Cisco at Nutanix .NEXT 2026
Now that the dust is settling from an amazing Nutanix .NEXT conference, it's worth recapping Cisco's presence. This year's conference felt ... different. It really felt like Cisco had a strong presence in Chicago this year (2026) and had a several exciting and relevant announcements that I've compiled below. Nutanix themselves had a lot of software feature announcements but unless Cisco was directly involved or influenced a feature, it won't be mentioned in this post.
To be clear, just because this post doesn't talk about the zero-copy feature Nutanix showed, it doesn't mean that Cisco can't leverage this, it just means it's not unique to/for Cisco.
FlexPod with Nutanix
While the FlexPod with Nutanix (NetApp support) announcement was more of a roadmap / future feature and isn't available yet, it definitely took center stage for most conversations and the excitement was palpable. I wrote a three-part series on the previous FlashStack with Nutanix release (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3) and while Cisco (and Nutanix) has seen a lot of interest and has had a lot of early success, there's been a sense or a sentiment of "Ugh".
What do I mean by that? Well for one, most of the Everpure (formally Pure Storage) deployments use the Fibre Channel (FC) protocol but support with Nutanix requires NVMeoF/TCP. This often times creates additional challenges for customers. This is not to say this is an impossible problem to overcome, quite the opposite, it just drags the conversations and often leads to longer testing leading to more hesitations.
Second and closely related is the potential for needing to retrofit the existing Everpure storage array or adding additional NICs to support the new IP protocol. This can be a bit more of an undertaking for customers that are in this scenario as it requires a little bit more surgery to the storage array.
That said, Nutanix really nailed the support of NetApp. There are a lot of details that still need to be divulged, however, when we look at the history of FlexPod (NetApp) deployments with Cisco and Broadcom (VMware), we see the vast majority of customers using IP based NFS protocol. And you guessed it (saw it!) - NFS is the protocol that Nutanix will support for their integration with NetApp, providing a much easier adoption path for customers.
From a Cisco standpoint, FlexPod has had a longer tenured history/relationship between the companies and broader adoption than FlashStack. Bringing the flexibility for customers who went down the FlexPod route and bringing AHV support to the architecture for customers looking to diversify their hypervisor strategy or completely move off Broadcom (VMware) is a slam dunk!
For the same reasons customers adopted FlexPod and the Cisco Validated Designs (CVDs) that help them get to production quicker and provides them a sense of security and validation, is the same reason FlexPod with Nutanix will be just as, and hopefully even more successful!
Welcome to the FlexPod family, Nutanix!
Cisco Unified Edge with Nutanix
Bam! Speaking of slam dunks, this announcement brings back memories of hearing "He's on fire!!!". I talked about Cisco supporting Nutanix NKP with Cisco Unified Edge back when the platform was initially launched in November 2025 and teased AOS/AHV support. The cat is out of the bag folks!
I won't dig into all the details of Cisco's Unified Edge platform here but Cisco officially announced HCI support with Nutanix at the conference for the platform which is set to come in the summer of 2026!
Often times, customers go to conferences like Nutanix's and don't necessarily expect to find themselves enthralled in a hardware conversation - after all, software "should" run on just about anything (or at least you'd think it should). That said, I can tell you that Cisco having a physical Unified Edge unit on site for customers to see the real product, touch it, and see the modularity really brought it home. The "Light Bulb" moments could be seen from space for some of these customers (I asked the Artemis II crew).
If seeing the actual platform wasn't enough, Cisco also showed up much more differentiated than I've seen any other OEM ... ever ... on that show floor with a life-sized AI hologram! Ya - I'm a bit of a cautious (healthy?) skeptic around the AI topic but this gave something tangible for customers to see / hear / interact with which led to a lot of outside the box thinking conversations.
Why was the AI hologram awesome? No, it wasn't because of her shoes, but the SLM (Small Language Model) actually ran on a Unified Edge server in a remote Cisco datacenter. You might ask "Well if Edge is so cool why didn't it just run locally at the show??" Ya, Cisco would have loved that too but someone somewhere in the conference center powers that be believes this could be a fire hazard. I digress.
The SLM was also trained to be interacted with and provide information to bystanders (in multiple languages) about its architecture and AI software. Speaking of the AI software - the cherry on top with this hologram? Not only did the SLM run on an actual Unified Edge platform as mentioned above, it also ran using Nutanix software. That's right - Cisco brought a real and holistic solution to the show floor with useful and relevant customer use cases.
Here's are a couple of pictures of curious crowds around the hologram.
Cisco Enterprise Agreements with Nutanix
Cisco also formally announced their inclusion of Nutanix software under the Cisco EA umbrella. This is quite the milestone and a testament to the partnership the companies have built together over the last 3 years. There were several social media posts that highlighted this but in an unpredictable world, customers appreciate getting predictability. This is exactly what Cisco EAs offer, which now officially includes Nutanix software.
Cisco AI PODs with Nutanix
Last but not least was the announcement that Nutanix software is now part of the Cisco AI PODs story. AI software can be complicated and Cisco AI PODs tries to bring clarity on the infrastructure side by providing customers a blueprint. Historically speaking, Cisco only supported NVIDIA and Red Hat software along with other third party storage vendors like Everpure, NetApp, and VAST.
Cisco's announcement at the conference added Nutanix at every possible layer where it made sense. Kubernetes layer: NKP, AI Software layer: NAI, and Storage layer: NUS. Now customers can run a Nutanix flavored AI PODs version.
Bringing It All Together
This wasn't all - Cisco got additional coverage with a dedicated Cisco Unified Communications support slide during Rajiv's day 1 keynote, which got some audible cheers from the crowd, they took home the America's OEM partner of the year award, and also had a genuine mainstage conversation between Danny McGinnis (Cisco) and Tarkan Manner (Nutanix) that really highlighted the partnership of the two companies.
And if all of the above wasn't enough let me spell out what I saw when Nutanix kept bringing up this slide that highlighted the heavily emphasized "39 innovations" ...
What I saw is Cisco stepping up to the plate (changed the sport in my analogies) and hitting homerun after homerun with Nutanix by driving innovation, pushing the envelope, continuing to differentiate, and bringing more and more value to customers. Other OEMs felt a bit more like playing "Where's Waldo?"
