Nutanix .NEXT 2026

I was lucky enough to attend the 2026 Nutanix .NEXT conference which was based in Chicago, Illinois, USA. This was my third attendance at the .Next conference which I attended after winning a golden ticket through Nutanix’s Multi Cloud Expert program.

The event was held at the McCormack Place convention centre which was conveniently placed next to the Marriott Marquis hotel where I stayed. Here’s a breakdown of my week there:

Day 1

The flight to Chicago took around 9hrs from London Heathrow. Once landed, I made my way to the Mariott Marquis hotel where I was staying. After checking in and unpacking, I meet up with the rest of the members of the Nutanix Multi Cloud Experts to head to a traditional pizza house round the corner (you can’t go to Chicago and not have a pizza!). Great night and a good chance to meet up with everyone.

Day 2

After a quick walk around the solutions expo and a quick meeting with the Multi Cloud Experts I headed off to various sessions.

5 Smarter Ways to Run Modern Workloads in Public Cloud – Niels Hagoot (Nutanix), Chris Porter (Nutanix), Ellie Ruano (Nutanix) & Chris Hendrick (Dawn Food Products)

In this session Niels and Chris explained how the Nutanix Cloud platform provides us with the ability to run modern workloads more effectively across public clouds including AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. They explained how we can use Nutanix to easily and seamlessly migrate and modernise our workloads. They advised how migrating to NC2 on public clouds can simplify operations and minimise downtime and how leveraging other platform features including NKP (nutanix Kubernetes Platform) and NDB (Nutanix Database Service) can help to manage and optimise workloads. It was then handed to Ellie and Chris who gave a customer experience case study to describe their migration to NC2.

Unfortunately, I missed the next session that I wanted to attend as the conference building was so big, I couldn’t locate the room.

After another session in the solutions expo collecting merch, getting scanned and having some lunch, it was time for the first keynote speech.

Opening Keynote

Nutanix CEO Rajiv Ramaswami started the show with an AI showcase of three identical (to him) agents doing tasks for him. He also explained how Nutanix was the platform of choice for all types of workloads.He also made announcements on the following:

Cisco UCS: Calling (Available), Contact Centre (Summer 2026),Meetings (Late 2026)
Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktops on AHV (Preview now available) and Azure Virtual Desktops with Nerdio (Late 2026)
Dell Powerstore Storage Arrays (EA Now, GA Summer 2026)
Netapp Storage Arrays (GA Late 2026)
Flexpod Datacentres on Nutanix, which include Cisco Nexus Switches and UCS Fabric Interconnects and NetApp AFF storage arrays in one rack (GA Late 2026)
Support for AMD GPU accelerated compute

The Admin’s Guide to the Next Platform: How to Build, Secure and Scale Kubernetes – Jose Gomez (Nutanix), Aarthi Mahesh (Nutanix), Arvind Bhoj (Nutanix) and Dominic Rodizza (Dartmouth College)

In this session Jose went through how Kubernetes is the next platform foundation. He explained how Kubernetes works at a high level and how it fits in with previous computing history. He used a great analogy of houses for VMs (i.e. you have to buy a house per app with a VM with a full operating system, whereas he compared Conatiners akin to booking a room in a hotel (i.e. you use the room and then check out when finished). He also anologised the language of Kubernetes (i.e. a host becomes a worker node) and using a Thermostat to the process of Kubernetes (i.e. we set the thermostat and the temperature is adjusted by your heating system, whereas in K8s we say we want 3 web servers and have 2 currently, the result is it will spin up a new server). He also explained about networking concepts and using YAML to make blueprints.

Aarthi then took over to run through the what AI applications are made of and how we build a “hotel chain” and how they link to the world of k8s. Arvind then went over the process for building production ready K8s and some security aspects of K8s. Then finally there was a case study with Dominic Rodizza who explained how his business had transformed their apps to Kubernetes and the process they went through to achieve that.

In the evening I was invited to the EMEA reception drinks and food, held at the VU Skytop bar . This was a great evening to relax and network and take in the great sites of the city of Chicago.

Day 3

Multicloud Experts – Meet the Engineers

My first session was arranged by the Multicloud Experts team and allowed us to meet some of the engineering team & to go through any questions that we had. There were many good questions and answers (unfortunately I can’t disclose due to NDA) and it was a good insight into the how and where Nutanix is headed.

Innovation Keynote

This was a demo heavy showcase from various technical experts running through demos of some new features. There was also a talk from Kelsey Hightower who went through advocating Kubernetes and containerisation.

Moving On up: Simplifying EUC World migration with Nutanix – Ben Crill (Choice Solutions), James Kindon (Nutanix), Jarian Gibson (Nutanix), Kai Berry-Helmlinger (Lockton)

After a bit of lunch I went to this session. The session covered how to simplify and streamline EUC workload migrations to AHV, gave best practices for migrating to AHV, and provided tools and resources for seamless migration, for both Citrix and Horizon VDI environments. There was also a case study of Kai from Lockton and how they approached their migration.

Unlocking New Possibilities: Nutanix + External Storage – Allan Waters (Nutanix), Bhavik Desai (Nutanix), Guhendran Devendran (Nutanix), Michael Prewitt (BlueCross, BlueShiled of Tennessee)

The session started with the product team explaining how Nutanix is expanding the capabilities of Nutanix by enabling further hardware\storage options. This included a look at licensing and how each of the current storage and server vendors systems linked to Nutanix AHV. It also explained how Nutanix’s Core VM integrates and talks to the external storage in more detail. There was also a vendor roadmap to show some of the features being worked on (subject to change). There was then a customer case study with Michael Prewitt from Bluecross, Blueshield (Medical) about how they were able to leverage this with their virtual environment and increase efficiencies across their estate.

Community Keynote

This was the finale keynote and started with a recap of the 39 new features Nutanix are bring to the table (See pic below, which I’ve to make bigger).

And just in case you can’t make it out here’s a full list:

Support for AMD GPU Accelerated Compute
Solutions with Cisco Secure AI Factory and Cisco AI Pod
Support for Intel CPU Accelerated Compute
Integration with Agent Toolkit & Nemotron Models
Integration with NAI with Model Scanning & Red Teaming
AI Optimized AHV & Flow
NAI Advanced Gateway
NKP Catalog of AI Services
Nutanix Service Provider Central
NVIDIA Certified – Optimized NUS Data Foundation
AppAnywhere Solution Powered by NKP & Wipro WINGS
Cloud Native AOS on Bare Metal
Cloud Native NDB
Flow for Containers
Foundation Central for NKP
NCM 2.0 AI-Scale
NKP Metal
NKP on External Storage
NKP Through NC Marketplace
Hybrid Cloud Solution Practice Powered by Nutanix
Velocity-N Hybrid Cloud Solution Powered by Nutanix AMD
AWS GovCloud & European Sovereign Cloud
Support for Azure Elastic SAN
Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop on AHV
Cisco Unified Communications & Cisco Unified Edge
Cisco FlexPod with Nutanix and NetApp
GA of Prism Central in Citrix DaaS
External Storage Support for Dell PowerStore & Dell Private Cloud
Zero Copy Migrations from vSphere Virtual Volumes
G3 Instance with Hyperdisk for NC2 on Google Cloud
Support for Lenovo ThinkSystem Servers & Storage
NDB and MongoDB Certified Integration
External Storage Support for NetApp
GA of Horizon 8 on Nutanix
DBaaS Solution Practice Powered by Nutanix
AHV on Any Compute Server
Cost Governance & Nutanix Data Lens On-Premises
DR to NC2 for External Storage
Synchronous DR for External Storage

After this there was a brilliant session with Youtuber Mark Rober, who explained how he makes his Youtube videos and how he tries to tell stories and explain the science behind his experiments. There were on stage live experiments with a plastic bottle of nitrogen, sealed and exploding in a barrel of small plastic balls (needless to say they went everywhere!). There was also an experiment showing how different air pressures can be used to make confetti go up a tube using a leaf blower blowing over the top. It was a really good session that was really entertaining and filled with Science.

.NEXT Party

After the finale keynote session is time for the Nutanix .NEXT party. This was held at a place called Radius Nightclub. Transport was provided with plenty of buses provided to get everyone there. Inside was a futuristic cyber themed party with almost anything you could think of. There were so many food options including Chicago Pizza, Tacos, Mezzo, Rice Bowls, and so much more. For dessert there was Ice cream made with Nitrogen, LED candy floss, a Sweet shop. For entertainment there was a DJ with visuals and LED dancers, plenty of games to play including ping pong, pool, air hockey, grabber machines, and loads of old arcade video games and pinball machines. There were also selfie robots and a drone drink delivery system so you didn’t even need to leave the dance floor! As always a really good ending party.

The next day after attending the final session withe Multicolour Experts, I was able to get into downtown Chicago (even though it was north!) and have a walk through the city. I took a boat tour that went through the history of the all the various buildings. I saw the bean and had a nice meal before getting my flight back to the UK.