IBM and Nutanix have announced a ‘multi-year’ initiative which aligns Nutanix’s enterprise cloud platform with IBM’s Power Systems server line to give large enterprises greater opportunities with hyperconverged deployments.
The two companies aim to put together a product which brings new workloads to hyperconverged. Alongside the mission-critical elements, such as databases and enterprise apps, as well as cloud native workloads like containers, there is also scope for ‘next generation cognitive workloads’, increasingly featuring machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI).
The companies set the scene in the press materials. “Being able to react in real time used to give enterprises a competitive advantage, but this approach no longer guarantees happy customers,” the companies write. “The value has now migrated to the ability to rapidly gather large amounts of data, quickly crunch and predict what’s likely to happen next – using a combination of analytics, cognitive skills, machine learning and more.”
The move will also include exclusive virtualisation management with AHV, Nutanix’s open virtualisation platform.
“Hyperconverged systems continue on a rapid growth trajectory. IT teams now recognise the need, and the undeniable benefits, of embracing the next generation of data centre infrastructure technology,” said Stefanie Chiras, VP Power Systems at IBM.
“Our partnership with Nutanix will be designed to give our joint enterprise customers a scalable, resilient, high performance hyperconverged infrastructure solution, benefiting from the data and compute capabilities of the Power architecture and the one-click simplicity of the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform.”
According to a study from 451 Research in February, Nutanix was named the leading vendor for converged infrastructure, ahead of nearest rivals Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and Cisco. Comparing the two scores of ‘promise’ and ‘fulfilment’, Nutanix scored lower than HPE for the former, but higher for the latter.
The company’s 2016 paper on putting enterprise applications on hyperconverged infrastructure – available to download on this title – gives an intriguing insight into a ‘fundamentally different approach to enterprise application needs’.
“In the last few years, hyperconverged, web-scale infrastructure has emerged as a better alternative,” the paper notes. “Taking cues from web giants like Amazon, Google and Facebook, hyperconverged infrastructure combines x86-based compute and storage resources – including flash – with intelligent software to create flexible building blocks that eliminate many of the pain points of deploying and managing IT infrastructure.”
The product will be sold exclusively through IBM sales and channel partners, with more specific details to be announced at the time of availability.