In a joint interaction, CRN India speaks to Ritesh Syal, Head & Director, Channels & Alliances, India, Nutanix and Anuj Gupta, CEO, Hitachi Systems Micro Clinic (HSMC), one of the master partners of Nutanix, who share how they are addressing the enterprise IT challenges and accelerating adoption of multi cloud as a combined force
Can you tell us about the Hitachi Systems Micro Clinic’s (HSMC) partnership with Nutanix?
HSMC: We are Master Partners with Nutanix, which helps us earn performance linked benefits. To maintain our strategic engagement, we have ensured to maintain a required number of certified resources with focused selling on the Nutanix core HCI products. By transforming the digital ecosystem of our customers using Nutanix products and solutions, we enable them with easier management, scalability, security, resilience, lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), rapid time to value and instant provisioning.
How have Nutanix and Hitachi Systems Micro Clinic collaboratively helped customers achieve business transformation? How has this changed during the pandemic?
HSMC: The range of offerings from Nutanix backed by Hitachi’s prowess to develop, design, and implement solutions is the primary driver to achieve business transformation for customers. The pandemic has accelerated digitisation, and Hitachi Systems Micro Clinic is helping customers consolidate and optimise application workloads with integrated system architecture, using HCI solutions from Nutanix. One of our customers in the PSU vertical has adopted Nutanix solutions, as they wanted to realise lower TCOs and secured controls. We partnered with Nutanix to consolidate their multilocation footprint of IT within smaller footprints. The biggest differentiator of Nutanix technology platforms for customers, is an alignment of IT to their organisation’s goals.
Nutanix: At its heart, Nutanix is an enabler of business. We are a global leader in cloud software and a pioneer in hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solutions. This means making solutions readily available via software as opposed to hardware. HCI technology makes it possible to combine private, hybrid and multicloud environments. Our mission is to make cloud technology as unobtrusive as possible so our customers can simply get on with business, while being able to manage operations via a single platform, wherever they are. This in turn helps customers achieve their digital transformation goals.
With regards to the pandemic, customers are telling us IT is now viewed more strategically within their organisations. They are seeking-out cloud technologies to maintain business continuity, build resilience, streamline operations and innovate their businesses offerings. The current situation means there is pressure to act now, but they are telling us they also see value in changing the way they are set-up for the long term so they can achieve greater flexibility.
What are the solutions being built (or upsold) around Nutanix platforms by HSMC?
HSMC: We are working on two core business applications migrations with Nutanix; database consolidation and integrated network segmentations for control and security. Before adoption of this strategy some of our customers were having a scattered approach of database management. Our collaboration with Nutanix on the proposed strategy helped customers to simplify database management by 87 percent, reduce TCO by 62 percent, and accelerate DEV/TEST deployment by 10X.
Another solution which we are partnering on includes file system for unstructured user data in a single integrated infrastructure solution. Most of our customers struggle with scattered unstructured user data due to separate NAS solutions. After understanding the pain points of our customers, we aligned with Nutanix to implement file systems solution. This has helped customers to centralise their business applications and file systems in a single solution, which improves management with secure control and with lower TCO.
How are Nutanix and Hitachi Systems Micro Clinic positioned to cater to this new market transition of subscription-based consumption of software?
Nutanix: Nutanix is positioned well because we are absolutely focused on our partners, driving services in the subscription economy of today. This has enabled us to help the channel move faster to Everything-as-a-service (EaaS) and adapt, using the subscription model, since customers are telling us it’s right for them. In fact, enterprises have already made the transition, so this is a sign the model will help the channel bring cloud to more customers so they, too, can move their applications, databases and workloads into the kind of multicloud environments Nutanix excels in enabling. The economic advantages for EaaS are also enormous. This is because EaaS is enabling our partners’ customers to shift resources to innovation and their core businesses, which is in turn helping them achieve better customer outcomes and run their core businesses more efficiently.
HSMC: Nutanix is bringing cloud-like experience on-prem with Hitachi’s proven technical expertise in large projects. Most of the customers are opting for subscription-based consumption of software as they want to get away from the hassles of ownership. Due to the complexity and need for multiple solutions in large projects, we are recommending and implementing Nutanix to reduce complexity with a single console for business applications, databases, file systems with a native virtualisation solution.
What is the future outlook and emerging opportunities for the IT channel in 2021, especially in verticals like BFSI, ITeS and the Government?
Nutanix: As of Q2 FY21, the Nutanix India business grew 68 percent year-on-year, with 27 percent customer growth and 25 percent partner growth, spurred by digital transformation and accelerated cloud adoption. This is a clear indication of the intention of India’s enterprises to adopt the best-of-breed solutions to succeed in a post-Covid world. The new normal will redefine how we do everything – from where we work to telemedicine, from education to e-trading and how data is securely accessed from anywhere at any time. Partners who are at the frontlines in supporting customer transformations will need to embrace the power of the cloud and cloud services, modernise legacy systems, move even more workloads to the cloud, and optimize access to data in the new era of the enterprise being ‘everywhere’.
Across verticals, hybrid and multi-cloud will be the clear winner for organiations looking to operative effectively in an increasingly digital environment.
HSMC: Due to the consolidation of multiple PSU banks, there continue to be opportunities for newer tech implementations. We are also seeing the Government and ITeS sectors grow more open to both private and public clouds due from a control, cost and security standpoint.
After seeing the tough year of 2020, how is Nutanix preparing its channel ecosystem for new opportunities for the next 1-2 years?Nutanix: In today’s subscription and consumption-based economy, the new buyer’s journey will continue to evolve and significantly change. Responding to this changing landscape, we launched our new global partner program, Elevate, in September 2020.
Elevate simplifies engagement for our entire partner ecosystem, and uses a consistent set of tools, resources, and marketing platforms- essentially cutting away complexity, and increasing incentive potential for our partners. The main goal is to help our channel partners provide the best engagement for customers as they navigate technology and business transformation to reach their full potential in today’s digital economy. Even in terms of our expanding portfolio, there is great opportunity for growth for our partners.
Being tech industry leaders what are some of the tech trends that you think will navigate the channel business?
Nutanix: Our Enterprise Cloud Index for India states that the majority (63 percent) of enterprises are shifting investments to hybrid cloud infrastructure as they view it as their ideal IT operating model. The shift to a ‘hybrid’ model of work in India, wherein part of the workforce continues working remotely while others work from the office, indicates the continued reliance on End User Computing (EUC) solutions. VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) and DaaS (Desktop as a Service) are perfect examples of the technology that will continue keeping India’s businesses running- from the country’s largest enterprises to startups and SMEs- as they navigate a post-COVID world. Most importantly, security has gained emphasis in 2020 and is now seen as fundamental to every element of enterprise IT.
HSMC: Nutanix continuously focuses on investing in strengthening the channel business. As a partner, it is important for our strategic engagement to continue to capture the changing need of a diverse set of customers to fuel their market adoption. In retrospect, application modernisation will lead the trend with automation as an objective. We are enabling organisations with Nutanix to deliver IT services with speed and agility. This will rapidly improve the channel business.
