Barracuda Networks

Despite obvious similarities, one of the biggest differentiators that compels prospective customers to select one over the other lies in the vendors’ licensing and lock-in differences. Because Nutanix is fully software-defined and operates on a hardware- and hypervisor-agnostic model, customers aren’t charged a separate virtualization fee.

License-free virtualization emerged for the simple reason that many businesses nowadays no longer consider virtualization an optional component of their infrastructure. It has become a crucial, non-negotiable feature. Even so, many vendors, VMware included, offer virtualization as an expensive add-on. Because many businesses can’t operate without virtualization, they choose to pay that licensing and management fee.

Customers looking to invest in a hyperconverged solution are also likely to consult analyst reports on the HCI space and the primary vendors in the market. The Gartner Magic Quadrant for HCI is an industry staple for evaluating the strengths and cautions for 14 of the most recognizable HCI organizations.

According to Gartner, VMware and Nutanix both rank in the “leaders” quadrant, with Nutanix inching out VMware for the past few years. This year, both rank just pixels apart. Below is the most recent figure from Gartner’s report from November 2019.

The Forrester Wave, a respected industry analyst, similarly positions both Nutanix and VMware in the dark blue “leaders” category on their chart, citing the following reason as why Nutanix pushes ahead between the two: 

• “Nutanix’s simplified management and non-disruptive capacity expansion stand out. It switched from solely offering an appliance to a solution with a software-only stack for certified hardware platforms, a strategy that has delivered results.”