Kathy Gibson reports from Nutanix .Next in Washington DC – As it continues to expand its solution set, Nutanix has reaffirmed its commitment to the channel as its route to market.
This is the word from Dave Gwyn, senior vice-president: worldwide channels, who says Nutanix differs in this respect from many other enterprise technology vendors that erode their partners’ opportunities by going direct.
He says Nutanix aims to nurture its partner channel by focusing in four areas: profitability for partners; ensuring the right products for the market; a long-term commitment that enables strategic decision-making; and trust.
Trust is arguably the most important leg of the commitment, he adds. “This is about ensuring we have perfect integrity in terms of things like deal registration, ensuring price advantages, incumbency privileges, and more.”
While many vendors pay lip service to channel integrity, Gwyn believes that Nutanix has demonstrated that it’s taking it seriously.
“From a profitability standing, rebates are currently the most lucrative in the company’s history and are driving major significant growth in profitability for our partners.
“Among other things, we have made some changes to price protection and deal registration – and also signed off an increased budget allocation to partner rebates for incentivised behaviours.”
And, while many resellers get sidelined when it comes to software subscription renewals, Gwyn points out that his team goes out of its way to protect partner renewals.
“We are now a subscription company, but that means the concept of lifetime value is relevant,” Gwyn says. “So we have to protect renewals and repeat purchase for the partner that brought the customer in.”
From a product point of view, Nutanix is constantly updating and modernising its offerings, so partners can take fresh and relevant solutions to their customers.
“What we are doing productwise is pretty astounding,” Gwyn adds.
He points to the slew of announcements made this week at Nutanix .Next aimed at enhancing infrastructure modernisation, running applications anywhere, and bringing agentic AI to fruition.
“These announcements all help our partners to open doors,” Gwyn says.
As a result, Nutanix is rapidly growing its partner ecosystem, and is investing in helping partners to grow their opportunities.
One way it is doing this is by increasing its investment in service providers – and bringing on products that are geared towards a consumption model.
It is also working on getting a lot more partners certified in migration and services, both profitable opportunities.
Perhaps the most significant investment that Nutanix is making in its partners is in effective communication.
“Within the next 90 days or so, we are going to roll out a revamped partner portal that will enable partners by helping them with forecasts, with managing pipelines, and understanding revenue. They will be able to see what Elevate tier they are on, and what they need to do to move up.
“An active pipeline will enable partners to drill in, see their active deals, and what they will make on those deals.
“It will display their enablement plans, how many people certified, and much more.
“This partner portal is a major revamp of the digital experience, aligning data and building applications on top – and with a really cool dashboard.”
The new partner portal is being built entirely with Nutanix tools and on the Nutanix platform, Gwyn adds.