Making a Mark with Nutanix Cloud Manager

Abstract: It has been over 3 months since we announced the general availability of the Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM). Since the early introduction of NCM, we have actively engaged with our customers and leading industry analysts on the value proposition of NCM and how it should address the challenges of hybrid multicloud management. In this blog, we share some of the early mentions and positive feedback we have received.

As the 87% of respondents in the 2022 Annual Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Index agreed,  succeeding with multicloud requires simpler management across mixed-cloud infrastructures, which use dissimilar platforms, tools, dashboards, and configuration approaches. These respondents cite security (49%), data integration across clouds (49%), and managing cost (43%) across cloud borders as their top multicloud challenges.

The Nutanix Cloud Manager^™ (NCM) solution addresses these concerns by bringing simplicity and ease of use to building and managing cloud deployments. NCM as a platform drives consistent governance across private and public clouds for its customers as it offers a unified solution for intelligent operations, self-service and orchestration, security compliance and visibility, and control of cloud costs.

Further, a majority of respondent organizations (64%) in the 2022 Enterprise Cloud Index expect to be operating in a multicloud environment as their most commonly used deployment model, one defined by the use of multiple clouds, whether private or public, within three years. The top use cases respondents cite for an increase in usage of multiple clouds are application modernization (53%), disaster recovery (51%), integration with native cloud services such as artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) (49%), and test and development agility (49%). In light of this, it is no surprise that we begin with hybrid multicloud management analyst reports.

One of the first analyst documents to cover NCM was The Forrester Buying Guide For Hybrid Cloud Management, which was published in December 2021. The report cites how “customers are looking for a solution that provides management across all environments from an on-premises cloud to a public cloud in one single pane of glass.” Forrester further states that “The capabilities required for public and private cloud management vary greatly, so this distinction drastically affects cost and functionality”.

NCM as a hybrid cloud management platform delivers both cloud building and cloud management capabilities for both private (Nutanix® and VMware® clouds) and public clouds. NCM goes beyond conventional multicloud management platforms, which often lack cloud building capabilities, may support only public clouds, and are less feature rich. Also, NCM can be tailored to create an “invisible cloud” by having developers access hybrid multicloud resources through a marketplace-like platform, controlling what is visible to them, or having governance policies around resource consumption.

In May 2022, the Forrester Now Tech: Cloud Cost Management And Optimization, Q2 2022 was published. In this report, cloud cost management and optimization solutions across 30 software vendors were analyzed by size and functionality.

NCM landed in the Standalone CCMO functionality segment.  According to the report, “Standalone CCMO tools provide the deepest functionality for public cloud optimization. Standalone CCMO tools are purpose-built for cost management and optimization of resources. This category represents the majority of the market. These tools extend across multiple cloud platforms to perform waste identification, resource resizing, reservation recommendations, forecasting, and integration into enterprise billing platforms. Their functionality tends to be the deepest relative to other categories.”

More recently and interestingly, the Forrester Now Tech: Hybrid Cloud Management (HCM), Q2 2022 report analyzed 29 Hybrid Cloud Management vendors. In the report, Forrester defines hybrid cloud management as a software stack that delivers governance, visibility, lifecycle management, and optimization insights across multiple clouds across both public and private environments. Forrester’s 2021 data shows that most infrastructure decision-makers whose enterprise is adopting cloud stated that they’ve adopted a hybrid cloud management (HCM) or cloud management platform (CMP) to manage their cloud environment. Nutanix’s NCM was included in the report in the large vendor market presence category.

Further, NCM was cited in the following HCM functionality segments: (a) Multicloud management and (b) Hybrid cloud management. According to the report, multicloud management vendors “deliver governance and cost management capabilities across multiple public cloud environments,” and hybrid cloud management vendors “deliver governance, orchestration, and cost management capabilities across multiple private and public cloud environments.”

The Forrester HCM Now Tech report further notes that “A full-scale hybrid cloud strategy — spanning both public and private clouds — requires a hybrid cloud manager that can handle complexity, deep private cloud usage, and cost optimization capabilities.”

At Nutanix, we believe that such coverage in these leading industry publications is a validation of our focus on developing elegant, powerful solutions that simplify and transform customer operations. We hope to continue bringing you more updates in the coming months.

Are you new to Nutanix Cloud Manager and want to try it for yourself? Sign up for the Intelligent Ops and Self-service Modules Test Drive today or you can head to the NCM home page to learn more!

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