The partnership offers a joint answer to one of enterprise IT’s most persistent headaches — modernizing virtualized infrastructure without ripping everything out and starting over.
Nutanix and NetApp have announced a collaboration to integrate NetApp’s enterprise storage and data management platform with the Nutanix Cloud Platform, giving joint customers a unified path to modernize virtualized infrastructure across on-premises, cloud, and containerized environments.
The integration, expected to be available later this year, will combine NetApp’s ONTAP data management software — which the company positions as a flexible, secure data foundation — with Nutanix’s hybrid multicloud operations platform and its AHV hypervisor. The companies say the joint solution is designed to let organizations modernize their virtualization layer, their data operations, or both, without requiring a wholesale infrastructure overhaul.
A central selling point is migration speed. Using NFS-based integration between the two platforms, along with NetApp’s Shift toolkit and Nutanix Move, the companies say customers will be able to perform data-in-place virtual machine conversions measured in minutes rather than the extended timelines typical of enterprise migration projects.
The integration also enables independent scaling of compute and storage — offloading data management to ONTAP while Nutanix handles the virtualization layer — and supports VM-granular management of performance, storage capacity, and recovery from a unified interface.
On the security side, the joint solution will include NetApp’s ONTAP Autonomous Ransomware Protection with AI and NetApp’s Ransomware Resilience service, which are designed to detect threats and data exfiltration attempts in real time.
“NetApp and Nutanix are enabling simple, secure and fast modernization of virtualized environments,” said Sandeep Singh, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Enterprise Storage at NetApp. “Whether seeking to transform their virtualization layer, data operations, or both, customers need Intelligent Data Infrastructure at the foundation.”
Tarkan Maner, President and Chief Commercial Officer at Nutanix, said the partnership is structured to let customers modernize at their own pace rather than committing to a fixed migration path.
Looking further ahead, the two companies plan to integrate NetApp ONTAP into Nutanix’s Agentic AI stack, a software platform the company is positioning for AI-driven business transformation.
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The announcement drew commentary from partners as well. Cisco’s Jeremy Foster, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Cisco Compute, said the integration extends the existing FlexPod ecosystem to support Nutanix Cloud Platform, combining Cisco networking and compute with NetApp storage and NCP in a single converged environment.
Matt Kimball, VP and Principal Analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, said the collaboration reflects a broader industry shift toward solutions that pair infrastructure modernization with intelligent data services, giving customers a stable foundation for both today’s virtualized workloads and tomorrow’s cloud-native and AI-driven environments.
