Data Center

Q&A: How Nutanix Helps Companies Navigate HCI Migration

Lee Caswell, senior vice president of product and solutions marketing for Nutanix, discusses the company’s new VMware-to-Nutanix migration promotion.

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In November, Broadcom completed its acquisition of VMware, and since then, many companies have been looking for alternatives to manage their hyperconverged infrastructure environments. To help them navigate this transition, Nutanix has launched a special VMware-to-Nutanix migration promotion.

BizTech spoke with Lee Caswell, senior vice president of product and solutions marketing for Nutanix, about how the promotion works, what it offers and how it can help businesses manage their infrastructure as vendor lock-in and costs grow.

BIZTECH: What does the VMware-to-Nutanix promotion include?

CASWELL: We’ve introduced a promotion for net-new customers that gives them one year of free licensing, migration and subscription support. This offer is meant to offset the costs of switching providers.

Customers can use this promotion whether they plan to continue using VMware vSphere (as part of a Nutanix deployment) or replace VMware entirely.

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BIZTECH: What makes Nutanix a compatible relocation option?

CASWELL: Since the Broadcom acquisition, there has been uncertainty about the end of perpetual licenses and the move to more bundled offerings. Customers who prefer to buy products a la carte might not want all that. To use the example of cable TV, they may only want three channels rather than the entire cable package.

Many of our customers told us they would be interested in moving to Nutanix. We’ve also heard from customers who have received price surprises after the acquisition and want to better balance their budgets.

This makes sense because we have a long-standing history of co-existing with VMware and a proven track record of helping companies during transitional moments like this.

With Nutanix, switching is simple: We use a KVM-based hypervisor that’s based on Ethernet protocols. We also have a free tool called Nutanix Move that makes it easy for customers to transfer virtual machines across environments.”

Lee Caswell Senior Vice President of Product and Solutions Marketing, Nutanix

BIZTECH: What are the benefits of moving to a Nutanix environment?

CASWELL: Some of the switching costs that come with a migration include time to learn. With Nutanix, switching is simple: We use a KVM-based hypervisor that’s based on Ethernet protocols. We also have a free tool called Nutanix Move that makes it easy for customers to transfer virtual machines across environments.

Moving to Nutanix also offers benefits for file storage. For example, among customers who were running traditional storage area networks, the fastest-growing type of file storage is object-based. With Nutanix, they get similar operations across block, file and object storage.

Migration can also help companies navigate the rise of artificial intelligence. Many organizations have questions about AI, like what difference will it make, or how will my infrastructure support it?

For many organizations, wide-scale adoption of AI means that the data center may no longer be the center of data. Now, the cloud and the data center are being brought together. This means companies need to be ready for hybrid and multicloud environments, along with all the applications that support AI.

To give a specific example, the evolution of AI makes it possible to create a “GPT in a box.” By combining GPU-enabled servers with Nutanix software, companies can build out their own gen AI toolsets without sacrificing enterprise data security.

Finally, companies want to make sure they’re effectively managing infrastructure budgets. Imagine traditional hyperconverged infrastructure as gas-powered vehicles and Nutanix’s offerings as electric. If the price of gasoline triples, it doesn’t mean you stop driving both gas-powered cars. It just means you’ll drive more efficiently and may consider replacing one of your vehicles with an electric alternative that offers the same functions and is better prepared to navigate the changing environment.

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