Nutanix .NEXT 2026 | Ketan Shah, Nutanix & Sandeep Singh, NetApp

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More from Nutanix .NEXT 2026

Ketan Shah

VP, Product Management

Nutanix

Sandeep Singh

SVP & GM, Enterprise Storage

NetApp

play_circle_outline Nutanix and NetApp Join Forces to Modernize Virtualization and AI Infrastructure While Elevating Customer Choice and Flexibility

play_circle_outline Practical modernization: reuse existing servers and storage to overcome hardware supply constraints

play_circle_outline Business implications: token budgeting, CFO and HR involvement, monetization of agents

play_circle_outline Roadmap: GA later this year, collaboration on business continuity, cloud-native, hyperscaler integration

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Ketan Shah, Nutanix & Sandeep Singh, NetApp

Ketan Shah

VP, Product Management Nutanix

Sandeep Singh

SVP & GM, Enterprise Storage NetApp

In this interview from Nutanix .NEXT 2026 in Chicago, Ketan Shah, vice president of products at Nutanix, joins Sandeep Singh, senior vice president and general manager of enterprise storage at NetApp, to talk with theCUBE's John Furrier and co-host Alison Kosik about the newly announced partnership between the two companies and how it equips enterprises to modernize infrastructure for AI and agentic workloads. Shah outlines the partnership's core premise: meeting customers where they are by combining Nutanix's cloud platform with NetApp's intelligent data fou... Read more

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What does the recently announced partnership between NetApp and Nutanix mean for customers? add

How will the Nutanix and NetApp collaboration help customers modernize their infrastructure, especially given hardware supply‑chain constraints? add

How does the rise of token-based compensation and AI-driven operational platforms connect to the C-suite—affecting budgets, organizational structure, and the integration of ITOps with business operations? add

What are the next steps and future direction for this partnership? add

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Ketan Shah, Nutanix & Sandeep Singh, NetApp

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Alison Kosik

>> Welcome back to theCUBE. We are in Chicago and we are streaming live at Nutanix.next. I am Alison Kosik. I'm hosting the show alongside the one and only John Furrier. He's the co-founder and co-CEO-

John Furrier

>> CEO, yes....

Alison Kosik

>> of SiliconANGLE theCUBE. And we are seeing a lot of action in Chicago, aren't we?

John Furrier

>> Well, this is a whole show that's just talking about AI, cloud and AI operations, and the virtual infrastructure is changing and evolving, and so is the values. It's a great segment here.

Alison Kosik

>> And partnerships are a big part of it, aren't they?

John Furrier

>> Absolutely. Absolutely.

Alison Kosik

>> Let's go ahead and bring in our guests right now. We've got Ketan Shah, the VP of Products at Nutanix. Welcome.

Ketan Shah

>> Glad to be here.

Alison Kosik

>> And Sandeep Singh is Senior Vice President and General Manager of Enterprise Storage with NetApp.

Sandeep Singh

>> Thank you for having me.

Alison Kosik

>> Welcome to the show.

Sandeep Singh

>> Thank you.

Alison Kosik

>> So talk us through how your partnership is going. Ketan, you first.

Ketan Shah

>> Yeah, let me start there. So we're really, really excited about the partnership. We announced it yesterday and we've had a groundswell of influx of customer and partner asks. And it's really grounded on this need for choice right now in the virtualization market. So NetApp and Nutanix are combining forces to help customers modernize the infrastructure, not just for today for virtualization, simplicity, agility of Nutanix with the agility and resilience of NetApp, but also take them on a journey to modernize as the apps evolve with containers and AI. So that's really what this is about.

Sandeep Singh

>> Yeah, and if I can just add to it.

Alison Kosik

>> Sure.

Sandeep Singh

>> As Ketan mentioned, customers are looking for a choice and flexibility. Our partnership enables that customers who are looking to move to Nutanix, it now gives them an option to have an underlying data foundation at the same time, to be able to have just flexible, secure, and intelligent data foundation to support their modernization effort.

John Furrier

>> The AI infrastructure is hot right now, so you're seeing all the CapEx build out. I wrote a post, "You got to feed the AI beast with data." Tokens is data. So the role of storage is key. What makes this compelling right now with the storage on main stage announcement? Storage is a set piece in the main keynotes. And this is a strategic element of the entire AI stack right now. This is where all the action is, agents are coming on. You got to have the data. That's where the action is. What's the most compelling thing about the partnership?

Ketan Shah

>> Why don't you start with this storage angle and I'll cover the rest of the angle, Sandeep.

Sandeep Singh

>> From a storage angle, when you think about what's happening in the marketplace with AI, with cyber resilience, ultimately data is at the core of each one of those priorities, including for even just infrastructure modernization. And when you think about storage, it very quickly elevates from not only just storing data, but being able to analyze it, protect it and secure it, and then enable AI to have access to it. So when you think about the cybersecurity angle for a minute, it's basically storage becomes the last line of defense for customers. Of course, they should have all multi-layers of protection, and it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. And storage becomes that last line of defense where you want to get real-time ransomware detection in your primary storage. So that's one example. And when you think about the AI perspective, it's critical for AI to be able to have the context of your enterprise data. But even for that, when you think about just the reasoning models to have the large context memory awareness, this is where storage is becoming critically important to provide that high performance access to KV caches. Another is just essentially being able to enable enterprises to harness their raw data and turn it into AI-ready data.

John Furrier

>> Talk about the role of intelligence with cyber resilience, because that category has changed significantly in the past 24 months, because you have, one, AI infused in there. Two, you have sovereignty. You have now new dynamics. What does that look like from your standpoint, because you got to manage all the ... Not only make the data available and recover to make sure the memory works both on the memory memory, and then the model memory, but also you want to have that core data, roll back, be ready, respond, recover. There's a lot of recovery concepts out there right now. Share your thoughts on that.

Sandeep Singh

>> Yeah. Look, it is absolutely about rapid recovery. There are regulations, as we're all aware of, DORA, there's Bank of England regulation that's driving cybersecurity infrastructure build outs. From a customer's perspective, it is about a full ecosystem that is integrated to enable that rapid recovery. At the data and at the storage infrastructure level, it comes down to, A, you need the real-time detection because then you can minimize the impact of the amount of data that is impacted, versus post-process where it can be hours to days later. And then secondly, you need immutability and time locked copies of data, point in time copies of data that are available. Of course, all of this has to integrate into your SIEMs so that your security teams are getting the appropriate signals. And then you have to be able to orchestrate the recovery for customers prioritized by their workloads, and that's what really matters.

Ketan Shah

>> And if I can just add a couple of perspectives here. Security is obviously a defense in depth strategy, is what most customers employ. And if you look at the work we're doing, from a Nutanix perspective, we just demonstrated a cyber clean room. You can basically bring up a clean room in a matter of minutes in the cloud. And the power there is, how do I basically bring up a fully managed infrastructure with virtualization, with containers, up and running in any location? So you talk about sovereignty. Customers want to run on premises, full control. Customers want to run in certain locations in the public cloud, they have that option. Customers want to run in sovereign cloud locations with service providers, they have that option. And the power of Nutanix is an on-demand infrastructure. So let's say something happens, with a little prep, you can go a long way. You can basically instantly bring up your infrastructure, and then the work we're doing will integrate with the data layer as well, with Nutanix's compute layer on that there.

John Furrier

>> Talk about the virtualization and the VM specifically, because we love virtualizations. It powered the cloud, right?

Sandeep Singh

>> Yeah.

John Furrier

>> But the AI stack looks differently. Certainly containers, Kubernetes are there. The role of VMs are changing. In the cloud it's great. Virtualization, get the servers up, get the storage, get the networking, check. Now, as there are new dynamics, what's the role of virtualization? Certainly, we're seeing the migration off full virtualization as a platform to specific use cases. Can you share your thoughts on how you guys are enabling this, because isolation looks good with virtualization? Well proven-

Ketan Shah

>> Virtualization's going to have a long life. We're not making predictions, but there's a lot happening here. But first, you need to be on a modern virtualization platform. And that's part of the work we're driving, is we offer a modern cloud platform with virtualization containers built in, and then you have the data strategy. Now, where virtualization plays a role we see going forward is, the world is hybrid for a long time, and hybrid in the sense is VMs, containers. How do you have an infrastructure that can adapt and embrace both of those topologies? And then how do you seamlessly mesh the experience? We talked about disaster recovery. We talked about security, networking, data services. Those are all services that we offer to integrate. And when it comes to AI, obviously the big thing is Agentic AI and there's an explosion of agents, agents are identities. There is needs for access control security. There's need for efficiency, optimization, performance, acceleration. These are all infrastructure constructs, and what construct better than virtualization that can embrace that? So the role of virtualizations can be very critical in the world of accelerated computing with GPUs, DPUs, security, governance. Confidential computing is an emerging concept as well. So we're pretty excited about the work in that area.

Sandeep Singh

>> And well said, Ketan. What I would compliment with that is, as customers are looking at basically modernizing their virtualization layer as well as a future to containerization and cloud, having a modern, underlying data infrastructure that brings in the intelligence and unifies their data operations across on-prem and cloud and gives them the intelligence for leveraging their data, also becomes part and parcel and critically important part of that stack.

John Furrier

>> You guys have been doing unification for years. I mean, NetApp. And this is a hot theme right now. And if you look at the cloud native world, the work's been done and hybrid has one. Kubernetes is there. How do you guys see that AI stack, because now you have a modernization? What are customers doing when you say modern platform? Because it's been clear, have AI in all part of our business, but the game is still the same. You got to have good compute. Tokens love compute. You got to have storage. How has the cloud native world ... I mean, the Linux Foundation just announced the Agentic AI Foundation, which should grow much faster than CNCF did. So you get those two worlds coming together. You guys sit at the heart of the convergence. What's different? What's changed? What is a modern version? What's the new strategy customers are taking? Can you share any insights on that piece?

Sandeep Singh

>> I think it builds or starts with a foundation where you need an intelligent data infrastructure there, because you need to be able to deliver the levels of performance for AI. You need to have the security built in for securely accessing the right data sets. You need to enable that discovery of the data sets. That's one of the core challenges that customers struggle with. How do they even discover and search for their data? And you need to be able to unify across on-prem and cloud. And then ultimately, you need to be able to vectorize that data and have the proper vector embeddings and enable and forward-looking and knowledge graph for Agentic AI. So it's an exciting future from bridging from the storage layer into the data layer to truly enable Agentic AI future.

Ketan Shah

>> And one of the things I'd like to add is the human element. So we had a customer on stage yesterday and they transformed themselves from just an IT administrator managing virtualization, to a platform engineer managing Kubernetes. And same set of resources, small team. But that's the power of the automation and the agility as a platform that we bring to the table. And that's when we say modern, modern is agile, simple, resilient. And as we look at AI, we don't think it'll be just another silo of infrastructure. We talk about shadow AI as an emerging thing. We think that should be integrated into the core infrastructure for efficiency, scale economics. And that IT person, the platform engineer, has the chance to drive the AI transformation in the organization as well.

John Furrier

>> Is there a fear of rebuilding again? I mean, one of these things we hear is that, "We don't want to do a do-over. We want to modernize. Also, we have an investment in cloud native." Is there sentiment in the customer base around the execution? You guys see any patterns there? Because this comes down to, "Hey, I want to get modernized super fast. I want to get value."

Ketan Shah

>> I think one of the things we are really excited about, and we're working very closely with engineering teams, is Nutanix and NetApp coming together, it's all about meeting customers where they are. So they want to modernize, but right now what's the biggest constraint? It's hardware supply chain, for example. So we're building the solution in a way where, guess what? We can reuse your existing servers, reuse your storage, and get the experience of Nutanix and NetApp better together. We're also doing a lot of work best-in-class, bringing the simple operating model of Nutanix, which has always been application-centric, combined with NetApp. And then even the path to modernization. Customers ask me, "How do I get there?" So we're investing in technologies to make that debt simple, turnkey, and fast as well.

Alison Kosik

>> For companies watching this, what is the big takeaway, since it seems that every company is sort of in their rethink moment on what you're talking about?

Sandeep Singh

>> Yeah. I would say, look, what Ketan just was saying, and building on top of that is, first, as customers are looking to modernize their entire virtualization stack, we're making virtualization optimization and modernization easy. So providing customers the flexibility and choice, and at the same time, helping them become more secure and resilient to protect against ransomware cybersecurity threats, as well as providing the simplified operations that are critically important for customers. And then forward-looking, it gives them the optionality, given the strengths of the Nutanix cloud platform and the intelligent data infrastructure from NetApp, is to be able to combine and leverage the best of both worlds together.

John Furrier

>> What's interesting is that Alison and I were talking before you guys came on around the workforce, and I just love the fodder at GTC when Jensen Wong said, "Everyone should have a token compensation budget and use your tokens." And if you're performing, see where it goes. Tokens are part of the monetization. It brings up the business model piece, because simplifying operations traditionally has been an IT thing. DevOps. And now you start bringing in the business model side of it and you're starting to see C-suite being involved, you're starting to see CFOs, "Wait, token budgets? Is that going to be on the budget?" And then the HR gets involved, "Wait a minute, the agents are workers?"

Sandeep Singh

>> Yeah.

John Furrier

>> So I know it's a little bit of a C-suite discussion, but it also has impact to what operations means-

Ketan Shah

>> That's right....

John Furrier

>> because the risk is execution we're seeing. So what's your thoughts on this? Because NetApp, you're coming up from the infrastructure sitting next to all the processors, but also going in with Nutanix on this neutral layer that's going to feed a lot of operations for agents. So you're on both sides of the vendor. You got the platform.

Ketan Shah

>> That's right. Yeah.

John Furrier

>> What is that C-suite connection? Because that's going to probably get justified either in budgets, reorganizations, workforce redeployments, jobs are changing. You just mentioned automation. I mean, that's Claire. I mean, IT admin today, infrastructure orchestrator tomorrow. What are some of your thoughts on this, because this is really connecting ITOps with business operations.

Sandeep Singh

>> Yeah. Look, what I would mention is, first of all, execution is key. It's critically important. And as customers are venturing on this journey of, "How do I truly harness the power of AI?" they very quickly come to, "I need to be able to combine that with my data." So data is kind of the linchpin, and having a intelligent ... Or a data platform is critically important there. What we're excited about is building a data platform that gives customers that choice and flexibility, and it brings along the security and the intelligence layer for enabling that. And it's absolute, ecosystem is critically important as part of that execution layer. We're obviously going to continue to partner with leaders. Nutanix is a perfect example of partnering on that ecosystem execution.

John Furrier

>> You're enabling revenue with these agents.

Ketan Shah

>> That's right.

John Furrier

>> What's your angle on this one?

Ketan Shah

>> And just to build and compliment what Sandeep said, there's three big journeys here for Nutanix. Infrastructure, acceleration and optimization. A lot of this infrastructure is GPU-based and emerging technology-based. So with our hypervisor, with our software-defined networking technologies flow, we're driving a lot of performance and efficiencies in the system. It's all about containers and VMs and hyperscalers around containers and VMs. That's our philosophy as well for efficiency, but also agility. So you get best of both worlds. And ultimately, it's the consumption layer. So how application developers can drive this adoption of Agentic AI. And for that it's, governance is key. Visibility and monitoring is key. So those are some of the higher level tools that'll help the CFO. And ultimately, number one goal is, how do I reduce the cost of the token? And with our flexibility to run anywhere, we're seeing an increasing trend. "I want to run sovereign, run in my own data center, where I can have a different cost model to tokens as well." So it's a full end-to-end sort of journey as well.

Sandeep Singh

>> Actually, a couple of points I'll reinforce that Ketan said that are very important, is governance is critically important as part of this, and that governance is going to be implemented at multiple layers there. And certainly the cost of token, the time to first token, and the token throughput are all critically important as part of this.

John Furrier

>> Well, you guys are both senior executives. I want to talk about, my final question is looking ahead. You got the neutral platform running at the speed of hyperscale growth, and you got a lot of velocity. Where does the partnership go next? Because you're moving super fast. You got to get the neutral platform out there with all the accelerated benefits that you're enabling. You got storage as a critical infrastructure piece of the puzzle. But then you got scale with distributed computing. What's next? Where does your partnership go?

Sandeep Singh

>> Yeah. Look, what's exciting is that this partnership is built on the foundation of a lighthouse customer. And that's the beautiful thing, is you always want customer-driven ecosystem integrations. As part of this announcement, both Ketan and I, both of our teams have seen just phenomenal excitement and interest across the board. There's a number of areas where, and our solution will GA later this year, but it extends into business continuity in hybrid cloud operations, as well as collaboration on the Agentic AI layer that we were just talking about.

John Furrier

>> Great opportunity.

Ketan Shah

>> And then I think we're ... Well said, Sandeep. Security is an area we're going to deeply collaborate, as well with cyber resilience. And customers will take us on that journey. Some of the lighthouse customers are already asking for the next release and the next feature. And one of the things like Nutanix is ubiquitous in all hyperscalers, so is NetApp, so that'll be an area of collaboration to expect. Cloud native is another area with what they're doing and what we're doing with NKP. So it's a journey and it's a long-term partnership. We're really super excited to work with them.

John Furrier

>> And you see AI native coming together with cloud native-

Ketan Shah

>> Yep, 100%....

John Furrier

>> fully converging?

Ketan Shah

>> That's right. In fact, that's how we are organizing our teams as well, AI and containers closer together. So that's definitely happening.

Alison Kosik

>> All right, Ketan, Sandeep, great conversation, John-

John Furrier

>> Yeah....

Alison Kosik

>> thanks for the analysis.

John Furrier

>> Right.

Alison Kosik

>> Thanks for stopping by theCUBE. Really enjoyed it.

John Furrier

>> All right, thank you for having us.

Sandeep Singh

>> Thank you. Pleasure being here.

Alison Kosik

>> And you're watching theCUBE. We've got more insights and analysis coming up right after the break. You're watching live coverage of Nutanix.next. Don't go anywhere. We're going to take a quick break and come right back.