HPE and Nutanix team up on cloud

HPE and Nutanix announced a global partnership to deliver an integrated hybrid cloud as a Service (aaS) solution to the market.

This offering will use Nutanix’s Enterprise Cloud OS software including its built-in, free AHV hypervisor, delivered through HPE GreenLake to provide customers with an HPE-managed hybrid cloud that, it’s claimed, dramatically lowers total cost of ownership and accelerates time to value.

Additionally, as part of the agreement, Nutanix will enable its channel partners to directly sell HPE servers combined with Nutanix’s Enterprise Cloud OS software so that customers can purchase an integrated appliance.

In a statement, the pair said businesses were under constant pressure to innovate and accelerate digital transformation. Legacy approaches to hybrid IT present many challenges, including complex systems that require large IT operations staff, increasing software licensing and operating costs, and concerns over vendor lock-in. As a result, businesses are losing flexibility in a world that demands choice and agility.

It said that the HPE-Nutanix partnership addresses these challenges by delivering an “attractive alternative” that reduces cost and complexity. The combined offering will provide a fully managed hybrid cloud infrastructure offered as a Service and deployed in customers’ data centres or co-location facility.

“The combination of HPE GreenLake and Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS software is ideal for customers who want to use Nutanix, including its AHV hypervisor technology, to support a range of use cases. These include mission-critical workloads and big data applications; virtualised tier-1 workloads such as SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft; as well as support for virtualised big data applications, such as Splunk and Hadoop”, the pair said.

They claim that customers using the HPE GreenLake aaS offering will benefit from:

  • Reduction in cost of operations, Capex spend, and support and professional services costs – The combined offering promises customers significant lower total cost of ownership. According to Nutanix commissioned IDC research on Nutanix hyperconverged software, customers will achieve a 60 per cent reduction in the five-year cost of operations. According to an HPE commissioned Forrester report on the total economic impact of HPE GreenLake, customers benefit from a 30 per cent Capex savings due to an eliminated need for overprovisioning, and a 90 per cent reduction in support and professional services costs.1
  • Focus on innovation and acceleration of time to value – by shifting to an IT aaS model, HPE provides 40 per cent increased productivity by reducing the support load on IT operations staff and shortens the time to deploy IT projects by 65 per cent.2
  • Choice and simplicity – customers can now leverage a built-in, free hypervisor through an aaS offering, and benefit from Nutanix’s single-click simplicity to deploy and scale virtualised workloads. The Nutanix technology can reduce IT staff hours by 61 per cent for deployment, management and support when compared to traditional infrastructure, allowing HPE GreenLake services to be delivered more quickly and efficiently.3

HPE CEO Antonio Neri said: “HPE created the modern on-premises, as a service consumption market with HPE GreenLake. Hundreds of global customers now leverage HPE GreenLake to get the benefits of a cloud experience combined with the security, governance, and application performance of an on-premises environment, while paying for the service based on actual consumption. HPE is expanding its leadership in this market by providing an additional choice to customers seeking a hybrid cloud alternative that promises greater agility at lower costs.”

Nutanix CEO Dheeraj Pandey said: “Our customers tell us that it’s their applications that matter most. Our partnership with HPE will provide Nutanix customers with another choice to make their infrastructure invisible so they can focus on business-critical apps, not the underlying technology. We are delighted to partner with HPE for the benefit of enterprises looking for the right hybrid cloud solution for their business.”

Nutanix will allow its channel partners to directly sell HPE servers combined with Nutanix’s Enterprise Cloud OS software as an integrated appliance. Nutanix customers to use a fully integrated solution, shipping directly from HPE factories, connecting the world’s largest installed base of secure, innovative ProLiant and Apollo server technology from HPE and the pioneering Enterprise Cloud OS software from Nutanix to modernise data centre environments and unify the support experience on their preferred hardware and software platforms.

The Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS software on HPE GreenLake and the integrated appliance utilising Nutanix software on HPE servers are expected to be available in Calendar Q3 2019.