Nutanix VP Offers Insight into Dell PowerStore Integration and What It Means for Customers, Partners

Dell Technologies recently rolled out new updates across its private cloud and storage portfolio to bring more automation, efficiency, and cyber resilience into enterprise environments. With that, Dell also brought Nutanix deeper into its private cloud strategy. By integrating PowerStore with the Nutanix Cloud Platform, Dell now gives customers more freedom to manage data across on-prem and cloud environments. The setup combines Dell’s trusted storage performance with Nutanix’s easy-to-use cloud tools, helping IT teams move workloads, protect data, and scale up or down without getting locked into one vendor.

The PowerStore integration is another step in how Dell and Nutanix are working together to make hybrid cloud management easier. For customers, it is less about adding one more storage option and more about keeping the flexibility and simplicity they expect from the Nutanix Cloud Platform.

ChannelE2E spoke with Ketan Shah, VP of Products at Nutanix, to learn how this integration supports Nutanix’s focus on customer choice, ecosystem growth, and partner collaboration.

ChannelE2E: How does adding Dell PowerStore support to the Nutanix Cloud Platform fit into your larger strategy of giving customers more choice across external storage?

Ketan Shah: Freedom of choice has been a core value of Nutanix. As we evolve the Nutanix Cloud Platform (NCP) and its ecosystem to meet customers where they are, preserving existing storage investments and choice of storage is becoming increasingly important for customers evaluating virtualization alternatives. With this announcement of NCP and Dell PowerStore, customers now have a new choice in how they architect their virtualization environments.

ChannelE2E: With PowerFlex already integrated and now PowerStore on the roadmap, what makes this integration stand out - whether in terms of capabilities or what you’re hearing from customers?

Ketan Shah: Nutanix with Dell PowerFlex solution is in the market, and the response has been very positive. The solution is hitting the mark in terms of helping customers transition with lower TCO and hardware re-use. The engineering, solutions, and support teams have also been collaborating closely for a while now. Collectively, this gives us a lot of confidence as we work on the roadmap for PowerStore. 

ChannelE2E: Nutanix has a strong channel ecosystem. How do you see Dell partners tapping into that network to position PowerStore as part of a modern cloud-like stack, and what does that mean for Nutanix-aligned resellers and integrators?

Ketan Shah: We couldn’t agree more on this - Nutanix has a strong channel ecosystem. Dell PowerStore also has a strong partner-centric ecosystem. Together, this is a perfect solution for the channel community. 

ChannelE2E: What new opportunities does this create for Nutanix partners, especially those already working closely with Dell infrastructure customers?

Ketan Shah: The solution enables additional choice and options in virtualization to address the growing customer demand. Much like the Nutanix-PowerFlex solution, partners will also be able to transact this solution entirely via Dell if they desire. Nutanix and Dell are collaborating closely on joint solution testing and validation to provide assurance and a blueprint for success.

ChannelE2E: Other storage vendors are eager to connect with Nutanix. How does this deeper collaboration with Dell shape your competitive positioning, and what message does it send to customers weighing multi-vendor options?

Ketan Shah: Nutanix Cloud Platform (NCP) is expanding the ecosystem and freedom of choice to include the choice of storage to meet customers where they are in their journey. Not only does NCP with AHV deliver a mature, robust, and simple virtualization alternative, but we are also focused on innovation and ecosystem expansion to partner with our customers for the next decade of transformation across virtualization, containers, cloud, data, and AI initiatives.

ChannelE2E: You’ve emphasized “future-proof flexibility” and simplified management - what does that look like in practice? How should customers think about moving existing workloads onto PowerStore within Nutanix environments?

Ketan Shah: Nutanix will be bringing all the relevant goodness of its cloud operating model in this integration of Nutanix with PowerStore. For example, Nutanix Prism will deliver 1-click operations and automation. Nutanix continues to deliver VM-centric operations. Nutanix will deliver the complete private cloud experience with built-in software-defined networking, security, and disaster recovery services. Customers will be able to manage both VMs and containers.

ChannelE2E: Beyond PowerStore, there is Dell Private Cloud and new XC platforms. Should customers and partners see these rollouts as part of a deeper Dell-Nutanix alignment, or are they designed to address different needs?

Ketan Shah: Yes, this announcement is an expansion of the strategic collaboration between Dell and Nutanix. Last year, we announced two solutions:  XC+ with Nutanix HCI and Nutanix Cloud Platform with Dell PowerFlex. We are expanding our collaboration on storage, servers, HCI, and automation software. Ultimately, the collaboration is also grounded in growing customer demand for these solutions.