Channel Guru

Nutanix synergizing with channel partners for seamless and impactful market penetration

by VARINDIA 2023-09-04

Elaborating about the key priorities of the company, go-to-market strategy with channel partners, brand distinctiveness, Harsh Vaishnav, Director Channels, Alliances and Ecosystem, India & SAARC, Nutanix discusses at length the partner programmes, partner enablement and much more

What are the business goals and key priorities for Nutanix in India for 2023-2024?
Nutanix is a global leader in cloud software, and with this, we offer organizations a single platform for running apps and data across clouds. Organizations can reduce complexity and simplify their operations, freeing them to focus on their business outcomes. Building on our legacy as the pioneer of hyper-converged infrastructure, Nutanix is trusted by organizations worldwide to power hybrid multicloud environments consistently, simply, and cost-effectively.
As part of our mission, Nutanix also supports its channel partners by providing them with comprehensive training and resources such as a starter kit bundle to help them deliver the best workable solutions to their customers. We also reward partners with competitive incentives and support to ensure their continued success.

The top 10 banks in India including RBL Bank and ICICI Bank are using Nutanix’s solutions. Major customers, Olam International, and Apollo Hospitals are using the Nutanix Cloud Platform.

How does Nutanix plan to align its go-to-market strategy with channel partners to ensure a coordinated approach and maximize market penetration?
Nutanix's go-to-market strategy harmonizes seamlessly with channel partners to achieve unified and impactful market penetration. Our approach encompasses multiple facets:
Collaborative Planning: We engage in joint business planning sessions, aligning goals and resources to ensure a synchronized approach to market engagement.
Empowering Partners: Comprehensive training equips our partners with the knowledge and skills needed to effectively present and promote Nutanix solutions.
Coordinated Marketing: Joint marketing initiatives, supported by Market Development Funds, amplify our reach and visibility, creating a more profound market impact.
Incentives and Support: Our deal registration programs incentivize proactive business pursuits, while continuous communication and technical support foster successful engagements.
Feedback-Driven Refinement: Regular feedback loops with partners allow us to refine strategies iteratively, ensuring adaptability and growth.
By aligning these strategies, Nutanix and its partners forge a powerful synergy that not only maximizes market penetration but also enhances customer experiences, strengthens partner relationships, and propels mutual success.

How are you making your brand distinctive among your partners amid the competition?
Nutanix is a customer-centric organization that aims to help make businesses successful by enabling them to establish the hybrid multicloud environments they need to put the applications and data in the environments that make the most sense. We listen to our customers to gain insights and tailor our solutions to meet their unique requirements. As part of this, we also provide customers with unique flexibility in terms of hardware, hypervisor, and cloud choices, and a subscription model that allows for complete portability of workloads between on-premises and public cloud environments. Nutanix's high net promoter score in the 90s is a testament to its strong market position and being a partner of choice for digital transformation.

How Nutanix is enabling its partners not only in terms of technology but also to adopt, perform, expand and grow?
Our channel programmes enable partners to increase their focus on customers and drive truly transformational results. Therefore, our partner programs including Elevate and the Nutanix Elevate Service Provider Program (NESPP) simplify engagement for the entire partner ecosystem using a consistent set of tools, resources, and marketing platforms provided in the new Nutanix Partner Portal – making it easier for partners to outline their path to success. In addition to this, Nutanix’s Partner Support Centres (PSCs) in Bangalore and Kuala Lumpur ensure that partners have the information and resources they need to meet changing client demands and promote increased profitability and success for Nutanix channel communities throughout Asia-Pacific and Japan. The PSCs combine expertise in strategy implementation and execution, as well as channel sales, to ensure that our partners receive the entire range of Nutanix assistance to help them expand their businesses. Through our partner programs, we are focused on helping India's businesses stay ahead of disruption by enabling hybrid multicloud environments, automating database management, and enabling secure remote work.

Customer centricity is a key agenda for every company. What steps are you adopting to ensure it?
Nutanix puts customers first, and this is why our Net Promoter Score has been consistently above 90 percent over several years. We continuously strive to provide solutions that meet the ever-changing demands of our customers. In fact, it’s this customer-centric approach that helps them navigate the complexities of cloud computing.
First, we deeply analyze customer insights through data and feedback mechanisms, enabling us to gain a profound understanding of their needs and preferences. This knowledge fuels our efforts to personalize our products and services, ensuring they align closely with individual customer requirements and expectations.
Second, we prioritize mapping out the customer journey to highlight the key challenges and areas for enhancement. This allows us to continuously improve interactions and overall experiences. We maintain an active feedback loop, actively seeking and acting on customer input to promptly address concerns and optimize our offerings. Our commitment to transparent communication keeps customers informed, engaged, and actively involved in the evolution of our products and services. Moreover, we place a strong emphasis on post-sales support, ensuring that our customers receive the assistance they need even after the initial transaction. By fostering a culture of empathy and continuous improvement, we empower our employees to provide exceptional customer service and innovative solutions that address emerging needs. Our goal is to build lasting relationships with our customers, grounded in trust, transparency, and mutual success. Through these multifaceted efforts, we strive to deliver not only technology solutions but also a comprehensive and customer-centric experience that stands as a testament to our commitment to their satisfaction and growth.

Last year, Nutanix announced new updates to its Elevate Partner Program to better enable Partner ecosystem. What kind of growth you have seen among the partners after introducing this partner program?
Since the launch of Nutanix's revamped Elevate Partner Program last year, partners have witnessed remarkable growth across various dimensions. Notably, within the APJ region, the program has significantly bolstered Managed Partner Businesses. One of the standout outcomes is the substantial increase in business driven by Growth Partners, contributing to over 30% of the overall business growth. Moreover, partners have achieved an impressive average new Logo ACV growth of 50%, highlighting the program's efficacy in attracting and retaining new customers. In a clear testament to the program's impact, partners have successfully added 125+ Net New Logos, underscoring their ability to expand Nutanix's market presence and win over new clients. The updated Elevate Partner Program has not only met its intended goals but also exceeded expectations, solidifying Nutanix's position as a leader in partner ecosystem empowerment.

“Enterprise Businesses are constantly under pressure in enhancing the experience of k8 applications across multi cloud environments. Nutanix k8 plays a major role in enabling customers to extend the flexibility to public cloud solutions like Azure Arc and Google Anthos. Increased Cloud repatriation opportunities are natural adoption to Nutanix platforms due to simplicity, ease of migration, building portability across hybrid multi clouds. Nutanix Being a patron of Hybrid cloud platform, they will be the default choice for customers across verticals. This collaboration is truly a transformational step towards building a strong and safe foundation for a digitally empowered nation.”

Anuj Gupta, CEO & Director
Hitachi Systems India

“With Nutanix cloud platform, we are able to leverage the opportunity created by the customers’ demand for a simplified management of their hybrid or multi cloud environments.

Most of our customers today are struggling with the complexity of managing an increasing number of environments across on-premises, public cloud, and the edge, leading to management silos, costs, security risks.

Nutanix has a cloud-delivered solution that provides a single console for visibility, monitoring, and management across public cloud, on-premises, hosted or edge infrastructure. This type of universal cloud operating model helps customers to break down silos, and simplify consistently managing apps and data anywhere.”

Cherian Thomas,Director
Wysetek Systems Technologists

“As a valuable partner we have successfully conducted business from one region thus we wish to expand geographically into other regions through our branch offices. We have created COE to support across geography the sales team and support L1 & L2 support.

With our PAN India presence we are planning to replicate our success with Nutanix for North to other regions. This includes certification of Sales, Pre-sales and implementation. Organizing customer events and engaging in demand generation activity. In FY 24 Nutanix is a strategic partnership for Orbit.”

Surjeet Kumar, Senior Vice president
Orbit Techsol India

“With Nutanix we have been able to lead our conversations with enterprises, whether it be moving from 3-tier architecture to HCI, catering to infra for VDI requirements, Edge Computing, Cloud Repatriation, Cloud Cost Management etc. We were one of the first adopters of Nutanix as a solution since 2015 wherein we introduced Nutanix to our customers and were successful in getting those early wins for Nutanix. Nutanix definitely is one of those marquee solutions in our portfolio which has helped better our revenues over the years.”