South African organisations are reassessing some of their most fundamental infrastructure choices while pressure is growing to modernise applications, make better use of cloud and establish a workable foundation for enterprise AI.
That changing technology agenda was at the centre of Nutanix .NEXT on Tour Johannesburg, which brought customers, partners and technology leaders together at The Galleria in Sandton to examine what infrastructure modernisation now needs to deliver for South African businesses.
While virtualisation remains an important part of that conversation, the decisions facing local IT teams increasingly extend well beyond the hypervisor. They need to determine how existing infrastructure investments fit alongside cloud-native applications, modern databases and AI, where workloads and data should reside, and how to introduce those capabilities without multiplying the platforms, tools and skills required to manage them.
Nutanix used the Johannesburg event to show how organisations can modernise in stages, supporting existing virtualised environments while introducing cloud-native applications, modern database services and AI without creating a separate operating model for each. The company’s approach is built around a consistent platform spanning datacentres, cloud and edge, allowing workloads to move as business, technology and regulatory requirements change.
“Modernisation can no longer be reduced to a conversation about replacing one virtualisation platform with another,” said Marco Viera, regional sales manager: SADC at Nutanix. “That may be where the conversation starts, but customers are also thinking about how they modernise applications, how they manage Kubernetes, what happens to their databases, where AI will run and how all of this works across their cloud environments. Our opportunity is to help them look at that as one infrastructure strategy rather than a series of separate technology projects.”
Local momentum extends across customers and partners
The Johannesburg event also highlighted the continued expansion of Nutanix’s relationships across the South African market, including new customer engagements and partners building services and capabilities around the platform.
“South Africa is an important market for Nutanix because there is a very practical conversation taking place here about what modernisation needs to deliver for the business,” said Raif Abou Diab, regional director: South Gulf, Oman and sub-Saharan Africa at Nutanix. “Customers want choice, but they also need consistency. They want to take advantage of cloud, containers and AI without creating another layer of operational complexity.
“Our continued investment in the market, together with the capabilities our partners are building around Nutanix, is about giving customers a credible path between where their infrastructure is today and where they want to take it next.”
Among the partners participating at .NEXT on Tour Johannesburg was Strategix, which has publicly aligned its infrastructure strategy more closely with Nutanix and is supporting the local event as a sponsor.
“Internationally we have seen technology costs rise sharply, putting both private and public cloud budgets under increasing pressure. At the same time, security threats are growing rapidly and organisations are being asked to invest in AI. Simply replacing one virtualisation platform with another doesn’t solve these challenges,” said Steve Dalgarno, MD of Strategix.
“Organisations need a hybrid cloud strategy that gives them greater control over cost, security, and data, while retaining the flexibility to place workloads where they make the most operational and financial sense,” he said. “That was central to our decision to add Nutanix to the Strategix portfolio. It enables us to help customers simplify their cloud environments, strengthen resilience and prepare for AI, while reducing complexity and giving the business greater freedom to innovate on their own Nutanix Private Cloud, or in the Strategix Secure First Cloud.”
For Nutanix, this growing partner engagement is an important part of extending the technology conversation beyond the platform itself and giving South African organisations access to the skills, services and operating models required to carry modernisation projects into production.
One platform across apps, data and AI
That theme ran through the .NEXT program, with sessions examining modern infrastructure across the datacentre, edge and hybrid cloud, Kubernetes and cloud-native applications, database modernisation and enterprise AI.
Global AI director Jason Langone addressed the economics and trust requirements emerging around agentic AI, including how enterprises think about model choice, inference, resilience and the growing need to govern how AI agents interact with corporate tools and data. The wider keynote programme explored Nutanix’s approach to providing a consistent platform for applications, data and AI across virtualised and containerised environments.
“The answer to every new technology requirement cannot be another layer of infrastructure,” said Sammy Zoghlami, senior vice-president: EMEA at Nutanix. “CIOs have to create the conditions for innovation while still managing the complexity already inside the enterprise. That means building a foundation that can support traditional applications, modern applications and AI in the environments that make sense for the business, rather than creating another silo every time the technology changes.”