Converged Infrastructure Vendor Nutanix Hires Former VAR To Develop Channel

Nutanix, a startup developer of technology that combines storage and virtual servers into data-center building aimed at eliminating traditional networked storage, has hired longtime solution provider Steve Kaplan as its new vice president of channels and strategic sales.

Kaplan, who until Friday served as the vice president of virtualization and cloud computing at Greenbelt, Md.-based solution provider Presidio, said the move for him represents an opportunity to take advantage of what he called the latest disruptive technology.

"Every so often a disruptive technology comes around," he said. "I based my career around that. Now we're here again with Nutanix. We're taking SAN-less compute and making it available for the masses."

[Related: Nutanix Upgrades NX Appliances, Improves Storage, VM Compute Capabilities ]

Nutanix is the developer of the Nutanix Complete Cluster, a converged infrastructure solution that consolidates the server and storage tiers into a single, integrated platform. It features a 2U modular design, which allows both compute and capacity to scale as new nodes are added. Nutanix's solutions include applications for Hadoop big data.

At Nutanix, Kaplan will be responsible for continuing to build out and run the company's channel strategy.

"So after 25 years in the channel, and being a columnist at three channel publications long since gone, I'm joining a vendor for the first time," he said.

Joining the vendor community was not a decision Kaplan said he took lightly.

"But I believe in the Nutanix message and want to do what the best storage companies have done in selling through the channel," he said. "And Nutanix is 100 percent channel. No ambivalence."

Kaplan in late 2011 joined Presidio when it acquired Dallas-based INX in a deal to give Presidio a nationwide presence.

Prior to that, Kaplan was president and co-founder of Sacramento, Calif.-based AccessFlow, in response to what was then the biggest disruptive technology in the market, server virtualization technology from VMware. AccessFlow was acquired in 2008 by INX.

"When a friend first showed me VMware and how a client had virtualized 24 servers to two, and showed me VMotion, I was hooked," he said.

Prior to that, Kaplan was an early proponent of Citrix Systems' WinFrame, a technology that gave multiuser capability to Microsoft's Windows NT. His Citrix experience helped him eventually roll up several solution providers, including his own earlier company Ryno Technology, into Stamford, Conn.-based MTM Technologies.

PUBLISHED MARCH 18, 2013