Nutanix launches Cloud Clusters (NC2) on Microsoft Azure

NC2 on Azure offers a seamless hyperconverged infrastructure and unified management spanning private and public cloud environments to accelerate hybrid cloud adoption. NC2 on Azure enables customers to deploy and manage their workloads in their own Azure account and VNet enabling them to keep the operating model simple and consistent between Azure and on-premises. 

With license portability of Nutanix term-based software and the ability to leverage all Microsoft Azure benefits, NC2 on Azure provides customers the investment protection and choice to run their workloads in a hybrid cloud environment. NC2 on Azure is now generally available to customers on Azure dedicated bare metal nodes in North America Azure regions, with additional global Azure regions to follow in 2023.

“Organisations are embracing hybrid multicloud to easily scale from on-prem to the public cloud, optimise costs for performant and secure workloads, and tap into a flexible subscription model,” said Rajiv Ramaswami, President and CEO of Nutanix. “NC2 on Azure gives our customers a frictionless on-ramp to Azure with consistent management of apps and data across their hybrid multicloud environment.”  

“While public cloud has solidified as a crucial investment for businesses, many customers need to run and manage workloads across public and private cloud environments,” said Scott Guthrie, Executive Vice President, Cloud + AI Group, Microsoft. “NC2 on Azure provides consistent management for businesses’ infrastructure across on-premises and cloud, reduces network latency, and increases cost efficiency.”

Customers can now run workloads on NC2 on Azure and manage Azure instances from Nutanix's management interface. This enables customers to run hybrid workloads seamlessly across private clouds and Microsoft Azure without needing to re-architect their applications. The expected result is simplified and consistent IT operations across clouds, hybrid cloud adoption in hours, and lower total cost of ownership when compared to other cloud deployment solutions. 

Customers can also take advantage of Azure Hybrid Benefit as well as Extended Security Updates to improve cost, security, and efficiency. Nutanix customers will be able to port their existing term licenses to NC2 on Azure or get on-demand consumption of Nutanix software through the Azure Marketplace, enabling frictionless movement between private clouds and Microsoft Azure. 

“Customers are struggling with the reality of managing workloads across private and public clouds, and this challenge is not going away,” said Paul Nashawaty, Senior Analyst at The Enterprise Strategy Group. “This Nutanix and Azure solution addresses key challenges many enterprises are facing by providing unified management across clouds with applications, data and license portability.”

Customers can leverage NC2 on Azure to: 

Simplify and optimise disaster recovery, eliminating the need to maintain a secondary site by utilising Microsoft Azure's on-demand capacity for failover.

Access on-demand capacity bursting to Microsoft Azure, rapidly scaling capacity while leveraging existing applications and tooling.

Migrate and modernise their datacentres by easily moving their existing applications and data as-is without costly and time-consuming refactoring or retooling.

“As we strive to financially protect 39 million customers around the world with our products and services, we continue to see hybrid cloud as a key milestone in our digital transformation journey,” said David Fitzgerald, Assistant Vice President of IT Delivery at Unum. “With NC2 on Azure, we are excited about leveraging a seamless hybrid cloud platform for disaster recovery as well as to migrate and run workloads in Azure to handle a myriad of hosting scenarios. We can now, on-demand, expand our Nutanix Cloud Platform to Azure regions without having to re-factor our applications. We look forward to continuing our strong partnership with Microsoft and Nutanix.”

"TCS has a long track record of embracing technology innovations to satisfy customer demand and enable them to focus on business outcomes,” said Dinanath Kholkar, SVP and Global Head of Partner Ecosystems & Alliances at TCS. “Microsoft Azure and Nutanix have been popular technology choices of TCS customers looking for digital transformation, and NC2 on Azure is an attractive option for us to help our customers extend and migrate their on-prem workloads into a cloud space more easily. The ability to rapidly deploy and burst workloads through NC2 on Azure is vital to our customer’s hybrid and multicloud strategy.” Dina added, “TCS Microsoft Business Unit (MBU) is looking forward to taking this solution to our joint customers.”