Nutanix and Pure Storage are joining forces. Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is now fully integrated with Pure Storage FlashArray over NVMe/TCP. This full-stack solution targets the large numbers of VMware workloads that are expected to find a new home.
Nutanix and Pure Storage made the announcement during Nutanix .NEXT 2025 in Washington DC, which is being held this week. Nutanix wants to offer freedom of choice in storage today, where it has always been “opinionated,” according to SVP Product & Solutions Marketing Lee Caswell.
Storage is now available in a decoupled form, via Dell, Pure Storage, and Cisco. This makes it easier to move away from VMware, as the storage layer can be retained and replaced on the normal upgrade cycle.
Migration in full swing
Nutanix and Pure Storage are not taking it for granted that organizations are migrating their VMs. They cite Gartner research that concludes that 50 percent of virtualized workloads will have left VMware “at enterprise scale” by 2028. The reason is obvious, but to be clear: this is due to the increased costs associated with continued use of VMware by Broadcom.
The push factors for customers are clear, but Nutanix and Pure prefer to talk about the benefits. For example, the posture regarding “end-to-end cyber resilience” should be much better within Nutanix. Flow micro-segmentation makes it less likely that an infrastructure will experience downtime as a whole. What does go down can be automatically recovered via disaster recovery orchestration. In addition to this offering from Nutanix, shared customers with Pure Storage can also benefit from at-rest encryption of their data and SafeMode for stronger security.
No (more) lock-in
The saga surrounding Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware will remain in the minds of IT decision-makers for years (perhaps decades) to come. The most important lesson (one that organizations seem unable to learn): don’t be tied to a single platform. If you do, it will result in sky-high costs or unwanted migrations time and time again. Modernization is difficult even when planned, especially when there are high compliance requirements.
Complete modernization is not necessary with Nutanix. It is likely that a hybrid cloud mix will always exist in larger organizations, making the promise of a single management layer for all environments from Nutanix attractive. Flexibility is therefore the magic word, as evidenced by the choice that the partnership has made. After all, the partnership is a match with all Pure Storage-supported hardware builders: Cisco, Dell, HPE, Lenovo, and Supermicro.
Early access to the Nutanix-Pure Storage combination will start in the summer of 2025, when channel partners from both parties will be able to offer it.