Nutanix CEO Addressed Shifting Market Conditions

Rajiv Ramaswami highlighted customer migration trends as server costs and hardware shortages impact the tech industry.

Updated on Oct. 13, 2026 in Data Centers

A close-up row of industrial server cooling hardware in a modern data center facility. — Nutanix CEO Rajiv Ramaswami reported significant customer growth as businesses migrate to cloud infrastructure to escape rising legacy server costs. AI Illustration. Upload story photo >

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Is now a good time for organizations to shift their infrastructure toward public cloud services?

Nutanix CEO Rajiv Ramaswami discussed current industry challenges and market shifts at the CRN XChange Best of Breed conference. The company reported adding between 500 and 1,000 new customers per quarter as users look for alternatives to legacy setups.

Why it matters

The shift is driven by severe hardware shortages and a fourfold to fivefold increase in server costs over the last year. Businesses are increasingly turning to public cloud bare metal instances to maintain operations while on-premises hardware remains difficult to source.

Server costs have risen 4X to 5X over the past year, while industry-wide hardware shortages are projected to persist for another one to two years. Nutanix currently facilitates migrations by deploying software on public cloud bare metal instances.

The players

Rajiv Ramaswami

He serves as the CEO of Nutanix and is responsible for steering the company through shifts in cloud and virtualization strategy.

Nutanix

This company specializes in cloud software and hyperconverged infrastructure that competes with legacy virtualization platforms.

VMware

This organization provides virtualization software that many enterprises are currently migrating away from due to changing support policies.

Insight Enterprises

This is a solution provider that was recently deauthorized by VMware in the North American market.

The details

Customers are actively migrating from VMware on-premises environments to public cloud infrastructure to bypass current supply chain constraints. This transition is part of a larger 10-year industry transformation as companies seek more reliable hardware access.

October 13, 2026: Rajiv Ramaswami spoke at the CRN XChange conference.
Next 1 to 2 years: Hardware shortages and elevated server costs are expected to persist.
Next 10 years: Industry transformation is anticipated for VMware migrations.

The Tech Race

This move capitalizes on the ongoing 10-year industry shift toward public cloud bare metal migration. The strategy replaces aging on-premises hardware dependencies, positioning Nutanix to capture market share from legacy providers like VMware.

Companies facing high server costs may find that migrating to public cloud infrastructure offers a more stable, albeit different, operational model. IT professionals should monitor hardware lead times closely as the projected two-year shortage continues to impact budget planning.

The takeaway

Businesses should prioritize cloud flexibility to mitigate the impact of persistent hardware supply chain issues. Exploring bare metal migration options may provide a necessary hedge against unpredictable server price hikes.