Harsh Vaishnav
Senior Director & Head - Channels, ASEAN, Hong Kong, India and SAARC
“Nutanix has always been a channel-first company. From the very beginning, we were clear that our go-to-market would be only through partners. We focus on partners we can invest with, who can take us to new markets and are ready to invest in building this practice with us. We committed to doubling our investment, including marketing investments, with those partners. Even if asked to double our business every year, we would not double our sales force; we would continue to leverage and build channels. We call them partners because they are an extended arm of Nutanix. Our ‘Special 26’ began with 26 partners, each having a pre-sales resource. We invested in skilling, capabilities and certifications, creating ambassadors who have stayed with us as we evolved from HCI to hybrid cloud and AI.
Partner profitability, trust and innovation
Our channel ethos rests on four things: a great product, profitability, long-term commitment and trust. We have maintained a 90-plus NPS for 10 years. Profitability is not just about front-end margins. Partners who invest with us, build skills and practices are rewarded through rebates they can reinvest or retain as profitability. Our incumbency programs help ensure that partners who invested in the original business remain partners of choice for renewals. Trust is built over time but can be broken in seconds. HCI remains a major focus, while we are becoming an application-centric, application-aware infrastructure platform. AI, GenAI, agentic AI, application modernization and NKP are significant focus areas.
Quality-led expansion of partner ecosystem
Our mantra remains quality over quantity. Focus partners remain at the core, while we carefully add emerging partners for newer markets, customers, use cases and verticals. We are building an ISV ecosystem, focusing on the top three per vertical, and have onboarded and certified around eight to ten partners in India. We will continue to double down on channels. We are a 100% channel-only company and do not want to go direct for the foreseeable future. Our programs keep partners in mind, and our partner advisory board provides feedback. Partner exchanges have also helped us double our Channel SE team. We want to continue standing by partners who have stood by us.”
