Nutanix portfolio outside its core hyperconverged infrastructure software. The new Nutanix Era as a service with HPE is focusing on doing just that.

“Most of our channel partners are very much selling our core offering, our core HCI, that‘s what they’re most familiar with. These newer products such as Era, File, Flow and so forth are relatively new to our partners and only now are they building up their capabilities to be able to sell that,” said Ramaswami last month. “I think the initial product market fit for some of these products was delivered very much by us. Now that we are deploying [and] actually scaling these products that we have product market fit on—this is where the partners come in and play a very significant role.”

HPE GreenLake with Nutanix Era for databases is generally available now to customers with metering billing capabilities available in July.