From Swim Lanes to Water Polo: Seattle’s Play for a Modern Infrastructure

According to city of Seattle CTO Rob Lloyd, a lot of city governments used to operate in swim lanes, with each department sprinting in one direction, rarely crossing paths.

Today, it’s water polo.

“Right now, everyone’s in the same pool, moving faster, constantly passing, and focused on a common goal,” Lloyd noted.

Members of Lloyd’s team aren’t just lifeguards on the sidelines; they’re in the water, collaborating, sharing information, creating solutions, and delivering services to more than 816,000 Seattle residents.

This transformation became the foundation for one of the most ambitious IT infrastructure modernizations in the city’s history.

Results with Nutanix

Seattle’s Journey to a Modern Infrastructure

“We have 816,000 residents and over 50,000 businesses,” said Lloyd. “That’s 816,000 reasons to excel every day.”

In 2025-2026 fiscal year, the City of Seattle faced a $250-million-plus budget deficit. The stakes were high, and the question wasn’t just how to cut costs—it was how to preserve the soul of public service in a city that prides itself on doing things differently.

Seattle needed a modern infrastructure—one that could reduce costs by unifying its digital landscape and empower every department to better serve the public.

The Search for a True Partner

When the city began evaluating options for a new hypervisor and infrastructure platform, Jim Sprinkle, the city’s Manager of Platform Technologies, led a seven-month analysis of six different solutions.

“We looked at everything,” Sprinkle recalled. “From full cloud migration to hybrid models. We ran total-cost-of-ownership projections, evaluated feature parity and mapped out every risk.”

One potential partner stood out: Nutanix.

“It wasn’t just the Nutanix Cloud Platform and hyperconverged infrastructure,” Lloyd explained. “It was how they listened to what we needed. Nutanix made a huge effort to understand our strategic plan. They didn’t just sell—they collaborated.”

The numbers backed it up.

“In our most recent technology roadmap, we were able to save 26% with Nutanix,” Sprinkle said. “And our total cost of ownership over six years is projected to save us $1.6- $2 million a year.”

The Migration Begins

The implementation was massive. Thousands of legacy VMs were migrated to the Nutanix Cloud Platform while services remained online. And every department—from public safety to permitting—had to trust that their systems would work, uninterrupted.

Sprinkle’s team approached the task with precision. “It’s like a long reboot,” he said. “The system came up on the other side just like it was before.”

By the time they crossed the 2,000 VM milestone, the city was already seeing the benefits. Faster deployments. Lower costs. Increased uptime. And a unified platform that could support everything from traffic cameras to emergency dispatch.

“Nutanix dramatically simplified infrastructure management,” Sprinkle noted. “This is especially vital for smaller teams. Nutanix has just been rock solid.”

The City of Seattle Platform Technologies team after a successful migration to Nutanix

Security is Foundational

For Jake Hammock, Seattle’s Chief Information Security Officer, the transformation wasn’t solely about performance—it was about trust.

“Nutanix solved one of the most complex security problems,” said Hammock. “They baked encryption and microsegmentation directly into the hypervisor. That’s not something you bolt on later. It’s foundational.”

With native support for federal security standards and automated containerization, Nutanix gave Seattle the confidence to scale securely. It also opened the door to responsible AI experimentation, in which Hammock’s team was deeply invested.

“We’re building an AI strategy that’s ethical, secure and aligned with our values,” Hammock explained. “Nutanix is helping us by providing the infrastructure to test, deploy and scale AI without compromising privacy.”

A Vision for the Future

Seattle’s IT strategy is built around hybrid multicloud. It’s not about chasing trends—it’s about building resilience.

“The strategy behind hybrid multicloud gives you maximum flexibility,” said Lloyd. “It enables you to deploy for the most optimal cost and best performance.”

That vision is already paying off. Departments that once operated in isolation are now sharing data. Applications that were once hard to maintain are now easy to scale. And the city is well-positioned to respond to crises, serve residents and innovate.

Throughout Seattle’s journey, Nutanix has been more than a vendor—it’s been a partner—leaning in, solving problems and co-creating solutions.

“The people at Nutanix never proclaimed, ‘We’re the best,’” Lloyd stated. “They proved it. Every time.”

From flash memory optimization to AI sandboxing, Nutanix worked side-by-side with Seattle’s IT organization to build an infrastructure that could meet today’s needs and tomorrow’s ambitions.

Seattle isn’t just in the same pool now. It’s playing water polo at full speed, passing, collaborating, and thinking ahead.

“When we work with Nutanix, they’re thinking two to three years ahead,” Lloyd added. “Very few companies in the technology industry even aspire to that.”

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