Nutanix Showcases Cloud-Native and AI Innovations at NEXT 2025

U.S.-headquartered enterprise cloud computing company Nutanix made significant announcements at its annual flagship event, NEXT 2025, held in Washington D.C. from May 7-9. The event attracted over 5,000 attendees and highlighted the company's focus on AI, Kubernetes innovation, and hybrid multi-cloud infrastructure.

Key Announcements

• Cloud-Native AOS: Nutanix launched a hypervisor-free version of its core storage software, designed to run natively on Kubernetes clusters. This solution aims to provide consistent data management across distributed environments, including data centers, edge locations, and hyperscalers. Thomas Cornely, SVP of Product Management, emphasized its ability to bridge gaps in hybrid cloud architectures.

  • Availability: Early access for AWS, with general availability expected by summer 2025 and bare-metal support by year-end.

• AI Advancements: Nutanix AI introduced updates to its Enterprise AI (NAI) platform, integrating NVIDIA’s NIM inference microservices and NeMo framework. Debo Dutta, Chief AI Officer, highlighted how this collaboration simplifies deploying AI agents across various environments while maintaining security and flexibility.

• Strategic Partnerships:

  • Pure Storage: Integration with Pure’s high-performance storage systems, enhanced with native NVMe/TCP support.
  • Google Cloud: Public preview of Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) on Google’s Z3 bare-metal instances, completing its hyperscaler trifecta after AWS and Azure.
  • Cisco and Dell: New alliances, including FlashStack for Nutanix and Dell PowerFlex integration, offering customers more choice without compromise.

• Security Enhancements: Nutanix expanded its security partnerships to align with the NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0, collaborating with Qualys, Palo Alto Networks, and CrowdStrike to strengthen defenses across data, identity, and network layers.

Growth in India

Nutanix reported strong growth in India, particularly in banking, finance, manufacturing, government, and healthcare sectors. CEO Rajiv Ramaswami noted that India’s growth rate is outpacing global metrics for Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) and profitability.

Challenges Ahead

Despite its innovations, Nutanix faces competition from VMware (now part of Broadcom) and Red Hat. Economic challenges may also impact cloud migration budgets. However, Ramaswami remains optimistic, citing the company’s partner-centric, modular strategy as a key differentiator.

Photo Credit: Author/Nutanix NEXT 2025

(The author attended the event in the U.S. on invitation from Nutanix.)