AWS Mid-Year Leadership Summit 2025 | Tarkan Maner, Nutanix

Clips
News
More from AWS Mid-Year Leadership Summit 2025

Tarkan Maner

CCO

Nutanix

Hybrid cloud emerges as cornerstone of enterprise AI strategy

Hybrid cloud is no longer just a bridge between old and new systems — it’s the foundation of enterprise reinvention.As organizations shift from static infrastructure to dynamic, AI-ready environments, hybrid cloud is becoming the architecture of choice for scaling innovation without sacrificing control. It’s not just about moving workloads anymore — it’s about orchestrating across edge, core and cloud with platforms that support legacy systems while enabling new, containerized and intelligent applications

play_circle_outline Importance of public-private partnerships in the convergence of commercial and public sectors.

play_circle_outline Nutanix's role in managing legacy, modern, and AI-centric applications across platforms.

play_circle_outline AWS partnership critical for Nutanix's success and customer outcomes in hybrid cloud.

play_circle_outline Nutanix emphasizes customer service and strong Net Promoter Score (NPS) for satisfaction.

play_circle_outline Cloud migrations are challenging, necessitating a comprehensive strategy for enterprises.

Info
Transcript

Tarkan Maner, Nutanix

Tarkan Maner

CCO Nutanix

In this AWS Mid-Year Leadership Summit segment, Nutanix chief commercial officer, Tarkan Maner, sits down with theCUBE’s John Furrier to break down why hybrid cloud and AI are rewriting the playbook for enterprise infrastructure. Maner traces Nutanix’s 15-year rise from hyperconverged pioneer to cloud-smart platform that lets developers, operators and business leaders run legacy, virtual and AI workloads on-prem, in AWS or at the edge.

The conversation dives into Nutanix and AWS’s strategic collaboration agreement, covering joint product integration, c... Read more

explore Keep Exploring

What recent trends and developments are taking place in the public and private sectors related to cloud computing and artificial intelligence? add

What has been the role and impact of Nutanix in the high-tech IT industry over the past 15 years? add

What is the significance of the partnership with AWS for the success of Nutanix and its customers? add

What is Nutanix's approach to customer satisfaction and how does it compare to AWS in the context of hybrid cloud solutions? add

What is the significance of migration for customers regarding their legacy and new applications? add

bolt Powered by CUBE AI

Tarkan Maner, Nutanix

search

>> Hello, we go back to the Cube here in our Boston area Studios. I'm John Furrier, your host of the Cube. We are here for the special presentation of the AWS and Ecosystems Leaders. It's our halftime report, 2025. It's the midpoint between reinvent and a lot has happened. So much change, so many announcements. It's almost like a half a year, feels like two years, but there's a lot of activity and we're featuring all the leaders from AWS as well as leaders in the ecosystem. Tarkan Maner, here's the chief Commercial officer of Nutanix Cube alumni. Tarkan, great to see you. Halftime. Report lots going on. How you doing?

Tarkan Maner

>> Always awesome to see you, John. You're fantastic. Cube is fantastic, and I just saw you in DC at Nutanix .NEXT event. We talked about some of these things at that event as well. So great to see you.

>> Yeah, the commercial side of the business is booming. You see public sector now becoming actually taken out of the name of AWS event. It's called the DC Summit. There is such a convergence between commercial and public sector, public private partnerships. The growth of AI is seeing all the action from AWS on the semiconductor side. I just saw Andy Jassy at the NYSE. Came into our studio. Robotics. You're hearing a lot about the sovereign cloud and private cloud. You're seeing distributed computing now full throttle, hybrid cloud. It's a bet that Nutanix made a long time ago, and so we covered this also at your next event and we went into great detail. But Nutanix really in a pole position for what's going on in both cloud and AI. Again, as Andy Jassy said to us on theCUBE as well as Jim Cramer on Mad Money, AI is the most transformative wave he's ever seen in his lifetime. We've been saying that on theCUBE. He even had said it's bigger than cloud, and he's a cloud guy. So he's like for him to say that it must be a hundred X more than cloud because they're leaning into it. Every company is going through a transformation. You guys have been there from day one on the on-prem infrastructure and private cloud, the convergence of hyper convergence, that was a couple generations ago. That's stormed into now AI infrastructure. So just set the table for us, Tarkan. The story of Nutanix for the people who aren't familiar with the role and this partnership with AWS in the ecosystem because of the experience and what you're doing now is very, very relevant.

Tarkan Maner

>> Absolutely. I think you just outlined John, what's going on in the industry. Look, Nutanix has been on stage for about 15 years now, basically redefining the platform story in high-tech in IT. So over the time, over the past 15 years, we've become the de facto platform for virtual applications, for legacy applications, and for brand new modern applications which are Kubernetes container driven and also leading now into AI centric applications. Basically, we become the platform, the destination for developers to build applications, for ops people to manage and run applications and for business people to run their businesses on. So bottom line is what's going on in the industry, obviously providing a lot of in our sales, what's going on with the Broadcom VMware acquisition, what's going on in the open source community? So at the end of the day, obviously our customers, our ecosystem is moving to the cloud. Cloud brings a lot of benefits. Some of the vendors in the space are allergic to cloud. They don't want cloud. We believe in cloud. We are cloud smart, cloud first company, and beyond that, we are the hybrid cloud platform for applications to run anywhere. Anywhere you can build applications, anywhere you can run applications and we are the platform for that. So in that context, obviously AWS, Amazon, AWS partnership critically important for our success and most importantly for our customer success. And we covered some of these things. When you and I met in DC at .NEXT events in May. We made about 12 announcements with platform vendors, OEM vendors, storage vendors, security vendors, new ISPs and NVIDIA in the AI space and everything went back to that hybrid cloud message with partners like AWS. So we are super excited about what's going on and being the platform gives us a lot of opportunity to deliver great outcomes for our customers.

>> What I like about the Nutanix story, and I'd like you to elaborate on is that it's not just on-prem, it's cloud edge. Distributed computing is the paradigm. It kind of is the computer science that's been around the computer industry. You're seeing a lot of systems thinking coming into the market, platform engineers working on thinking about AI infrastructure, and you and Amazon have a similar culture of working backwards from the customer. And right now customers, it's not about cloud versus on-prem. It's really about how do us all work together. So one of the key things in this area is migrations. How do I set up a cost-effective infrastructure to handle what my distributed computing will need to look like in this modern era? Because you have sovereignty issues that aren't just about GDPR and other things. It's about data. It's about sovereignty of a nation. You start to see cloud and hybrid architectures evolve quickly. So this is putting a lot of pressure on migrations. I have to ask you, what is the story with customers with migrations? Are they struggling with it? Are they actively moving workloads into the cloud for certain use cases? When does the on-prem happen? Take me through what the customers are doing right now because cloud is prevalent. Obviously your relationship with AWS highlights that. Are customers still struggling with migrations?

Tarkan Maner

>> Right. So look, stepping back a little bit, you just said it, AWS and Nutanix, culturally very similar companies even though AWS started the journey from a cloud-only perspective, and we started the journey from the on-prem perspective, we just kind of met in the middle and created this beautiful marriage of two companies coming together and providing a hybrid cloud vision unlike any other. So stepping back, for a business to be successful, for a partnership to be successful, you need to have customer-partner ecosystem intimacy. You need to have a portfolio IP differentiation that's different, that's meaningful, that drives outcomes, and you need operational excellence on how you do things from customer service to customer support. Look, Nutanix is 90 NPS Net Promoter Score score company for the past 10 plus years because we are obsessed with customer outcomes, customer service, customer delight. AWS is the same energy, same culture. So what we decided is basically to help customers to take advantage of this hybrid cloud journey in which they can run, build, manage applications anywhere they like, on-prem, off-prem or in between. These applications can be legacy applications, even mainframe applications. These applications can be virtual applications. Some of the classical applications over the past 20 years, and these applications could be new generation, Kubernetes-driven microservices applications, container applications, especially now enterprise AI-driven applications that we are also working with AWS and companies like NVIDIA in a big way to deliver outcomes around AI for our customers, not just googly-gob AI applications, but applications actually deliver value like fraud detection banking industry, document search, document lifecycle management for legal industry, manufacturing lifecycle for smart city projects and governments and so on. So having said all this migration becomes a big story because a lot of these customers want to migrate some of their legacy applications to cloud. They want to run some of their virtual applications both in the cloud, in public cloud, also in their on-prem and want to build some of their new applications, AI applications in the cloud and also run them fine-tune them, manage them better in the edge. So AWS and Nutanix jointly provide a platform doing all of this and doing all of this with strong customer service and support and with the best financial metrics and best outcomes with the customers. That's why we're super excited about the partnership and what we're doing together.

>> Yeah, we heard from Matt Garman on the keynote here too as well, a 40-minute interview I just did. He says that they see a lot of growth in AI workloads, and you pointed out some of the production aspects of it. There are more production workloads that have not yet even gone to the cloud from on-prem. So there's still a lot of cloud migration, not just for lift and shift, but real production workloads. And now more AI enabled or AI native production workloads. So this is a huge headroom opportunity for value extraction for customers and value creation on your side. So it's a huge upside potential. Talk about that specifically.

Tarkan Maner

>> Yeah, absolutely. Look, just to dissect that a little bit further, and you just gave all the high level tenants. One of the key issues with enterprise AI and AI in general is AI started with a more like a consumer view with large language models, basically with gen AI. But now that vision, that roadmap is changing toward agentic models, which is going to actually create huge value for enterprises to deliver better value for their customers in every vertical industry, in every part of the world, in any size company. So having said all this, for this to happen effectively, you need to have the right platform on-prem and right partnerships and right platform off-prem in the cloud and combine those services and capabilities together, especially at the edge, especially for inferencing, especially for managing these applications. And most importantly, as these applications also in the open source universe, there are a lot of issues related to data gravity, security, you mentioned GDPR, privacy, hugely important issue. So we are providing the tools for managing these systems and applications running on these systems better than on-prem or off-prem and most likely hybrid cloud fashion with AWS. And also deliver an agnostic platform for customers to use any large language model, any OEM platform from Dell to Cisco to HP to Supermicro, to Lenovo, to Fujitsu. Just stop me, we keep it open. Working with any storage vendor. You saw we made a big announcement with Pure Storage. We have a big announcement with Dell storage beyond basically HCI hyperconverged. Now we are moving to external storage applications, supporting those customers and workloads we never support before, making sure from legacy applications to virtual applications to modern container-centric AI applications, we give the best platform and best opportunity for customers to save money and create more value for their end-user customers with AWS.

>> Well, everyone knows you guys have your own hypervisors. That's known. How is Amazon customers and how is AWS executing with you in terms of specifics, product integration and go-to-market joint selling, or how is that working? Can you just detail that? I think that's important because a lot of AWS customers are looking at not only migrations, everything's being migrated, even VMware workloads, and they're going full on-prem. How is Amazon Web Services capitalized on and what's in it for the customers, their customers and now your joint customers?

Tarkan Maner

>> AWS and Nutanix agreed around a strategic collaboration agreement we call SCA. This agreement basically have two main tenets. One is our product, development and integration together on the IP front, delivering the best value with the best platform for our customers. Hypervisor is part of that of course, but beyond that, hypervisor at the end of the day is a commodity part of that overall platform. The platform has all the aspects of manageability, security, availability, reliability, providing support for different type of databases on-prem, off-prem, both closed source and open source databases from Oracle to Postgres, everything in between. Kubernetes services, making sure we give tools for DevOps environments for folks to build, manage new applications, container-centric AI applications, efficiently, fast time to market, supporting them with the best storage platform in the back end across multiple protocols from block to file to object, making sure we completely secure these systems and processes. So the joint partnership entails both product integration and innovation and most importantly, with our channel ecosystem, with our ISD ecosystem, with our OEM ecosystem, working with partners like Dell, Cisco, HP, Lenovo, Supermicro, Fujitsu, and deliver value to our customers wherever those applications run from on-prem to off-prem or in a hybrid fashion. So the partnership is a very unique partnership. We are not exclusive per se. Obviously AWS partners with a lot of different ISVs and vendors. We do a lot of work also with other cloud partners, but this one is a strategic preferred partnership between the two teams. We invested in this jointly. We have a lot of enablement with our channel partners globally. Our SI partners like Accenture, TCS, Infosys, Vprom, Deloitte, they're all part of that ecosystem. Our MSD partners like SoftBank, NTT Data, ODH, OneNeck. We are delivering a complete end-to-end ecosystem with our partner ecosystem delivering this hybrid cloud vision to our customers to get best outcomes for them. Again, final point with the best security, best manageability, best availability, reliability, with a great total cost of ownership and obviously with the scale, again from legacy apps all the way to AI apps across any platform.

>> Yeah. I think the end-end thing is one of the things that's a trend that's really critical when we start to see successful AI because agents and the application layer is going to morph into the business logic. That's where that end-to-end platform, whether you want to call it horizontally scalable, but vertically specialized is key. Tons of great activity, Tarkan. I have to ask you, since this is the halftime report, it's almost like a whole half a year went by. Give us an update. I know it might be a little bit redundant because you just had your next event, but for the folks that didn't see all that content we published on theCUBE, give us a snapshot of what happened in the first half of the year for Nutanix and AWS and Nutanix in general, and then what's your plans for the second half of the year? Just saw Rajiv here at the RAISE Conference Summit, so obviously the second half's coming, we're going to see re:Invent in six months. What's happened? Give us all the highlights and what's the plans for second half of the year?

Tarkan Maner

>> No, you're fantastic. By the way, John, every time I talk to you, you give me so much energy. I love having these conversations with you and you are so contextual. You get the points crystal clear. Look, this is the end of our fiscal year, mid-year basically, and we're public company, you saw our results. We had a phenomenal last 12 months from a calendar perspective. First six months of the calendar has been great, and next six months we're basically committed to executing in a big with AWS. The partnership started very strong because there's demand. As you know, a lot of legacy vendors are still trying to support the customers, but sometimes what they provide might be not super contextual or strategic. And as you know, my style, John competition makes us better, not bitter. I never bad-mouthed competition. Competition makes us all better. We are all in the same ecosystem, delivering value for our customers because we're customer-obsessed, but we want to make sure that customers realize we have the best migration tools, best tools for security and manageability with AWS. Basically giving them a modern platform, basically taking them from legacy virtualization-centric universe into a container hybrid cloud, AI-driven universe with AWS. So we have a lot of stuff going on in the halftime into the next six months, I'm going to be in New York with the AWS team. We're working very closely with Matt, with Andy, who started the partnership with us four years back. The strategic collaboration agreement in the last 12 months, growing very, very nicely there, and most importantly, delivering super value customers around the world, around multiple vertical industries. We have some of our customers going to be in Europe with us on stage. They're going to talk about some of the success stories they have, and I think the next six months, the rest of the calendar year is going to be fantastic. We're super excited. This is one of the most exciting parts of our business and personally one of my most favorite sides of the business. Hybrid cloud and AI coming together, again, creating huge value for everyone involved.

>> Yeah, distributed computing is a team sport. Great that you pointed out the relationship. I got to say, in interviewing all the Amazon executives, part of the keynote program that you're part of, the story between the lines is that they're executing full transformation at scale with AI, the entire company. Andy and Amazon running all of Amazon and Matt Garman, CEO of AWS, they are moving and it's not a pivot. They're not changing directions, they're just accelerating at scale, transformational change internally to build the muscle for the AI that they need. They know that's coming super fast. So we're going to be excited to follow your joint teams as they hit their stride. But I have to ask you, with that being said, the ecosystem a big part of the cloud now, AI infrastructure is changing. How are you guys transforming and what's the role of the ecosystem in the modern era? Because it's not like yesterday's playbook, I mean it's built on top of, but there's all new mechanics and mechanisms and relationships in this ecosystem. Like you said, it's end to end. MCP is a big part of the agents, so they can talk to each other. The platforms have to support, and you start to see this . So what's your perspective on that? Because it's kind of the same playbook, but it's got a tweak to it. It's much faster change. What's going on. Give us your take.

Tarkan Maner

>> You nailed it. Without the ecosystem, without the right ecosystem, without the right contextual ecosystem, this is a fool's errand. You have to have... No one company can do this alone, as you know well. From server platform to storage platform to networking platform infrastructure partnerships to subsystems to GPUs with NVIDIA, AMD, Intel and others to tie into all the ISV applications by vertical industry and geo. And the platform with Nutanix, delivering this value with a phenomenal partnership with AWS from a cloud perspective is key. So within that context, obviously channel partners, GSI partners like Accenture, TCS, Vprom, Infosys, and obviously our MSD partner's going to play a massive role. We talked about NCPs. A lot of these GPUs or service companies are coming now obviously. Mega partners, mega vendors like AWS, doing a phenomenal job with their technologies, and we want to make sure we provide an agnostic solution for any use case, any workload on any platform. The key word is here is simplicity, and the second key word is security. Keep things simple, keep things secure, and be agnostic as much as possible with the right channel ecosystem around it to deliver the best value for our customers. That's our big focus. Today, we have more than thousand partners in this ecosystem, more than thousand certifications, making sure everything is simple, integrated, open systems based, and delivers value in terms of financial to our customers and with the best simplicity and security.

>> Yeah, you start to see that the integrations, the migrations, the joint selling, the intentional relationships between AWS and the ecosystem is the formula if you want to be high value add creation side of it. That's a huge piece. Thoughts on that?

Tarkan Maner

>> Yeah, absolutely. Look, all of these piece by the way, critically important for the success, and one last point tying to what I just said, making it relevant and contextual for the customer. As you know, we are super customer obsessed. Andy, Matt, Ruba, Chris Sullivan, Rachel Rich, the entire executive team we love at AWS because they're so customer oriented, customer obsessed. We have similarly in our boardrooms meeting rooms have an extra chair empty for the customer's voice. We love that. And a lot of our folks also worked in the past for AWS in the ecosystem, and some of the folks at AWS worked in the past at Nutanix. So we have a lot of good people. Look, goes back to the people, the culture and honestly passion to deliver value to the customer. So from that perspective, we are super psyched about the partnership. This is definitely one plus one equals three kind of an ecosystem for us with AWS. And I'll tell you the next 12 to 24 months holds huge opportunities for us and for our customer base with our partner ecosystem delivery value.

>> Tarkan, thank you so much for coming in and keynoting on the ecosystem side. Really appreciate your time and again. AWS and the ecosystem all primed for major growth. Thanks for coming on. I appreciate your insights.

Tarkan Maner

>> Always a pleasure. Great to see you.

>> Okay, I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We are here for the AWS Ecosystems Leaders, a halftime report digital event, featuring the midpoint between re:Invent where so much has happened, so many announcements, so much change, and it's only going to accelerate as we go into re:Invent at the end of the year. Thanks for watching.