In conversation with Raif Abou Diab, Country Manager UAE, Oman, Pakistan and Yemen at Nutanix, as he discusses the company’s GITEX participation and key messaging.
How excited are you about GITEX and what will be your theme of participation at GITEX?
We are absolutely thrilled to be a part of GITEX again this year! Nutanix will be participating at GITEX Global 2023 for the 8th consecutive year, with the theme of helping regional organizations streamline operations and turn cloud complexity into multicloud simplicity. The company will share its vision and strategy of delivering the optimal hybrid cloud experience to radically simplify and solve the biggest modernization needs of enterprise customers. The event will also serve as a platform to introduce regional customers to the ‘World of Purple’ – Nutanix’s new brand identity that was unveiled at the company’s flagship event .NEXT in Chicago in May this year.
How about announcements or any new launches this year at GITEX, the ones you can share?
Sure, we are particularly excited about several announcements at GITEX. Starting off with the recent Global strategic partnership with Cisco. This partnership will combine Nutanix’s best-in-class software with Cisco’s SaaS managed compute portfolio to help our customers and prospects enter a hybrid multicloud future. The partnership with Cisco spans joint engineering and interoperability, expanded world-class support, go-to-market cooperation for a more seamless customer experience, as well as building the foundation for broader solutions with Cisco’s market leading networking, security and collaboration offerings.
Secondly, Nutanix announced Nutanix GPT-in-a-Box – a solution for customers looking to jump-start their artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) innovation, while maintaining control over their data. The company believes there is a growing trend around the AI-powered edge. Organizations will begin to leverage public cloud resources to train AI models, but then deploy them at the edge, where the data is often collected. Most enterprises will not have the infrastructure or resources needed to train AI models in their own datacenter without huge investment, so they’ll look to public cloud to supplement. This is where a hybrid multicloud strategy is even more important, as organizations will need a cloud platform that spans from public cloud, to their datacenters and the edge, to be able to move their applications and data where they’re needed. Being able to manage and control both of these is hugely important.
As 2023 is the year of Sustainability for the UAE, and Dubai will host the COP28 just one month after GITEX, Nutanix is keen to showcase its innovations and initiatives that demonstrate its commitment to the global climate cause, including reducing an organization’s datacentre footprint, eliminating resource waste and overprovisioning and minimizing carbon use.
Whats on showcase this GITEX?
Nutanix will be showcasing its full solution stack at GITEX, with a particular focus on 4 areas of customer needs:
- Hybrid MultiCloud Management with Nutanix NC2 -Nutanix is a two-way ticket to and from the cloud for customers, with its universal cloud operating model to run apps and data anywhere. This is a key differentiator for Nutanix and offers consistent management across endpoints, integrated security, self-service and on-demand resources, governance, and full license portability. By partnering with major hyperscalers such as Azure and AWS (with more to come), Nutanix NC2 offers a hybrid cloud infrastructure solution that provides seamless application mobility, along with unified management for all applications and data across clouds.
- Nutanix Database Service (NDB) -Data is the new currency, and being able to manage this data in a way that can optimize and accelerate business efficiency can be the main competitive advantage for most organizations. At GITEX, trade visitors can learn how Nutanix is eliminating 90% of database management complexity through NDB.
- Nutanix Migration Services – Nutanix Services Experts are available at GITEX to discuss the implementation of a hassle free, less costly migration strategy to Nutanix. The team will be present to discuss how organizations can mitigate risk, the top use cases for migration and how they can move to Nutanix AHV (hypervisor) with minimal to no disruption.
- Nutanix Unified Storage -aims at eliminating the traditional NAS and consolidating all data services (files, objects, and block storage) into a single platform. It includes an integrated ransomware protection called Data Lens, which helps audit and analyse at no additional cost. The company’s EMEA Leader for Unified Storage, Stuart Heade will be present to discuss the business impact Nutanix NUS can have on an organization. Executives from Peer Software, one of the company’s alliance partners, will also be on hand to assist with joint backup and storage solutions to fit organization needs.
How important do you think GITEX is for Nutanix, what are your expectations this year?
GITEX is and continues to be a showcase of the world’s leading consumer and enterprise technologies. Whether you’re a tech enthusiast looking to play around with new gadgets or an IT buyer who is looking to diversify their Enterprise stack, there is something beneficial for everyone. Not to mention, Nutanix has offices and boots on the ground across the Middle East & Africa – GITEX brings us all together. We use GITEX as a platform to meet new customers but also thank our existing ones for their continued trust in us.
A huge part of your business depends on the Channel, please share key messages you have for the channel community at GITEX?
Nutanix’s vision and strategy has always been ‘Channel First’. Our go-to-market is 100% channel with huge focus on partner profitability and hence we have been investing significantly to enhance our Elevate partner program to make it more appealing and most rewarding partner program in the region.
Thanks to digital transformation, data explosion, an avalanche of new applications, and the increasing push to develop innovative products and get them to market as quickly as possible–IT landscapes have become infinitely more complex. What enterprises need today is a consistent operating model that delivers a unified approach for managing disparate environments.
Nutanix pioneered hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) to break down legacy silos by merging compute, storage, and networking into a single, easy-to-use datacenter platform. Now, as the cloud has emerged as a critical component of IT infrastructure, Nutanix is breaking down silos once again, this time between on-premises, cloud, and the edge. We make hybrid multi-cloud infinitely simple and cost effective, giving the partners the opportunity to manage the whole customer lifecycle with one platform to run apps and data from anywhere.
We empower our partners to give the customer the freedom to choose their cloud, their apps and their technology.
Where can we fin you at GITEX 2023?
Nutanix will showcase its beautiful stand #A30 in Hall 6 at this year’s GITEX, where the company’s key alliance partners and alliances have been welcomed to participate along with the company with the objective of delivering a joint go-to-market message.
