Nutanix Teams Up With Google For Hybrid Clouds

Nutanix and Google Cloud have said they will work together to deliver hybrid clouds which combine the best of private cloud architectures with scalable public cloud environments.

It comes after Nutanix positioned itself as a rival to the likes of Amazon Web Services (AWS), and has previously claimed that public clouds are too costly and complex for many enterprises.

And in another development, the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS will also be delivered as a full software stack thanks to new capabilities in Nutanix Calm and a new cloud service called Nutanix Xi.

Nutanix and Google

Nutanix of course specialises in delivering data centre hardware and software in order to provide businesses with a hybrid cloud approach that bridges the gap between on-premise servers and big data centres.

With the partnership agreement with Google Cloud, it seems that both firms have recognised the respective strengths of each others services.

“As a result of the partnership, joint customers will be able to deploy and manage both cloud-based and traditional enterprise applications as a unified public cloud service, while blending the Nutanix environment with Google Cloud Platform (GCP),” the two firms said.

“Google and Nutanix will work together to address the technology opportunities for building and operating hybrid clouds that combine the best of private cloud architectures and scalable public cloud environments,” they added.

For example customers will be able to undertake ‘one-click hybrid operations with Nutanix Calm for GCP, which will allow for a ingle control plane for managing applications between GCP and Nutanix cloud environments

Nutanix customers will also be able to natively extend their data centre environment into GCP via Nutanix Xi Cloud Services on GCP,

Meanwhile Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS has built-in support for Kubernetes, which enables container-based applications to be deployed, managed and scaled in a Nutanix Enterprise Cloud.

And it is not just hybrid cloud services that both firms will offer. Both have also agreed to collaborate on Internet of Things (IoT) use-cases which will combine real-time edge intelligence with core cloud computing.

“Hybrid Cloud needs be a two-way street,” said Sudheesh Nair, President, Nutanix. “The strategic alliance with Google demonstrates our commitment to simplify operations for our customers with a single enterprise cloud OS across both private and public clouds – with ubiquity, extensibility and intuitive design.”

“With this strategic alliance with Nutanix, Google is addressing one of the most pressing technology challenges faced by enterprises – the ability to manage hybrid cloud applications without sacrificing security or scalability,” said Nan Boden, Head of Global Technology Partners, Google Cloud. “Partners like Nutanix are essential for us to build a thriving ecosystem and help enterprises innovate faster.”

The first integration of Nutanix and Google Cloud Platform will be available in the first quarter of 2018. No pricing information is available yet.

Software Stack

It remains a busy time for Nutanix at its NEXT Conference 2017, as it has also announced that the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS will be delivered as a full software stack with new capabilities in Nutanix Calm and a new cloud service called Nutanix Xi.

“The new offerings take a fresh approach to hybrid cloud, empowering customers to use Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Software throughout their multi-cloud deployments, including on-premises with platforms from IBM, Dell EMC, Lenovo, Cisco and HPE, in the cloud via AWSTM, Google Cloud Platform and Azure, or natively with Nutanix Xi Cloud Services,” said the firm.

It should be remembered that the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS supports a variety of hardware platforms from other vendors to ensure that a single software fabric with unified management can run across all enterprise environments.

The Xi Cloud Services is designed to give customers the ability to instantly provision and consume Nutanix infrastructure on demand as a native extension of the enterprise data centre. Nutanix Calm on the other hand is design to help system admins as it abstracts application environments from the underlying infrastructure and recommends the right cloud for the right workload.

“Multi-cloud IT strategies require much more than today’s first generation hybrid cloud architectures, which force companies to provision and manage separate IT silos” said Sunil Potti, Chief Product and Development Officer, Nutanix.

“The Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS enables ubiquitous consumption of simple, delightful cloud services across any enterprise infrastructure and will be expanded with Nutanix Calm to deliver a consistent experience across all cloud environments, while new Nutanix Xi Cloud Services will enable enterprise apps to be consumed as a service without burdensome ‘forklift’ operations – making lift-and-shift a thing of the past,” he added.

Try our cloud computing quiz!