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Nutanix CEO urges partners to become AI experts

As users wrestle with rising costs and struggle to understand what’s being used, the vendor has rolled out a solution its channel can pitch

Simon Quicke
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Published: 02 Jul 2026 12:15

Nutanix’s CEO has viewed its latest artificial intelligence (AI) gateway as an opportunity for its channel partners to work with customers to tackle the rising costs of using AI.

The supplier has reacted to the increased concerns customers have around the costs and management of AI with the launch of its Agent Gateway offerings.

Rajiv Ramaswami, CEO of Nutanix, said the rapid spread of AI had caused customers to raise questions around the costs of using tools and to try to get more visibility of how the technology was being used across their organisations.

“Top of mind is ‘let me get a handle around who’s using what in AI, what tools are being used, how much is being consumed, what’s it costing me’, and then I want to start putting some controls on it; I want to understand how much of each tool I want to be allowed to use,” he said. “Who should be allowed to use these tools? Maybe, if you’re doing some simple applications.”

The vendors has responded with a technology that will enable users to keep an eye on workloads and determine which ones need to exploit the heavy lifting of expensive AI tools.

Ramaswami said the pressure was on the channel to keep on top of the rapidly evolving market so they could be the source of AI expertise for customers.

“It’s all moving very quickly, because I don’t think there’s much talk about gateways and modern control planes and stuff like that, if you even go back six months to a year ago,” he said. “It’s becoming more the topic of the day, so partners need to keep up, they need to be able to represent that.”

Conversations with customers

Ramaswami added that the conversations he had been having with customers the past few days underlined the importance of being able to talk about the latest development.

“Every meeting this concept of gateway came up, and they were very intrigued, and the CIO, CEO, COO [chief operating officer],” he said. “It’s starting to be a C-level thing, whether it’s a COO or CFO [chief financial officer], not just a CIO, CTO [chief technology officer] thing, in terms of trying to figure out how to enable AI for the enterprise in a cost-effective way.”

Ramaswami met with some partners earlier this week and said they understood the need to get into a position where they could become AI experts because of the interest and pressure coming from customers that wanted to adopt the technology but were increasingly concerned about costs.

“They’re getting the message,” he said. “Typically, our partners are very effective at selling what we have traditionally sold, and then on the newer stuff, it naturally takes some time to go assimilate, build their practices, and get certified and trained.

“On this particular one, this is probably the fastest moving,” said Ramaswami. “It’s moved at a breakneck pace, and keeps moving, and so they have to catch up, and most of them still have to learn and keep up, and it’s not just our partners – whether it’s ourselves within the industry, in terms of people, who are building these things.”

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