During an interview at Nutanix .NEXT 2024 annual conference, held in Barcelona last May, Adam Tarbox, recently appointed General Manager Northern, Eastern Europe & CIS, shared his views on the new challenges faced by customers and partners. He also clarified the company's position with regard to recent developments. As head of Channel Sales at Nutanix since 2021, Adam Tarbox has played a key role in organising the company's partner network.

Nutanix is often seen as a provider for large enterprises. Are there any nuances there that you might care to lay out for us?

"While some smaller customers might find Cloud a better option, Nutanix serves mid to enterprise customers across various verticals. We have tier-one enterprise customers like Wells Fargo, as highlighted in today's keynote. We also cater to the mid-market effectively. Recent announcements, such as hardware certification acceleration and partnerships with Dell, help mid-market customers adopt Nutanix technology more easily and quickly. Tools like Move simplify migration to the Nutanix hypervisor, supporting the mid-market further. Our Launchpad offering simplifies adoption for customers with up to 192 cores."

"CIOs, regardless of the size of their organization, typically focus on a set of common priorities: application modernization, adopting innovative technologies like AI and ML, utilizing cloud services for performance or cost benefits, and enhancing cybersecurity. To address these, they often need to modernize their platforms, moving away from traditional infrastructure based on the server, storage, and network triad. Nutanix offers a cloud platform that provides rich data services, helping CIOs advance their digital transformation agendas."

How does this translate into business benefits?

"The benefits depend on what the customer aims to achieve. We meet customers where they are on their journey. For those accelerating public cloud adoption, we have a strong track record in migrating applications from on-premises to the cloud of their choice. When modernizing architecture, customers often seek to reduce total cost of ownership and redeploy staff into innovative areas that drive revenue. Here too, we can provide them with the necessary means to achieve their objectives in terms of cost reduction and innovation acceleration."

"We serve customers across all verticals, including financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, and automotive. We integrate with key providers in each sector, like Temenos in financial services and Epic in healthcare. Our ecosystem of partners is well-positioned to address diverse customer needs in these industries."

When do you expect to see the consequences of the acquisition of your competitor VMware by Broadcom?

"The impact depends on the customer and their current situation. Since Broadcom acquired VMware, there have been significant changes, including restructuring their partner program, product offerings, and pricing. Customers are still understanding these changes. Some may face increased pricing and will need to decide whether to renew or seek alternatives. Nutanix is well positioned for those looking for alternatives. In our view, it's a multi-year perspective as customers decide on their future vendor strategy. We've seen increased interest from customers exploring new possibilities."

"On the other hand, the effects of these changes for the channel are several. And none of them are good. Partners may have deployed VMware products that will no longer be offered or will be sold to another company. That could mean unwanted and unnecessary change for those partners and their customers."

"As AI continues to reconfigure the IT landscape, partners need confidence that new workloads in Kubernetes containers are protected but also that critical legacy apps and workloads will still run anywhere that customers prefer. The job of the channel is to advise and support, not dictate, so it’s important to cover all bases and offer a range of deployment platforms, whether that’s on-premises, in the public cloud or at the network edge, and with full licence portability to support future change."

"What I want to affirm very clearly is our commitment to supporting customers. For those concerned about changes or exploring alternatives, we're here to help them on their journey. Whether customers are into DevOps, Kubernetes, or cloud exploration, Nutanix is well-placed to assist. We're focused on accelerating time to market for new products and services and supporting customers’ technological adoption."

It sounds like you prioritize your customers. Is it right to say that Nutanix is a customer-centric company?

"Absolutely, we are customer-obsessed. Our CEO Rajiv Ramaswami mentioned earlier that one of our four key cultural values is customer obsession. Our focus is on making it easy for customers to adopt the necessary technologies, whether it's public cloud, on-premise, edge, or working with partners. This customer-centric approach extends to our partner network. In EMEA, we operate through our partner network, ensuring we support both partners and end customers effectively."

Interview by Michael Renotte