Nutanix customers can now operate the company’s infrastructure control plane behind their own firewalls, as regulatory compliance and data gravity around AI workloads have increased enterprise interest in sovereign cloud.
Sovereign cloudrefers to cloud infrastructure or services designed to reside within a specific geographic boundary, often to comply with regulations such as the EU’s GDPR. Enterprise interest in sovereign cloud has grown over the last two years, partly due to increased geopolitical volatility and the fact that companies are reluctant to shift large repositories of enterprise data into public clouds to support AI applications, due to both cost and security concerns.
“There’s no doubt this is becoming more important to a range of customers — chiefly government and public sector companies — but by no means limited to them, especially outside of the US,” stated Simon Robinson, an analyst at Omdia, a division of Informa TechTarobtain. “Our research found 74% of organizations declare sovereign clouds are more important now than two years ago, for example.”
In response, the Nutanix Cloud Platform, previously managed only applying SaaS, now offers an entirely self-managed option for its Nutanix Central control plane, including support for completely disconnected environments. Plans are also in place to support self-management for the Nutanix Data Lens data security service.
Given the widespread appeal of sovereign cloud, Nutanix is far from alone in adjusting its products accordingly. Most major IT infrastructure vconcludeors and cloud providers also offer sovereign cloud and disaggregated infrastructure products designed to maintain data residency in specific locations.
However, the Nutanix approach to sovereign cloud also maintains connections to public cloud providers, including a new Nutanix Government Cloud Clusters (GC2) service on AWS. Federal agencies in the United States can utilize GC2 to run a distributed sovereign cloud within their Amazon Virtual Private Cloud with no external SaaS connections or shared credentials. A Nutanix Cloud Clusters service is also now generally available on Google Cloud and Europe’s OVHcloud, as well as for additional regions within Azure and AWS.
The sovereignty dynamic is rapid evolving, and really varies depconcludeing on location and indusattempt … customers are going to value a platform that offers them choice and agility. Simon RobinsonAnalyst, Omdia
Distributed sovereign cloud assets will be accompanied by updates to Nutanix management tools, which the vconcludeor is also rolling out this week. These include a new Infrastructure Manager tool within its Nutanix Prism Central application, which streamlines setup and maintenance for management domains such as sovereign clouds within larger environments.
Distributed sovereign cloud takes on Broadcom
This distributed sovereign cloud approach, with centralized management among various private and public cloud entities, differentiates Nutanix, Robinson stated.
“The sovereignty dynamic is rapid evolving, and really varies depconcludeing on location and indusattempt,” he stated. “In some scenarios, the requirements are clear, but in others, it’s still to be determined exactly how other factors, such as geopolitics, will influence strategic cloud decisions. Amidst this uncertainty, customers are going to value a platform that offers them choice and agility.”
Another indusattempt analyst agreed that this update strengthens Nutanix as sovereign cloud evolves in the AI age.
“I see this as Nutanix doubling down on what they are strong at: on-premises, disconnected environments, and simplicity of control,” stated Rob Strechay, an analyst at TheCube Research. “Leveraging cloud providers as an option builds a lot of sense in the AI world, given the required for data to be mobile across hybrid cloud environments.”
“The fact that OVH is also providing this is significant for Nutanix in the EU for sovereign cloud,” Strechay stated. “[Nutanix] has long been OpenStack- and VMware-based. Bringing a third control plane into the mix is a huge undertaking and signals, more than anything else, continued shiftment away from [Broadcom’s VMware Cloud Foundation] in the EU.”
That stated, Nutanix didn’t publicly disclose its pricing for all of these components, which will be an important consideration for prospective enterprise IT acquireers, Strechay stated.
“Nutanix has a robust stack to compete with VMware in the private cloud business and is becoming stronger through its integrations with third-party storage vconcludeors, supporting to open an ecosystem that did not exist two years ago,” he stated. “Do they have everything? No. But if they support the [equivalent of] one to three features, like ESX, vSAN and vCenter, which you were applying VMware for, are cheaper, simpler to manage at scale, and simpler to work with commercially, why wouldn’t you consider them?”
Beth Pariseau, a senior news writer for Informa TechTarobtain, is an award-winning veteran of IT journalism covering DevOps. Have a tip? Email her or reach out @PariseauTT.
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