Nutanix Looks Beyond HCI at. NEXT Conference

Long known for its hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solutions, Nutanix is signaling a broader strategic shift at this week’s Nutanix. NEXT conference. The company is expanding into external storage, containerized architectures, and AI-driven solutions, all under its “run anything, run anywhere” vision. This approach now supports a wider array of storage options, hypervisor-free deployments, and enterprise-scale AI model management.

Figure 1. Nutanix Expands Beyond Traditional HCI.

Key announcements include:

• Nutanix Enterprise AI (NAI):Now integrated with NVIDIA AI Enterprise, enabling support for agentic AI workflows across the organization.
• Pure Storage Partnership: Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure will now work with Pure Storage FlashArray via NVMe/TCP to support mission-critical workloads.
• Cloud Native AOS: A new solution that brings Nutanix’s storage and data services to Kubernetes environments without the need for a hypervisor.

Nutanix Makes Major Move into External Storage

In a pivotal evolution beyond its hyperconverged roots, Nutanix is announcing the general availability of its integration with Dell PowerFlex and early access for Pure Storage integration. These developments allow customers to pair Nutanix’s compute capabilities with external storage arrays—marking a strategic expansion of the platform’s flexibility. Figure 1 shows Nutanix Expands Beyond Traditional HCI.

“Most HCI buyers were trying to get away from managing storage; they just wanted the storage to be there,” said Lee Caswell, Senior Vice President of Product Marketing, during a press briefing. “We also realize there’s a lot of storage expertise out in the marketplace still.”

The new integrations retain the hallmark simplicity of Nutanix’s management experience via its Prism control plane. For instance, when a user initiates a snapshot in Prism, the operation is executed on PowerFlex. The same streamlined process applies to replication and other storage operations.

Additionally, the Pure Storage integration will be part of Cisco’s FlashStack offering. The resulting “FlashStack with Nutanix” solution will combine Pure Storage for data, Cisco UCS servers for compute, Cisco networking, and the Nutanix Cloud Platform into a unified infrastructure stack.

Cloud Native AOS: A Hypervisor-Free Future for Nutanix

In another bold step away from its traditional architecture, Nutanix has introduced Cloud Native AOS—a containerized version of its storage platform designed to operate independently of a hypervisor.

“The idea of Cloud Native AOS is that we can now push deeper into the cloud and further out to the edge,” said Lee Caswell, Senior Vice President of Product Marketing.

This marks the first tangible product to emerge from Project Beacon, a long-term initiative Nutanix unveiled three years ago to reimagine its technology stack for a more flexible, cloud-native future. With Cloud Native AOS, Nutanix aims to extend its storage and data services seamlessly into Kubernetes environments, enabling organizations to deploy infrastructure where and how they need it—without the traditional virtualization layer.

Shifting the Value from Hypervisors to Data and Containers

For decades, the hypervisor served as the core foundation for delivering IT services, with storage and compute capabilities layered on top. But that paradigm is shifting. According to Lee Caswell, Senior Vice President of Product Marketing, the industry now views hypervisors as largely commoditized.

“Most clouds, including Amazon, run a hypervisor underneath their Kubernetes environments,” Caswell explained. “What we’re doing now is removing the need for nested virtualization entirely.”

With Cloud Native AOS, Nutanix embraces a future where value is no longer derived from the hypervisor, but from data and how it's managed. This new architecture is built on containers—key to modern application development.

“Containers provide immense value to developers,” Caswell said. “They accelerate development and remove OS dependencies during testing, which is essential when deploying across multiple, diverse environments.”

Enterprise AI: Evolving with NVIDIA to Support Agentic Workflows

Nutanix is also advancing its AI strategy with the general availability of the latest version of Nutanix Enterprise AI (NAI). The updated platform features deeper integration with NVIDIA AI Enterprise, helping organizations streamline the deployment and management of AI agents across hybrid environments.

This release represents a significant evolution beyond last year’s “GPT-in-a-box” concept, enabling the development of more intelligent and autonomous AI workflows.

“Many customers are eager to get started with AI, but they’re unsure how,” Caswell noted. “They’re also concerned about intellectual property and data privacy.”

NAI now supports NVIDIA’s Nemo and NIM models and focuses on enabling agentic AI workflows. These workflows include advanced capabilities such as guardrails, re-ranking, and embedding—allowing enterprises to move past basic question-and-answer models to more production-ready, autonomous AI systems.

“The original AI experience was simple—you ask a question, and it gives you an answer,” said Caswell. “Now we’re talking about agentic cycles where the model critiques, plans, executes, and integrates with tools. That’s the kind of sophistication enterprises need for real-world use cases.”

Source: NETWORK WORLD

Cite this article:

Priyadharshini S (2025), Nutanix Broadens Its Scope Beyond Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI), AnaTechMaz, pp.136