For Nutanix, external IT developments have strongly influenced its trajectory over the past three years. Initially, those factors were AI and Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware. Now, IT talent shortages have joined the mix, and the call for sovereignty has grown louder. At .NEXT 2026, we see how these developments have prompted Nutanix to prioritize flexibility.
For a moment, it seemed that Nutanix could easily count on years of revenue growth from VMware defectors. Organizations that cannot afford the “public cloud experience in private” offered by VMware by Broadcom certainly have an obvious alternative in Nutanix. Yet the latter knows that the transition isn’t a one-to-one swap. Although we’ll once again hear frequent talk of “virtualization modernization” (read: a VMware exit) during .NEXT 2026, there’s more at play. Nutanix aims to be the premier agentic AI platform—a solution for cost management, containerized workloads, and leveraging existing hardware. In other words, a hefty list of requirements to meet.
The “agent-ready” step for NCP
For every IT vendor, an “agent-ready” platform means something different. Nutanix thinks on different scales at the infrastructure level. First of all, it already announced early access to the full-stack Nutanix Agentic AI during the recent Nvidia GTC. It is scheduled to be released in its final form in the second half of 2026. The goal of the solution is to serve as a secure, high-performance foundation for AI infrastructure by integrating compute, storage, and networking. The promise here is that organizations may not need to scale up or upgrade all three components to achieve their AI ambitions. Consider, in particular, the option for GPU-as-a-Service; organizations rent their computing power from a neocloud or public cloud and connect this to their own infrastructure
The Agentic AI solution is also intended for neoclouds or public clouds themselves. For example, Nutanix makes it easier to allocate resources—which are often scarce and, in the case of GPUs, extremely costly—among customers. With Nutanix, neoclouds can use the same infrastructure to provide multiple users with the desired computing power. The company envisions all kinds of as-a-Service structures, ranging from GPUs to Kubernetes, VMs, notebooks, and vector databases to models. Utilizing the infrastructure should be easier thanks to improvements to Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM). This includes measuring GPU usage, API calls, and model consumption for usage-based pricing.
To manage this effectively, Nutanix is introducing what it calls Service Provider Central. This platform is designed as a multitenant IaaS solution and is expected in the second half of 2026. For VMware Cloud Service Provider partners—and there are quite a few of them—this will be a welcome alternative.
Storage is often a sticking point for AI plans, even though that is precisely where the business value lies. Linking proprietary data to AI is easier said than done. That is why Nutanix is making Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) 5.3 generally available. It serves to convert object storage into usable storage for AI, for example via Smart Tiering. This applies to Google Cloud and OVHCloud S3, including multi-tenant object scaling and quotas for large AI data lakes. For organizations looking to use their data for AI training, Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) acceleration for S3-compatible object storage will follow later this year. This increases throughput for datasets in AI training and data-intensive pipelines. DMA (or, when remote, RDMA) is a technique that allows GPUs to bypass server system memory (DRAM) and load data directly from storage into GPU memory.
Nutanix is becoming ‘dual-native’
The dichotomy between VMs and containers is often oversimplified. VMs aren’t just the outdated technology you replace with Kubernetes; in many cases, Kubernetes itself runs in VMs. Organizations also want to run cloud-native workloads on their own hardware—and not always in the public cloud. The existing Nutanix Kubernetes Platform will be given a stronger position during .NEXT 2026 to emphasize that freedom of choice. NKP Metal now makes it possible to run Kubernetes on bare-metal infrastructure. This is crucial for high performance across a wide range of workloads, from AI training to AI in edge environments with compact GPU configurations.
Nutanix is therefore no longer solely hypervisor-based. It also supports Kubernetes without abandoning VMs. These VMs are particularly useful because they are relatively easy to maintain. Full-fledged, automated lifecycle management should provide NKP Metal with the same consistency that customers are accustomed to with VMs.
Plenty of choices
In addition to this dual-native approach, Nutanix relies on a diverse mix of partners. The new Foundation Central appliance simplifies the deployment of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and the AHV hypervisor on servers from Cisco, Dell, Fujitsu, HPE, and Lenovo. For Dell PowerFlex servers and Everpure solutions, Nutanix now also offers support for synchronous disaster recovery. Integration with Everpure has been further expanded to support not only //x and //xl FlashArrays but also the new //c FlashArray platform.
Support for AMD CPUs has also been expanded, although support for that company’s GPUs is still pending. Nutanix will also soon make Dell PowerStore support generally available, further integrate with Lenovo solutions, and support NetApp ONTAP later in 2026.
The NetApp partnership is even being referred to as a strategic alliance. Customers can expect a smoother path to modernizing and migrating IT environments, simplified management, and a higher level of security.
As the latest addition to the extensive list of partnerships and integrations, we can add MongoDB. Nutanix Database Service and MongoDB Ops Manager together make it possible to leverage data from legacy IT environments for AI without the complexity that normally accompanies such efforts. Sharded MongoDB clusters can be automatically deployed and scaled, while cyberattacks or other IT outages won’t result in prolonged downtime thanks to NDB Time Machine as an integration within Ops Manager. Anyone with a MongoDB Enterprise Advanced license in NDB 2.10 can take advantage of the integration today.
Sovereignty as a driving force
Sovereignty is an essential part of the Nutanix offering, even though it is often an implicit capability based on the features provided rather than a separate “Sovereign Cloud” solution. Nutanix is, however, working on supporting third-party sovereign clouds. Starting today, Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) supports secure regions such as AWS GovCloud; integration with the AWS European Sovereign Cloud will follow later this year.
Conclusion: the more things change…
The rise of AI and price increases for VMware customers have driven Nutanix toward predictable developments. The outside world is once again having a strong influence on Nutanix’s innovations in 2026. IT shortages and the demand for sovereignty are forcing organizations to make the most of existing infrastructure and to take a critical look at how they relinquish control.
Nutanix addresses these issues indirectly. Although it must compete with hyperscalers to be considered an AI infrastructure, organizations have more than enough reason to place a management layer between themselves and those AI tools. What if you suddenly need to migrate your production-ready AI workloads, or if you want to stay on-premises but need or want to adopt Kubernetes? For such use cases, Nutanix is an obvious solution, and the new announcements fully address this.
Nevertheless, Nutanix sees just as much reason to court VMware customers even more than before. MSPs can purchase Nutanix software on a per-month basis during a promotional period, provided they sign up for a new Nutanix subscription for at least three years. The pricing should prove advantageous for these IT service providers and prevent duplicate costs.
In short: Nutanix is active on multiple fronts to address the biggest IT challenges. These have largely been around for years but have become more urgent. As a result, Nutanix feels compelled to adopt a “dual-native” approach to Kubernetes alongside VMs and hypervisors, expand numerous partnerships, and help VMware users resolve their issues. This year, Nutanix is focusing more on concrete solutions rather than the large-scale, often vague AI ambitions that vendors touted between early 2023 and now. That’s a good thing, especially since the era of scarcity, shortages, and difficult choices is far from over for the IT industry.
Read also: Nutanix and Nvidia launch AI Factory for governments