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Nutanix comes to town

Nicola Mawson
By Nicola Mawson, Contributor.
Johannesburg, 12 Nov 2014
Nutanix has been growing at a phenomenal rate, says Paul Phillips, regional director for Western Europe and Africa.
Nutanix has been growing at a phenomenal rate, says Paul Phillips, regional director for Western Europe and Africa.

Nutanix, the Web-scale converged infrastructure company, is expanding into SA to better service its growing sub-Saharan African customer and channel base.

As part of the launch, Nutanix will build a team of sales and technical Nutanix skills to support partners, as well as appoint a country manager. The company currently works through local distributor, Bitrate, and partners.

As part of its global distribution strategy, Nutanix will appoint an additional distributor to provide greater reach into Sub-Saharan Africa.

Paul Phillips, regional director for Western Europe and Africa, notes the company has been through a massive expansion globally, having more than doubled staff to just over 800 in the past nine months. He says the local office currently has three staff members, but will scale as demand grows.

Continental shift

Nutanix is also looking at moving further into Africa and will use its Johannesburg base as headquarters, says Phillips. He notes additional resources will be put on the ground as demand grows.

Jan Ursi, director of the company's channel sales and field marketing unit for Europe, Middle East and Africa, explains the company, which is valued at $2 billion and has $300 million in the bank to fund growth, went from zero shipments in 2011, to an annualised rate of 200 million currently.

The company, which Ursi says aims to be bigger than EMC, previously sold its products into SA through the channel.

Phillips says the global market will be worth $50 billion shortly and represents a large opportunity for Nutanix. He adds there is keen demand from local companies, such as those in financial services, and it has also signed up a range of partners and resellers to provide its offerings.

These include Bitrate, Bytes Integrated Systems, Cybervine IT Solutions and Eurotech Computer Services South Africa. The company has also inked a deal with Dell to incorporate its software into Dell's XC series servers.

Energy saving

Phillips says the five-year-old company was founded by people who built Web-scale data centres for entities such as Google and Facebook, and wanted to take the technology to enterprises. Ursi added the solution simplifies ICT environments, requires fewer skills to manage, takes up less space, and uses between five and 10 times less electricity.

Phillips says although there are other companies that provide similar offerings, Nutanix's value lies in its software that intelligently allows one person to manage thousands of applications and offers a mobile dashboard that can be used on tablets.

Other companies such as VMWare are also entering this hyper-converged space, which Ursi says validates the company's offering. He notes, however, many other products require the vendor's own software be used, while Nutanix's offering is agnostic and scalable. "Your solution is as big as you need it at that time."

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