Nutanix grabs channel manager from Dell

Nascent converged infrastructure vendor Nutanix has recruited a new channel manager out of Dell.

"I’d been working with 'tier 1' vendors for 17 years," said Darrin Edkins, now in his third week as Nutanix's ANZ channel manager. "I was at HP for 10 years, including managing the partner program in enterprise, then after a brief stint at Sun, I developed the enterprise channel business for Dell."

It was at Dell that Edkins met Silver Peak's regional boss Wayne Neich, who would later become the managing director for Nutanix ANZ.

Neich recalled that he "liked Darrin's style".

"He was great at building relationships and trust among partners and bringing new ideas to the channel, and that helped a lot," Neich told CRN. "I made a mental note."

The vendor's ANZ partner of the year BEarena is a typical example of the resellers that Edkins will seek to sign. "BEarena is highly specialised – what I call a 'boutique' reseller."

"We're currently focusing on specialised partners that can offer a high level of skills," Edkins told CRN.

Neich said that growth is focused on alliance-centric channels, with Nutanix recently having invested in VMware, Citrix, and Microsoft alliances.

"The way we’re growing is by streams of channel recruitment initiatives through each of those alliances," said Neich. "For example, we can teach Citrix partners how they can make VDI deployments so much easier [using Nutanix]."

Nutanix has grown its business strongly in Australia. Neich said he was the eighth employee in ANZ upon his appointment last August, but Edkins now joins a local team of 23 staff.

"The 23 includes sales and marketing, but we also have a laboratory in Melbourne and a laboratory in Auckland run by senior engineers," said Neich. "The company wants to find the best practice in deployment and how our products should be configured in specific use-cases."

US vendor Nutanix has recently made local headlines for deals with Avnet and deployment at car giant Hyundai through BEarena.