Nutanix®, a leader in enterprise cloud computing, today announced that its Enterprise Cloud Platform™ software will be available as a term-based license for deployment on Hewlett Packard Enterprises® (HPE) ProLiant® rackmount servers and Cisco UCS® B-series blade servers, adding to previously announced support for the Cisco UCS C-series platform. With this announcement, Nutanix is responding to the growing demand from large enterprises and service providers for a more flexible way to consume its leading Enterprise Cloud Platform™ software, while creating new opportunities for its go-to-market ecosystem of channel and system integrator partners.
These new supported hardware options will broaden the deployment potential of Nutanix beyond newly purchased appliances from the company or its global OEM partners, Dell and Lenovo, to the millions of HPE ProLiant and Cisco UCS servers already in use inside corporate and cloud datacenters. The Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform will soon be available either as an integrated Nutanix- or OEM-branded appliance or installed as software-only on qualified third-party x86 platforms from companies who Nutanix considers to be four of the largest enterprise server vendors, who collectively account for more than 52% of the global server market based on shipment units and who have sold more than 5 million servers in 2016.
Enterprise cloud builders need flexibility and choice of hardware platforms while maintaining a consistent and agile operating environment. Customers will enjoy the optionality of deploying newly licensed 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 at a later date. This flexibility mitigates the risk of hardware commoditization while maximizing the value of their Nutanix software-only licenses.
Beyond hardware options, cloud builders also need the ability to mix consumption models when building and scaling their cloud environments. To this end, Nutanix also announced a new program named Nutanix Go, which can deliver enterprise cloud infrastructure using operating budgets and allow for flexible scaling up or down of infrastructure. This program will align the purchasing experience of public clouds, allowing customers to break free of long-term capital budget commitments.
As the de facto infrastructure choice for more than 5,300 customers across 100+ countries, Nutanix will provide the most choices of both hardware and consumption models when building Enterprise Clouds. Datacenter teams can define the right hardware and procurement model for the business and still get the same consumer-grade operational experience across their entire infrastructure. This datacenter-wide OS is the culmination of eight years of advanced development to build a hardware independent, web-scale software architecture that is API-driven and supports virtually all workloads, including virtualized, container-based and bare metal.
Consuming Nutanix as Software
Enterprise cloud builders and Nutanix go-to-market channel and SI partners require a complete abstraction between the operating system and underlying hardware, enabling fast qualification and testing of new server platforms. Nutanix’s ability to rapidly support an expanding portfolio of partner and third-party hardware platforms is the 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.
The freedom to choose the right hardware platform extends well beyond initial installation to the full infrastructure lifecycle. For example, new software-driven features implemented in any layer of the software stack – including Nutanix software, Nutanix Prism management, hypervisor software, BIOS and platform firmware – can be put into production directly using Prism’s one-click update capability. The ongoing health of hardware platforms can be automatically monitored via Nutanix Cluster Checks (NCC) software plug-ins. And as datacenter designs evolve, new Nutanix software-only entitlements can be freely transferred to other qualified third-party platforms for maximum flexibility, and to prevent expensive hardware lock-in that can degrade business agility.
