'We Leave No Partners Behind': Nutanix’s Alvarez Talks .NEXT 2021 News

“We have successfully become a subscription company and we haven’t left our partners behind.” That’s the word from Nutanix’s Christian Alvarez as the cloud computing company holds its .NEXT 2021 conference this week.

Nutanix, which enables hybrid clouds, has spent the past couple years shifting its resellers away from legacy sales and compensations models. It has done that with greater efficacy over the past year through Elevate. That partner program, launched last September, emphasizes expertise and capability over size, and pays on a recurring-revenue basis.

“I’m proud that we went away from a traditional tiered partner program to a 100% competency-based program,” Alvarez told Channel Futures. “I know that the mindshare we’ve built … by the trends we’ve seen in certifications … has just been outstanding.”

Nutanix’s Christian Alvarez

But Alvarez isn’t done looking for ways to continue making Nutanix’s partner approach even smoother. He’s working on a new tactic he believes will motivate partners to sell more — and keep them in better touch with their customers. He calls it “disaggregating the incentive stack.”

That’s a lofty way of saying that the lifetime value of a customer matters more than the initial sale. From that perspective, Nutanix could reward partners throughout the client’s time with the company — at point of sale, at activation, at renewal, at expansion, or at another point. Whatever the cadence, the goal remains constant: “You are basically assuring that the customer is going to get the most value out of their investments,” Alvarez said. “Incentives drive behaviors.”

Overall, resellers benefit “and embrace this new subscription economy,” he added.

More Focus on Distributors

Alvarez isn’t only focused on resellers, though. This week, at .NEXT 2021, he announced the Elevate Distributor Partner Program. It’s a tiered structure for distributors.

“It’s one of the first of its kind in the industry,” Alvarez said.

In this model, the company will expect its distributors to act as aggregators. They and their resellers will recommend and build the most optimal platforms on Nutanix with products from the likes of HPE Greenlake, Lenovo, RedHat and others. The idea is that partners will sell more business outcomes, rather than products.

“Partners love that and it’s a huge trend,” Alvarez said. “It’s changing discussions.”

Nutanix also hasn’t let up on developing new capabilities for partners to offer.

Nutanix Cloud Platform Feature Upgrades

To that point, on Tuesday at .NEXT 2021, the company unveiled additional features in Nutanix Cloud Platform. For example, partners now may take advantage of AOS version 6 software for building software-defined data centers and speeding up hybrid multicloud deployments, Nutanix said. They also may deliver more specialized business continuity/disaster recovery options, including the ability to use the public cloud as a secondary site. Nutanix said the BC/DR enhancements eliminate enterprises’ specialized hardware and software, improve recovery time and reduce licensing costs. Further, Nutanix Cloud Platform soon will come with automated zero-trust security policies. Other upgrades in Nutanix Cloud Platform include simplified data management, and optimized database and big data workload performance.

IDC’s Eric Sheppard

“The new features address many of the demands of enterprise customers looking to gain efficiency and reliability across clouds, to support their needs now and in the future,” said Eric Sheppard, research vice president for IDC’s Infrastructure Platforms and Technologies Group.

Alvarez agreed, with the channel in mind.

“We leave no partners behind,” he said. “We don’t take deals direct; we’re not taking renewals direct.”