Nutanix has expanded its FY27 Elevate Partner Program, representing its largest investment in the programme to date.
The updates bring systems integrators into Elevate, add incentives for referrals, renewals, and customer expansion, and increase support for partner-led services, giving partners more opportunities to generate revenue beyond the initial technology sale.
The expanded programme also supports partners looking to grow their businesses around emerging customer requirements, including enterprise AI, cloud-native applications, and databases. Additional incentives are designed to encourage opportunities involving Nutanix Enterprise AI, Nutanix Database Service (NDB), and Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP), alongside the development of services around these technologies.
The inclusion of systems integrators (SIs) in the programme recognises their growing role in shaping IT strategy, designing and integrating solutions, managing migrations, and delivering services. Eligible SIs and consulting partners will also be able to earn referral rewards for identifying and developing Nutanix opportunities, even when they are not the partner responsible for the final sale.
The programme creates opportunities for eligible partners across seven areas:
- Land: Earn rebates on qualifying net-new Nutanix customer transactions.
- Expand: Earn applicable rebates by introducing additional Nutanix solutions into existing customer environments, including enterprise AI, cloud-native technologies, and databases.
- Grow: Access benefits that recognise qualifying year-over-year business growth.
- Reward: Provide incentives to eligible partner sales and technical employees who help identify or secure qualifying new and expansion opportunities.
- Retain: Earn incentives for qualifying on-time renewals.
- Refer: Earn referral rewards for qualifying opportunities introduced by eligible systems integrators and consulting partners.
- Differentiate: Build verified services capabilities through Powered by Nutanix: Verified Services, with eligible partners able to access Earned Business Development Funds for qualifying go-to-market activities.
Incentives, rebates, referral rewards, and business development funding are subject to applicable programme requirements, eligibility criteria, and regional availability.
Nutanix is also expanding support for partner-led services through Powered by Nutanix: Verified Services, helping eligible partners build recognised capabilities in areas such as migrations, deployment, and ongoing customer support. Partners will also have access to standardised Service Delivery Kits and opportunities to shadow Nutanix experts, helping them build the technical expertise and delivery capabilities needed to expand their professional services businesses.
“A partner can spend months helping a customer work out what technology they need, plan a migration or prepare for AI, but they don’t always get paid for the work that goes into making a sale happen,” says Sven Schoenaerts, vice-president EMEA: channel and technology alliances at Nutanix. “We want to change that. Partners should be able to earn money for bringing us new business, helping existing customers do more with Nutanix and providing the services those customers need. That’s especially important for systems integrators and consultants, who often do much of the work before a customer is ready to buy.”
Nutanix Cloud Platform’s flexibility supports expanded partner opportunities, especially as customers contend with hardware availability, infrastructure costs, and the disruption of major technology upgrades. Support for selected external-storage configurations, including applicable Dell, Everpure, and NetApp technologies, gives partners more options to modernise customer environments while retaining existing infrastructure investments. Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) allows partners to help customers run and move supported workloads between on-premises environments and supported public clouds, providing an alternative when hardware availability or capacity becomes a constraint.
Nutanix is also investing in AI-powered tools to simplify partner engagement and identify new opportunities. Deal Coach, planned for introduction through Nutanix Partner Central later this fiscal year, is designed to support sales-cycle activities. Further planned capabilities include approved visibility into selected customer-environment health, adoption, and lifecycle signals, subject to customer authorisation, helping partners better support customers and plan renewals.