What to expect from Nutanix .NEXT 2026
Chicago is famous for many things.
The windy city is known for its particular take on hot dogs, its elevated rapid transit system, its deep-dish pizza (classed by Italians as “well, it’s not pizza”) and also for its iconic sports teams, the Chicago Bears (American football) and the Chicago Cubs (baseball).
This April 7-9, the city will also be known as the host location for the Nutanix .NEXT conference, which will be held in the facilities at McCormick Place.
The company tells us that over those three “impactful” days, attendees will get a chance to connect with Nutanix leaders and industry luminaries who want to help advance the next era of enterprise technology with real-world perspective and practical guidance.
Speakers this year include (of course) Rajiv Ramaswami, CEO, Nutanix, alongside his team, which includes: Mandy Dhaliwal, CMO, Nutanix; Manosiz Bhattacharyya, CTO, Nutanix; Lee Caswell, SVP, product and solutions marketing, Nutanix; Thomas Cornely, EVP, product management, Nutanix and Tarkan Maner, President & CCO, Nutanix.
Now long-embedded in his role at the helm, Ramaswami will also be joined on the speaker podium by Mark Rober, founder and CEO of CrunchLabs and (of course, when is not on the list?) former distinguished engineer at Google Cloud and airline mile collector extraordinaire Kelsey Hightower.
Hybrid multi-cloud operating model
With a heritage in hyperconverged infrastructure, the Nutanix of 2026 is one firmly focused on explaining how its approach to the hybrid multi-cloud operating model should be the deployed operational model of choice for modern enterprise software application development teams.
Nutanix uses multicloud as opposed to multi-cloud as its preferred convention in this arena, but en-dash hyphens notwithstanding, the company denotes this approach to virtualisation services as a means of grasping a unified software platform that spans private datacentre deployments and multiple public cloud estates.
The company colours that definition further and explains that a hybrid multi-cloud operating model works to enable consistent management, security and portability for applications and data. This is all used to make sure enterprise IT teams are able to run workloads anywhere without re-architecting… and the promise here leads directly towards a chance to reduce operational complexity and eliminate vendor lock-in.
“Hybrid multi-cloud only works if the platform is consistent. Today, platform teams are dealing with Kubernetes sprawl, inconsistent storage and networking constructs and security policies that don’t map cleanly across environments. That complexity lands squarely on developers and slows innovation,” said Thomas Cornely, EVP product management at Nutanix.
“At .NEXT – particularly in our AI & cloud-native pavilion – we’ll be demonstrating how we’re delivering a unified platform layer that runs VMs, containers and AI workloads side by side, with governance and data services built in. The aim is simple: standardise once, enforce policy once and give developers the freedom to deploy anywhere without re-architecting or compromising control,” added Cornely.
Outside the keynotes and on the exhibition floor, the .NEXT 2026 event itself is broken out across five pavilions.
Practitioner pavillions
The AI & cloud-native pavilion will feature AI and ML solutions and is described as an area to engage with C-suite executives, IT directors and key stakeholders from Nutanix to get product demos and look through solution case studies.
The public sector pavilion is a place for attendees to discover how government and education IT leaders are transforming service delivery and enabling mission success. This area showcases solutions that bridge traditional and modern IT… and it also serves to “enhance constituent experiences” (so says Nutanix), all while optimising resources and improving security
The service provider partner pavilion is intended to work as a platform for firms to showcase their collaboration with Nutanix, highlighting solutions that aid customers in achieving a secure, reliable and economical hybrid multi-cloud. Topics covered here will include datacentre modernisation & consolidation, data sovereignty, data security, anything-as-a-service and the CapEx to OpEx transition.
Partner perspectives
The cloud pavilion is a zone for hyperscaler users (AWS, Google, Azure), cloud professionals and decision-makers. Then finally, the embedded solutions pavilion is all about how partners are integrating Nutanix with their operational technologies to deliver turnkey and secure solutions to their ecosystem.
“Nutanix .NEXT brings together enterprises navigating one of their most critical challenges: modernising infrastructure without disrupting operations. Our work with Nutanix to run NC2 on AWS allows organisations to run their applications on a consistent environment across both on-premises and AWS, while gaining access to AWS services – including AWS Databases, Amazon S3 and advanced AI and ML capabilities – along with the security, resiliency and scalability AWS offers. This show is a great opportunity for our teams to show customers how they can modernise their infrastructure and immediately tap into the breadth of AWS services to build differentiated AI applications that drive real business value,” said Chris Sullivan, VP, Americas channels & alliances at AWS.
Event sponsors with presence on the ground this year include AMD, AWS, HPE, Lenovo, Palo Alto Networks, Pure Storage, Cohesity and a company known as Cisco.
