Navigating Change Together: Nutanix Delivers VMware Alternative

The tech world is no stranger to change, but uncertainty can still shake even the firmest foundations. With VMware’s recent changes under Broadcom, some partners might feel they’re left searching for solid ground.

In an exclusive interview with CRNtv Host Sydney Neely, Dave Gwyn, senior vice president of worldwide channels at Nutanix shares how they are providing stability for partners right now.

Sydney: How is Nutanix actively supporting partners in navigating the recent developments surrounding VMware?

Dave: First, we recognize this isn't a standard bump in the road for our partners, this is a serious, meaningful impact for them. Many partners had critical revenue streams related to the VMware and the Broadcom acquisition, and it’s having a serious impact on them. We take it very seriously. We put ourselves in the shoes of our partners and we are genuinely asking ourselves what can we do as a vendor to provide an alternative that takes away their risk and offers them a new way forward.

Sydney: What are some key benefits Nutanix brings to the table for partners who are considering a transition?

Dave: Our partner program is called Elevate and it was awarded a five-star rating in 2024 from The Channel Company. We've done a lot of work on that program over the last year. We've improved our partner profitability on the front and back end so better margin, better rebates.

We doubled individual SPIFs so that the sales, technical folks and our partners are incentivized in the same way that the executives are at our partner companies.

We created an autonomous segment that we call Channel Led, it's got a $10 billion addressable market and tens of thousands of accounts in that segment.

We're paying our partners additional rebates as they focus on accounts in that segment, asking for their autonomous selling there and increasing profitability when they behave as a true force multiplier for us at Nutanix.

We're a subscription company, but you also have to think about renewals. We've made renewals more profitable, and we've done that to really encourage our partners to be able to take advantage of the full lifetime value that a customer represents.

We all have become interested in driving adoption and because of that renewals are profitable to our partners as our follow on expand deals because we always have had high return purchase multiples and we've also averaged a 90 net promoter score for the last seven years.

We've got great customer satisfaction that tends to lead to consistent renewals and a lot of expanded sales.

Sydney: Partners want the switch to be as seamless as possible. In the face of change, how do you ensure a smooth transition process for those looking to adopt your platform?

Dave: We've rolled out a migration program and whether our partners want to move from vSAN or from ESXi to AHV in full or in part, we've got a migration program that provides one year of Nutanix licensing free that's transacted as a one-time discount to our customers via our partners.

We also include deployment and migration services for migrating workloads from vSAN or ESXi to the Nutanix Cloud platform. We have that performed by our partners so that our partners can use their own services organizations to do it.

I think the key to this also is to have a product that actually fits. You can't swap out ESXi and plug in a random firewall. You must have an applicable product, and our product, called AHV, is a battle-tested enterprise-grade hypervisor. It's a great alternative to ESXi has been for a long time.

Our partners and our customers feel comfortable that they've got a product that truly can be plugged in and used in both private cloud and the public cloud for virtualized or containerized workloads.

For more information about Nutanix, visit nutanix.com/partners.