Nutanix Builds A Kubernetes PaaS

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Enterprise cloud computing player Nutanix (Nasdaq: NTNX) reported its first quarter results that surpassed market expectations. Better than expected financial performance for the quarter sent the stock soaring 10%. Nutanix continues to invest in its cloud-focused strategy, assuring investors of continuing growth.

Nutanix’s Financials

For the first quarter, revenues dropped 0.6% to $312.8 million, ahead of the market’s forecast of $298.4 million. ACV billings grew 10% over the year to $137.8 million. Net loss was $265.05 million, compared with a loss of $229.3 million reported a year ago.

By segment, Nutanix’s Product revenues fell 19.02% to $155.8 million while revenues from support, entitlements, and other services grew 30% to $157 million.

For the second quarter, Nutanix forecast ACV billings of $145-$148 million compared with the market’s estimates of $134.4 million.

Nutanix’s Cloud Expansion

During the quarter, Nutanix announced the general availability of its Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure (HCI) on AWS. With the availability of its products on AWS, Nutanix is now able to extend the simplicity and ease-of-use of its software to the public cloud. This move is part of its plan to making computing seamless across multiple clouds – public or private.

As part of the same focus, it announced a partnership with Microsoft, bringing its product portfolio to Azure. Nutanix plans to leverage these cloud partnerships to become an infrastructure software company with a bring-your-own-license approach that will help its customers with their hybrid computing journey.

As part of its cloud focus, Nutanix recently announced Elevate, a new global partner program that will simplify engagement for Nutanix’s entire partner ecosystem using a consistent set of tools, resources, and marketing platforms to take advantage of cloud business models. Under a single integrated architecture, Elevate will allow Value Added Resellers, Value Added Distributors, Service Providers, and other cloud partners to grow their business with hybrid and multi-cloud solutions.

Nutanix’s Kubernetes PaaS

Besides focusing on the cloud, Nutanix is also expanding its product portfolio. It continued to innovate its core platform and product by adding new capabilities and recently announced the launch of its kubernetes-based PaaS solution known as Karbon Platform Services (KPS). KPS will help democratize containers beyond DevOps for IT operators.

KPS has been built for the multi-cloud environment and offers developers simple, open abstractions of services to accelerate the development and deployment of applications, ranging from basic, containerized applications to complex web-scale applications. It features a global SaaS control plane for multi-cloud management while offering system-wide security. Developers will be able to securely connect to their existing data lakes in any cloud using the built-in data interfaces with multiple cloud services including AWS S3, Azure Blob Storage, and GCP CloudStorage.

Its stock is currently trading at $33.18 with a market capitalization of $6.69 billion. It was trading at a 52-week high of $37.86 in February last year. It fell to a 52-week low of $11.31 in March last year amid the turmoil.

Disclosure: All investors should make their own assessments based on their own research, informed interpretations, and risk appetite. This article expresses my own opinions based on my own research of product-market fit, channel execution, and other factors. My primary interest is in product strategy. While this may have bearing on stock movements, my writings tend to focus on long-term implications. The information presented is illustrative and educational, but should not be regarded as a complete analysis nor recommendation to buy or sell the securities mentioned herein. I am not a registered investment adviser and I am not receiving compensation for this article.

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