Dheeraj Pandey: Nutanix Will ‘Have To Adapt Even More’

“As I've told the team at Nutanix, ‘Sleep well, don't speculate too much, and yes, ignore the Wall Street roller coaster. Real money sits with Main Street,” says Nutanix CEO Dheeraj Pandey.

Nutanix founder and CEO Dheeraj Pandey said his software company will need to adapt even more over the coming months to meet the demands of the new at-home workforce that has sprouted from the coronavirus pandemic.

Pandey said many of Nutanix’s sellers faced the challenge of needing to adapt to the “new reality of not having any physical meetings” with customers. “Our employees and our sellers have actually found a calling of doing everything through video calls,” he said in an interview with CNBC. “It’s been a really good thing for us in the last one month alone to really do things digitally and virtually, but over the course of this coming six months, we’ll probably have to adapt even more so.”

The San Jose, Calif.-based company has launched a slew of new offerings this month to help customers and channel partners get through the economic uncertainty from COVID-19. Pandey said Nutanix has seen a “meaningful increase” over the past month in supporting desktops for customers as well as from healthcare and education organizations that need to quickly adopt new work from home strategies by leveraging Nutanix’ broad software portfolio

[Related: Nutanix Channel Chief On Driving VDI To Combat Coronavirus]

In one recent use case, Nutanix was deployed at Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University to deliver a scalable and flexible private cloud infrastructure to support the university’s transformation during the coronavirus pandemic as more functions are moving online. The university is now leveraging Nutanix’s Enterprise Cloud OS, AHV virtualization, Xi Leap for cloud-based disaster recovery, and Xi Frame for Desktop as-a-Service to deliver secure remote working capabilities for its staff.

Another recent use case was with the Maryland Lottery and Gaming agency, who began leveraging Xi Frame to provider work from home capabilities to its team. When COVID-19 emerged, Maryland Lottery lacked enough laptops for all its staff. Over the course of just one weekend, Xi Frame was deployed and provided employees with the same access and tools from their personal devices from any location, while also providing secure access to the VPN.

Al Solorzano, vice president, end user computing at Concord, Calif.-based Entisys360, said Nutanix is not only helping to drive new value via remote workforce solutions, but also “speed of return on investments” for his customers.

“They’re giving us a lot of things that we can to go market with our customers with to help them specifically for COVID-19 related opportunities and work at home initiatives,” said Solorzano. “We’re trying to do right by customers first and foremost.”

This month, the hybrid cloud specialist and hyperconverged infrastructure pioneer launched its new Nutanix Special Financial Assistance Program to provide channel partners with extended payment terms. Nutanix is also offering 180-day deferred payments through its Nutanix Financial Solutions organization as well as free certification exams.

The company also launched FastTrack for VDI, a new offer that enables channel partners to create a VDI environment for customers in days.

“There is no doubt that this pandemic will change the way we live, work, and transact business,” said Pandey in a recent blog post. “Where my mind is focused is on what I can control and where we can help. I'm focused on our employees and focused on our customers and how we can help them during this time. As I've told the team at Nutanix, sleep well, don't speculate too much, and yes, ignore the Wall Street roller coaster. Real money sits with Main Street. Everything else follows.”