Nutanix expands multi-cloud portfolio

According to the IDC InfoBrief, sponsored by Nutanix, “Surviving and Thriving in a Multi-cloud World,” multi-cloud deployments are now the norm for enterprise organisations — less than 30% of customers report using single cloud environments. Most customers leverage different cloud platforms across multiple service providers. The interoperability of data and applications between these varied cloud environments is growing in importance, and yet access to hybrid cloud capabilities where a single application runs across clouds remains elusive to most organisations. As companies eagerly seek out ways to make the multi-cloud environment a reality, these new updates from Nutanix provide additional capabilities to streamline the implementation of their cloud services deployments.

Introducing Nutanix Xi Frame for the Private Cloud

With Nutanix Xi Frame, customers can already access applications and virtual desktops from popular public clouds like AWS and Azure simply and easily, using any browser and any device. With the latest Xi Frame update running on the Nutanix AHV hypervisor, customers can now extend desktop delivery to their Nutanix private cloud, integrating virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) services with the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud platform. Xi Frame desktops can be simultaneously delivered via multiple clouds and managed via a single console for seamless control and administration, providing a true hybrid experience.

In addition to being available to users on AWS and Azure, Xi Frame is now also available to customers worldwide for Nutanix private cloud deployments using AHV. Customers can provision 1000s of virtual desktops in minutes, as opposed to weeks, enabling them to improve the economics, speed and scale of desktop delivery. IT teams can now select the right cloud — public or private — for their VDI initiatives.

Extending the Reach of Cloud-based DR to More Regions with Nutanix Xi Leap

As enterprises continue to embrace cloud services, and enterprise infrastructures become more virtual, data and IT operations are rapidly migrating to the cloud. When done right, cloud-based disaster recovery is an attractive strategy for any size organisation to protect their business-critical applications. Nutanix Xi Leap extends the enterprise datacenter to the cloud, allowing IT teams to harmonise public and private clouds and deliver enhanced availability for critical data and applications. Customers get a natively-integrated DR cloud service, and single pane management, to protect critical workloads running in the datacenter and in a cloud, delivering improved business continuity.

Nutanix is adding new capabilities to its Xi Leap DR service, including:

• New Availability Zones: Nutanix Xi Leap is expanding beyond its current availability zones in U.S. West, U.S. East and the U.K. In the coming months, additional Xi Leap availability zones are expected to be available in Italy, through Nutanix’s partnership with Sparkle, the international services arm of Telecom Italia Group, as well as in Japan and Germany.
• Support for ESXi: Xi Leap now also provides DR services for enterprise workloads running on Nutanix private clouds using VMware ESXi, making it even simpler to transform existing applications into a hybrid service.

“With previous disaster recovery systems, we weren’t able to achieve the performance we expected for virtual machine restoration and managing DR as a separate silo made our infrastructure more complex,” said Patrick Sudderth, Director of Technical Services, Lexipol. “Nutanix Xi Leap allows us to configure policies that automate the DR workflow directly within the Prism Console and restoration happens in a matter of minutes. No other DRaaS vendor can come close to the simplicity of execution we experience with Xi Leap.”

Securing Cloud Applications

Fundamental to delivering applications in a multi-cloud architecture is ensuring that applications remain secure — independent of the cloud infrastructure chosen. Comprehensive and automated compliance assessments are necessary to ensure application mobility between clouds. Xi Beam, a Nutanix SaaS offering that provides cloud governance, will include a real-time security compliance module designed to identify critical cloud infrastructure vulnerabilities and recommend specific remediation. With new security and compliance functionality, IT architects will be able to fix security risks before they impact the business.

“The multi-cloud world is the new reality for IT — it’s no longer up for debate. Customers need solutions that can bring together the full mix of public, private, and edge clouds that will soon make up their critical infrastructure without drowning them in needless complexity and unchecked costs,” said Sunil Potti, Chief Product and Development Officer, Nutanix. “By continuing to add new capabilities to our portfolio, we’re giving customers the freedom to deliver their applications and data from the cloud that makes the most sense for their business.”