Nutanix is the leading vendor (and this does not even count all sources because Cisco and HP buyers also put Nutanix on their servers - although unauthorized by Cisco or HP, and HP actually did a marketing campaign in 2017 stating that Nutanix was not authorized to run on our servers - and yet still customers put Nutanix on their servers and go to Nutanix for service instead) despite VMWare and Dell and Cisco and HP having 6 figures in the number of enterprise customer accounts vs. now, more than 11,000 for Nutanix.
Despite this huge, and this is a HUUUGEEE disparity between Nutanix and all the rest, VMWare (along with its parent Dell) can only keep within a statistical tie of Nutanix. This means, since Nutanix has many marquee customers, and its deal size is materially growing as HCI approaches and may cross the “chasm” this year, that Nutanix is taking customers from VMWare and from Cisco and HP. Cisco + HP = ~10% total marketshare. VMWARE + Nutanix = ~70%+ of marketshare. Everyone else, including NTAP, EMC, and the new up and coming software companies fight over the remaining 20% or less of the market and are showing no signs of gaining any share from the top 2.
VMWare offers great product. Nutanix offers great product. The rest are also rans. Consider how good Nutanix product must be to be doing what it is doing in this market and it is getting stronger, not weaker. Now the market is moving to the hybrid integration market. Nutanix is the innovator, VMWare the close follower, and the rest…NTAP cannot even be said to be selling HCI, but rather CI (which has peaked and HCI has finally caught and is leaving in the dust. CI is converged infrastructure that was better suited to incumbents with hardware. HCI makes the hardware a commodity with software defined networking defining things).
If one is still worried about Dell, after all this time, so be it. Dell server sales would materially suffer if they forced their customers to buy VMWare instead of Nutanix. And doing this would not even guarantee more VMWare sales as customers (like they do with Cisco and HP) would most likely just continue to buy Nutanix and put it on whatever commodity server they can find. But hey, maybe the Dell MBA’s see the possibilities otherwise. Doubt it very much, but how knows.
Tinker