Nutanix aims to be AI platform, more than VMware replacement

Nutanix is aiming to me more than your VMware replacement option and hyperconverged infrastructure company. The game plan for Nutanix is to be the control plane for AI workloads, containers and traditional virtual machines.

At Nutanix's .NEXT conference, CEO Rajiv Ramaswami used his keynote and investor meeting to argue the company is sitting at the intersection of multiple trends including the need to modernize infrastructure, the ongoing move to the public cloud and a shift to agentic AI.

"Nutanix delivers a unified modern platform, powering the apps of tomorrow, the AI apps of tomorrow and also the mission-critical apps of today, enabling our customers to use us across a wide variety of fronts, running their existing business, modernizing everything and innovating in the AI future," said Ramaswami. The big theme from Ramaswami is that Nutanix has a larger total addressable market than it did just a few years ago.

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Ramaswami added:

"Every CIO and customer that I talk to is thinking about how they can operationalize AI in their enterprise while dealing with the complexity that it brings to the table. There's AI in the public cloud, AI on-prem, AI everywhere, and they struggle to figure out how to deal with it and how to operationalize it in their companies and get tangible ROIs on it.

The AI factories are here. But then again, putting it all together to make this thing work for them is not -- no easy task. At the same time, we've got the geopolitical situation that we're all sitting in. What that means for us as a company is that there is a lot more focus on sovereignty. And I hear that everywhere from every company in every industry."

To address the AI inflection point, Nutanix has expanded and evolved. In 2023, Nutanix was about hybrid cloud infrastructure including cloud management, unified storage and database automation. Since then, Nutanix has expanded to Kubernetes management and enterprise AI. Agentic AI also means that workloads will run in the public cloud, private cloud and edge devices. "You have the need to do real-time inferencing for a lot of new use cases," said Ramaswami. "We expect that the slew of AI applications will continue to be hybrid just like the world is hybrid."

Simply put, Nutanix wants to be the cloud operating model between the AI factories, models and enterprise data with one unified experience. The company is seeing partnerships with Cisco, Dell Technologies and Everpure (formerly Pure Storage) and Lenovo coming online. Customers moving to Nutanix cited at .NEXT include Wynn, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee, State Street, Tire Rack and Power International.

More than a VMware displacement option

Nutanix has surged in recent quarters due to its ability to displace Broadcom's VMware unit. The company in recent quarter has noted early success replacing VMware, but there's the reality that Broadcom has responded with better pricing. In addition, enterprise contracts take time as do replacement cycles.

Ramaswami said that VMware displacements will come in waves. "The first wave started after the acquisition closed, where a subset of customers started migrating. And many of them have signed multiyear deals with VMware even just prior to the deal closing. So those customers have migrated, and we've done a lot of large-scale migrations," said Ramaswami.

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In that first wave, multiple VMware companies stayed put waiting to see how the situation would develop. These companies now have renewed with Broadcom, but had to buy the entire VMware stack. That set of VMware customers are now plotting migrations.

"There's going to be another wave happening as Broadcom starts to force more and more during their next cycle to their newest platform, VCF, and force them to upgrade," said Ramaswami, who noted that "this is not going to happen in one fell swoop."

Ramaswami's argument is that VMware is going to a tailwind to Nutanix, but it will take time to evolve. He said Broadcom/VMware has more than 300,000 customers and Nutanix is actively targeting 165,000 enterprise customers. About 30,000 of that set of customers are Nutanix customers. "There's still a fair number of customers we can go after," said Ramaswami.

Nutanix has been making migrations simpler and more automated.

.NEXT news flow

At .NEXT, Nutanix moved to broaden its ecosystem with key partnerships. Here's a look at Nutanix announced.

• Nutanix Cloud Platform (NCP) enhancements to make it a more complete platform. Nutanix said NCP is now a full-stack offering that can handle AI workloads, containers and virtual machines. Nutanix emphasized flexibility and control, including unified storage, advanced data services, and stronger ecosystem integrations. Nutanix also extended multitenancy and management capabilities through Service Provider Central, enabling enterprises and partners to run AI workloads with better governance, sovereignty, and operational consistency across hybrid and multicloud environments.
• A focus on neocloud providers. Nutanix outlined future enhancements to its Agentic AI platform designed specifically for "neocloud" providers, which are emerging AI-focused cloud operators. These updates aim to help providers move beyond GPU infrastructure toward full-service AI platforms, offering services like GPU-as-a-service and Kubernetes-as-a-service with enterprise-grade security and cost predictability.
• Nutanix expanded its ecosystem. Nutanix enhanced its Elevate Service Provider Program, focused on helping partners scale cloud offerings and modernize customer environments. The biggest addition was multitenant cloud capabilities via Service Provider Central.
• Partnerships with MongoDB and NetApp. Nutanix announced a certified integration between its database platform and MongoDB, aimed at simplifying deployment and lifecycle management of MongoDB environments. The Nutanix Database Service now provides automation for provisioning, scaling, and recovery, reducing operational overhead for enterprise teams. Nutanix and NetApp announced a strategic partnership to integrate NetApp’s storage capabilities with the Nutanix Cloud Platform. The collaboration combines NetApp ONTAP data management with Nutanix’s virtualization and multicloud operations.

The connective tissue between the announcements is that Nutanix is building a full-stack AI platform and broadening its distribution.

Where Nutanix is headed

Nutanix is clearly pushing to evolve beyond hyperconverged infrastructure and going full stack to become an AI platform. What remains to be seen is whether Nutanix can become that AI operating layer, a space that's partly occupied by Microsoft Azure, AWS and Google Cloud.

Meanwhile, Nutanix is acknowledging the VMware displacement opportunity but not embracing it wholly because it is legacy framing.

The big idea from Nutanix is that it is reframing away from LLMs to executing on infrastructure for AI agents. Agentic AI was referenced throughout Nutanix press releases, keynotes and analyst meetings and the company was focused on orchestration, governance and cost control. Those themes are top-of-mind for CEOs.

Nutanix is also developing a Neocloud focus to reach AI workloads where they are and enable alternative clouds to compete with hyperscalers. Nutanix isn't necessarily picking fights with hyperscalers, which are also partners, but focusing on control, cost predictability and portability.

Ongoing questions for Nutanix:

• Is VMware displacement a multi-year trend or mostly played out already?
• Will Nutanix's efforts to build its ecosystem via various partnerships pay off sooner than later?
• Will CIOs see Nutanix as an AI control plane and full-stack AI platform?
• When will hybrid deployments for sovereignty and control agentic AI begin to scale?