Nutanix Recognized as a Leader in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Distributed Hybrid Infrastructure

Nutanix has been named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Distributed Hybrid Infrastructure (DHI). By Gartner’s definition, “Distributed hybrid infrastructure (DHI) is a solution incorporating cloud-native infrastructure principles (e.g., programmability, elasticity, modularity and resiliency).”

This is Nutanix's third consecutive year in the Leaders quadrant, positioned for both Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision.

"Our customers are navigating unprecedented complexity as they scale applications and data across hybrid cloud, edge, and AI environments. They need an operating model that tames that complexity. That unified experience is exactly what we deliver. We view this recognition as a testament to our rapid pace of innovation, continuously advancing our architecture to future-proof our customers' distributed infrastructure and set them up for success as they transform their businesses for an AI-enabled world, including enabling secure, sovereign Agentic AI deployments across hybrid cloud and edge environments."
Thomas Cornely, EVP Product Management at Nutanix.

In our opinion, Nutanix's recognition across multiple analyst evaluations highlights the breadth of the Nutanix Cloud Platform (NCP). In addition to being named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Distributed Hybrid Infrastructure, Nutanix was also recognized as a Challenger in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Container Management for the second consecutive year. These concurrent recognitions come as we continue to invest in providing customers with a unified platform that excels across both virtualized and containerized worlds.

In addition to the NCP recognitions, Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) was recognized as a Leader in the 2026 Forrester Wave™ for Object Storage Solutions, an evaluation of the strength of top vendors’ strategy and current offerings. In the Forrester Wave report, Nutanix was also named a “Customer Favorite” based on outstanding customer feedback. With the rising importance of Objects as a primary storage tier for cloud‐native applications and AI-native workloads, this reinforces the strength of the Nutanix solution for demanding modern workloads.

Together, these recognitions coincide with Nutanix's platform which is designed to bring together virtualized and containerized workloads, with advanced data and AI services, across datacenter, public cloud, edge, and sovereign locations under a unified operating model. This foundation is further strengthened by our Agentic AI platform, enabling secure, sovereign AI deployments across hybrid and edge environments.

A Unified Operating Model for a Distributed World

At Nutanix, the goal is not simply to provide infrastructure, but to deliver a platform that helps organizations consistently manage applications, data, and operations across environments.

Organizations today must support traditional applications, cloud-native services, and emerging AI workloads, often while navigating data sovereignty and regulatory requirements across data center, cloud, and edge. Managing these environments independently creates complexity, operational silos, and inconsistent governance.

Nutanix enables organizations to manage VMs, containers, and emerging AI applications through common operational practices and governance frameworks across environments. This can support a more consistent operating model for organizations managing increasingly diverse application and infrastructure environments.

Addressing New Hybrid Cloud and AI Requirements

The DHI market continues to evolve as enterprises balance operational resilience, compliance, sovereignty requirements, and AI adoption.

As organizations move AI initiatives from experimentation into production, infrastructure decisions become increasingly important. Businesses need flexibility in where AI services and data reside while maintaining governance, security, and control.

Over the past year, Nutanix has continued expanding its hybrid cloud capabilities, including broader support for Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) across AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, AWS GovCloud, and sovereign cloud providers. Additional innovations include cost-effective disaster recovery using Multicloud Snapshot Technology (MST) with Amazon S3, Azure Blob Storage, and Google Cloud Storage, as well as support for running Nutanix Files natively on Amazon EC2 and Azure VMs with cloud tiering to S3 and Blob storage.

Nutanix has also introduced new AI-focused capabilities, including Nutanix Enterprise AI, Agent Gateway for LLM governance, integrated model security capabilities, and NKP Metal for bare-metal Kubernetes deployments. Nutanix also strengthened security from the infrastructure up—reducing attack surfaces, improving encryption and time synchronization, extending consistent microsegmentation to VMs and Kubernetes, and simplifying hardening through security profiles, analytics, and stronger tenant isolation.

Together, these capabilities help organizations:

• Run any workload anywhere: Deploy where it makes the most business sense
• Meet compliance needs: Address regulatory, security, and sovereignty requirements
• Extend across environments: Operate consistently across public cloud, datacenter, and edge environments
• Access specialized resources: Simplify and optimize GPU usage for AI workloads
• Maintain consistent governance:  Maintain consistent security policies, operational controls, and compliance posture regardless of where applications and data reside.

Architectural Flexibility Across HCI and External Storage

Enterprise modernization rarely happens in a greenfield environment. Most organizations need to consider existing investments and operational processes while planning for the future. Nutanix's support for external storage integrations  with Dell PowerFlex, Dell PowerStore, Everpure Storage, and NetApp (in development)allows customers to adopt modern operating models without requiring wholesale storage replacement. This approach gives organizations greater choice in how they evolve their environments and transition from other DHI platforms while helping organizations manage complexity and protecting existing investments.

Looking Ahead

More than a decade ago, Nutanix helped popularize hyperconverged infrastructure by simplifying how organizations deploy and manage IT infrastructure. Today, customer requirements extend far beyond infrastructure consolidation. As Kubernetes and AI workloads become distributed across on-premises, edge, and public cloud environments, organizations need a new infrastructure model purpose-built for this reality.

We believe our recognition as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Distributed Hybrid Infrastructure marks an important milestone in Nutanix's evolution from an HCI pioneer to a platform for operating modern applications, data, and AI across distributed environments.  As customers continue to modernize, we're focused on delivering the simplicity, flexibility, and innovation they need to move forward with confidence.

As infrastructure becomes more distributed and AI adoption accelerates, we remain focused on helping customers manage operational complexity and maintain control wherever applications and data reside.

Gartner, Inc, Magic Quadrant for Distributed Hybrid Infrastructure, Julia Palmer, Daniel Bowers, Adrian Wong, Elaine Zhang, 7 September 2026

Gartner, Inc., Magic Quadrant for Container Management, Dennis Smith, Tony Iams, Wataru Katsurashima, Lucas Albuquerque, Carolin Zhou, 2 September 2026

Forrester Research, Inc, The Forrester Wave™: Object Storage Solutions, Q2 2026

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