Kathy Gibson reports – Nutanix is pursuing a growth strategy – with a specific focus on emerging markets, particularly in Africa.

“We are investing in Africa as we see the potential and need to acquire market share,” says Shaista Ahmed, channel sales director for emerging markets at Nutanix.

Partnering is core to the Nutanix go-to-market strategy and the company is actively looking to acquire partners in strategic growth markets, she adds.

At the same time, Nutanix is garnering new interest from partners looking to diversify their portfolios in the wake of Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware.

“Customers don’t want to be locked into any solution and this is why partners are looking at Nutanix. We don’t believe in lock-in, but always let the customer make the choice.

“And this has resonated with both customers and the partner community.”

With Nutanix, partners can position multiple OEMs and solutions. “We have more than 700 alliances – 565 of them on just the hypervisor. This means our partners are free to build solutions that accurately meet their customers’ demands.”

CIOs and CISOs today are focusing on five top priorities, she adds. They are security, artificial intelligence (AI), automation, hybrid cloud, and multi-cloud.

“And Nutanix ticks all of the boxes, giving them access to a complete solution,” says Ahmed.

At the same time, IT departments are under pressure from their business to deliver working AI solutions.

“AI is happening now – and we are able to cater to that demand with our partnerships and GPT in a box solution.”

While organisations are rushing to implement AI solutions, Gerhard Fourie, channel sales manager: sub-Saharan Africa and IOI at Nutanix, cautions that any AI implementation can only be as good as the quality of an organisation’s data.

“The biggest problem we have seen – particularly in Africa and South Africa – is that customers’ data is not classified or sanitised.”

There is a big opportunity for reseller partners there, Fourie adds. “The way we build our channel is to create all the ancillary services that customers may not be able to do themselves. Partners would consult with customers to understand their data and match it with the business requirements and large language model (LLM) soltions. We empower partners to provide holistic services rather than just sell a product.”

Indeed, Nutanix has received a high number of reseller applications over the last few months.

“We are particularly looking at partners that don’t necessarily fit the usual Nutanix mould,” Fourie says. “These include born-in-the-cloud, data analysts, and others.”

Ahmed stresses that Nutanix is serious about building its channel in Africa.

“The four things that are top of mind in our partnering strategy are trust, profitability, product, and long-term revenue for partners.

“We need to make the relationship very sticky – and trust is key to achieving this.”

The customer shift to hybrid cloud can put pressure on partner’s margin, she adds. “When customers want both on-premise and cloud solutions, this puts pressure on the partner. So we have to build our partners to enable them to build competencies, focus on developing champions, and talk the Nutanix language.”

Distributors play a key role in developing the channel ecosystem, providing competencies and helping partners to build the skills required to go beyond just supplying a solution.

Axiz and Pinnacle distribute Nutanix in the SADC (Southern Africa Development Community) region, while Axiz and Redington are responsible for WECA (West, East and Central Africa).

The role of the distributor is rapidly changing, Fourie says. “As the business changes we are seeing a lot of distributors investing in skills – adding value to partners and helping them to acquire skills.

“So we are seeing a lot more partners looking to certify themselves, looking for training, and cross-skilling the people in their organisations.

“As for Nutanix, we are actively working to get partners skilled up to the same level as our own engineers.”

Nutanix focuses on working with a handful of direct partners, while the distributors look after the bulk of the business.

Across the board, partners find themselves having to add value in various areas, becoming more strategic and invested in the solutions they sell.

“So they want to know that, if they make these investments, that we will reciprocate,” Fourie says.

Nutanix has responded by investing in its partner programme and committing to ongoing partner support. “We need to make sure we stay relevant,” Fourie says.

Ahmed offers advice for partners in a challenging world.

“Partner are seeing that there is a saturation point so they are looking to specialise. So the hypervisor could become their bread-and-butter – and they could special in a value-add offering like database management, AI, or automation.

“We suggest that partners aim to build a niche for themselves with the skills and resources that allow them to understand the use case, relevance, and return on investment (ROI) for the customer.

“And we are more than keen to support our partners on this journey.”

Fourie adds that specialised partners are better equipped to help customers with the best solution for their needs.