.Next Chicago Recap

Fair warning, this one's a bit longer than usual, so grab a cup of coffee or your favorite adult beverage and settle in.

Last year I wrapped up my DC recap by saying "I look forward to seeing you next year in Chicago," and here we are. Nutanix .Next 2026 brought us back to the Windy City, McCormick Place, and a week that reminded me once again why this is the conference I look forward to most every year.

After nearly a decade of attending .Next, the venue and city may change, but the formula that keeps me coming back never does: incredible people, meaningful conversations, and announcements that actually move the needle. Over 5,000 customers and a packed house of partners gathered in Chicago, and the energy was electric from the opening keynote through the final handshake.

The People: Friends, Customers, and Partners

I'll never stop saying it: the best part of .Next is the people. Before we get into the tech, let me start where it matters most.

The NTC Family

The Nutanix Technical Champion community continues to be one of the most rewarding parts of my career. Getting together with fellow NTCs in person is always the highlight. The hallway conversations, the late-night dinners, the "hey, have you tried this?" moments... that's where the real magic happens. If you're not part of this community, I can't recommend it enough.

One of the things I love about .Next is the dedicated community section. There's a space carved out just for us, complete with special guests and experiences you won't find anywhere else at the conference. This year, getting to meet Kelsey Hightower was a personal highlight. As I continue to educate myself on Kubernetes and cloud native technologies, hearing from someone with his depth of knowledge and passion for the craft was truly inspiring. What an amazing person to learn from.

For the second year running, the NTC Champions Lunch included a special Q&A session with Rajiv Ramaswami and Thomas Cornely. Having that kind of direct, candid access to Nutanix leadership is something that sets this community apart. The conversations are real, the feedback flows both ways, and you walk away feeling like your voice actually matters. Because it does.

A huge shoutout to Angelo Luciani for his never-ending effort to make sure the NTC community gets the most value, and the most fun, out of attending .Next. From coordinating the community space to lining up special guests and experiences, Angelo consistently goes above and beyond to make this conference something special for the champions. It doesn't go unnoticed, and it's a big part of why this community feels like family.

Customers and Partners

One of the things that makes .Next special is the mix. It's not just a vendor event, it's a true ecosystem gathering. This year I spent time with current customers looking to expand their Nutanix utilization, as well as potential customers we brought along to evaluate a move to the platform. The value for them isn't just in hearing the keynote announcements or sitting through breakout sessions. It's in watching their reactions as they walk the expo floor and connect the dots. The "oh, this is useful" moments. The "we didn't know they could do this" conversations. That's where the real impact happens.

Whether it's a customer who's been running Nutanix for years discovering a new capability, or a prospect realizing the platform does far more than they expected, those moments of discovery are what make bringing customers and partners to .Next so worthwhile. The momentum is real, and you can feel it in every conversation.

And honestly, some of the most valuable time with customers happens outside the conference itself. From happy hours to catching the Blues Brothers, steakhouse dinners to piano bars, getting away from the tech for a few hours and just connecting as people is sometimes as valuable as any breakout session. Those are the moments where relationships deepen, trust is built, and the conversations shift from products and features to real challenges and goals. Chicago was the perfect city for it.

The Announcements: Broadest Ecosystem Expansion Yet

If last year in DC was about choice, this year in Chicago was about making that choice even bigger. Nutanix described this as the broadest expansion of infrastructure support in company history, and I don't think that's an overstatement. Nutanix highlighted 39 new announcements during .Next, and I'm sure I'm missing some in this recap, but the ones below stood out to me. If I had to put a single word on this year's .Next, it would be expansion. Let's dig in.

External Storage: The Partner Ecosystem Explodes

Building on the Dell PowerFlex and Pure Storage partnerships announced at .Next DC, Nutanix went wide with external storage support this year. Three new storage partners were announced, and the existing partners got meaningful expansions:

Dell Technologies - Named the 2026 Global OEM Partner of the Year, Dell brought synchronous disaster recovery for PowerFlex (available now), PowerStore support in early access with GA coming, and PowerFlex Ultra5 support on the way. The Dell relationship continues to deepen and the breadth of options for customers is impressive.

NetApp - Nutanix announced support for NetApp ONTAP, including AFF all-flash A-series and select FAS hybrid-flash systems, expected in the second half of 2026. The companies also plan to expand the partnership to support AI use cases with integration into the Nutanix Agentic AI stack.

Lenovo - A full-stack expansion covering ThinkSystem storage, ThinkSystem servers, and XC One automation. Lenovo has been a solid Nutanix partner and this deeper integration across compute and storage is a natural next step.

Cisco - Integration with Cisco Unified Edge, Secure AI Factory, AI Pod, and FlexPod with NCP are all coming. Cisco also introduced validated designs for Cisco AI PODs integrating Nutanix Agentic AI. This is a big deal for shops running Cisco infrastructure end to end.

AMD - Expanded CPU support across all major server vendors, plus AMD GPU-accelerated compute servers for AI workloads. As AI infrastructure demand grows, having AMD GPU options alongside the Nutanix platform is a welcome addition.

Everpure (Pure Storage) - The partnership that started with the //x and //xl FlashArrays now extends to the new //c FlashArray platform with added synchronous DR capabilities. Great to see continued investment in this partnership.

The sheer breadth of storage partnerships now available is staggering. Whether you're running Dell, NetApp, Pure, Lenovo, or Cisco infrastructure, there's a path to Nutanix that doesn't require ripping and replacing your storage investment. That's powerful.

Zero Data Migration: ESXi to AHV with External Storage

This one deserves its own callout. For organizations running VMware ESXi on external storage, Nutanix showcased zero data migration capabilities, meaning you can convert from ESXi to AHV without moving your data. The storage stays where it is, and the hypervisor simply changes underneath.

Think about that for a moment. The biggest barrier to VMware migration for many organizations has been the complexity and risk of moving data. By taking data migration out of the equation entirely for external storage customers, Nutanix just removed one of the last major objections. This is a game-changer for organizations evaluating their VMware alternatives.

Agentic AI Platform

The Agentic AI story was front and center this year, and it's clear that Nutanix is positioning AI as a core pillar of the platform rather than a bolted-on feature. The Nutanix Agentic AI solution is a full-stack platform designed to help enterprises build, run, and protect agentic AI applications on NCP. It integrates compute, storage, networking, and Kubernetes services with NVIDIA AI Enterprise at the Agent Builder layer, giving organizations everything they need to go from model training to production inference on a single platform.

What makes this compelling is how it ties together the broader Nutanix AI and NKP stories. The Nutanix Cloud Platform provides the secure, high-performance virtualization foundation for AI infrastructure, while NKP delivers the Kubernetes layer for containerized AI workloads. Together, they create a unified stack where enterprises can manage both traditional virtualized workloads and modern AI applications without stitching together disparate tools and platforms. The full Agentic AI solution is expected in the second half of 2026, and I'm looking forward to seeing how customers put it to work.

NKP Metal: Bare Metal Kubernetes

NKP Metal extends the Nutanix Kubernetes Platform to support deployments directly on bare-metal infrastructure, and this one has me paying close attention. Currently in early access with GA expected in the second half of 2026, NKP Metal combines automated lifecycle management with integrated Cloud Native AOS data services to deliver simplicity and enterprise storage capabilities on physical infrastructure.

Why does bare metal matter? There are workloads where a hypervisor layer adds overhead that you simply don't want. AI training workloads that rely on dense GPU infrastructure need every bit of performance from the hardware, and running Kubernetes directly on bare metal eliminates that abstraction layer. Edge deployments are another strong use case, where you may have limited hardware resources at remote or branch locations and need to run Kubernetes efficiently without the overhead of a full hypervisor stack. Think retail locations, manufacturing floors, or remote offices where simplicity and a small footprint are critical.

The beauty of NKP Metal is that it brings the same Nutanix operational simplicity and lifecycle management to these bare-metal environments. You're not trading ease of use for performance. That consistency across your Kubernetes deployments, whether they're running on AHV, in the cloud, or on bare metal at the edge, is what makes this a meaningful addition to the platform.

AVD Hybrid: Microsoft + Nerdio + Nutanix

The end-user computing space got an exciting three-way alliance between Microsoft, Nerdio, and Nutanix. Nerdio announced a private preview of its Manager's desktop orchestration and management capabilities for the Nutanix Cloud Platform, enabling organizations to run Azure Virtual Desktop in hybrid environments, managing desktop images on Nutanix AHV while leveraging Nerdio Manager and AVD to modernize their VDI environments.

One of the most important decisions in any VDI deployment is where to run your desktops. Cloud, on-prem, or both? Until now, AVD meant Azure. Full stop. AVD Hybrid changes that equation entirely by giving customers the choice to run Azure Virtual Desktop on-premises with Nutanix AHV as the foundation. That's a big deal. Organizations now have a single platform that supports both cloud and on-prem desktop workloads, and they can place those workloads where they make the most sense, whether that's driven by performance, compliance, cost, or user proximity, and manage it all through a unified experience.

One nuance worth calling out: Windows 11 multi-session is not a feature of AVD Hybrid. For organizations that need multi-session scenarios on-premises, Windows Server with RDSH will be required. It's not a dealbreaker by any means, but it's an important detail to factor into your desktop strategy and licensing decisions as you evaluate AVD Hybrid for your environment.

It's also great to see Nerdio supporting this from the very beginning. Nerdio Enterprise Manager brings an expansive feature set to AVD, from automated scaling and image management to cost optimization and monitoring, and having that full capability available for the hybrid deployment model is huge. Nerdio has become the go-to management layer for AVD environments, and their early investment in the Nutanix partnership signals confidence in where this is headed. For organizations already using Nerdio to manage their AVD in Azure, extending that same tooling to on-prem desktops running on AHV is a natural and compelling next step.

I've spent a good part of my career in the VDI space, going all the way back to Citrix WinFrame, through MetaFrame, XenDesktop, Omnissa Horizon, Nutanix Frame, and now AVD on AHV. Seeing the EUC ecosystem on Nutanix continue to expand like this is exciting. Each new platform option reinforces the same theme that runs through the entire conference: choice. Organizations aren't locked into a single vendor's desktop stack anymore. They can pick the VDI solution that fits their needs and run it on Nutanix AHV with confidence. Between Citrix, Horizon, Frame, and now AVD Hybrid, AHV has become a legitimate multi-platform VDI foundation, and that changes the game for customers evaluating their options.

NC2 Expands: GovCloud and European Sovereign Cloud

Nutanix Cloud Clusters continue to extend their reach. NC2 support for AWS GovCloud is generally available now, with AWS European Sovereign Cloud coming later this year. For government agencies and regulated industries that need the Nutanix experience in sovereign and secure cloud environments, this is a critical milestone. Add in the Hyperdisk and C3 bare-metal instance support coming for NC2 on Google Cloud, and the multicloud story gets even stronger.

Now, if I could just get something similar on the Microsoft Azure side for NC2 in government cloud regions, that would really round out the story. I'm patiently (okay, impatiently) waiting on that one. Pretty please, Nutanix and Microsoft... many of the public sector customers I work with would love to see NC2 in Azure Government. Consider this my official public nudge.

NDB Gets MongoDB

Nutanix Database Service and MongoDB Ops Manager now have a certified integration that is generally available now. This covers automated sharded cluster provisioning, point-in-time recovery down to the second, and coordinated backup and recovery workflows through NDB Time Machine. For organizations running MongoDB at scale, having native NDB integration simplifies operations significantly.

Stepping Back: What It All Means

That expansion theme I mentioned at the top runs through every one of these announcements. Expansion of storage partnerships, expansion of cloud reach, expansion of AI capabilities, and expansion of the ecosystem. Nutanix isn't just building a platform, they're building a platform that meets customers wherever they are, whatever infrastructure they're running, and whatever workloads they need to support.

The VMware migration wave continues to be a massive tailwind, and announcements like zero data migration with external storage are the kind of practical, customer-first innovations that turn interest into action.

Final Thoughts

After nearly a decade of .Next conferences, I continue to be impressed by how Nutanix evolves without losing sight of what makes them special: simplicity, community, and a relentless focus on customer choice. Chicago delivered in every way: the announcements were substantial, the conversations were meaningful, and the community showed up strong.

If we missed each other this year, let's connect soon. Want to talk about anything you saw at .Next, share which announcements got you excited this year, or discuss your own infrastructure modernization journey? I'd love to hear from you. Connect with me on LinkedIn or reach out at mike@mikedent.io.

I look forward to seeing you next year in Vegas at the Venetian. Until then, keep building, keep learning, and keep pushing the boundaries of what's possible.

Thanks for reading!