According to Rajiv Ramaswami, CEO of hyper-converged infrastructure company Nutanix, the first “inning” of hyper-converged infrastructure was the “convergence of all the legacy stuff into hyperconverged.” He called the convergence of clouds the second inning.
Ramaswami spoke to ZDNet after the company released its fiscal Q4 report. The company’s revenue and profit in July topped Wall Street’s expectations. The billings for the current quarter outperformed expectations too.
Nutanix shares rose 5% in late trading after a conference call between Ramaswami and CFO Dustin Williams and Wall Street pundits.
The second inning
Ramaswami’s comments to ZDNet came in response to whether hyperconverged products are all about the consolidation of legacy equipment or whether the product category has relevance in the future.
The CEO’s point is that as companies scale their use of the public cloud, costs go up as complexity increases. That is when hyperconverged takes a new position in the second inning to reduce this cost and complexity.
He said that the company is making it easier for customers to run public cloud(s) they choose, with portability as an option and no danger of public cloud lock-in.
Substantial partnerships
Ramaswami said Nutanix is focused on its partnerships for selling, such as AWS, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Red Hat. Referring to HP’s database-as-a-service, he said that Nutanix is doing more work with HP GreenLake, which has led to the company selling more of Nutanix’s entire portfolio and not just the core.
The company also announced a partnership with Red Hat, which is substantial in its scope and goals.
In prepared remarks, Ramaswami has called the quarter “a strong end to an excellent fiscal year,” which he says saw consistent execution and solid progress across financial and strategic objectives.