Nutanix Broadens Elevate Partner Programme to Include Systems Integrators and Expand Revenue Opportunities

Nutanix has expanded its FY27 Elevate Partner Programme, marking its largest investment in the initiative to date. The changes extend programme participation to systems integrators, introduce additional incentives for referrals and renewals, and increase support for partner-led services, creating new revenue opportunities beyond initial technology sales.

The expanded programme is designed to help partners address emerging enterprise requirements in areas such as artificial intelligence, cloud-native applications and database management. New incentives will encourage partners to develop opportunities around Nutanix Enterprise AI, Nutanix Database Service (NDB) and Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP), while building complementary professional services capabilities.

The inclusion of systems integrators (SIs) reflects their growing involvement in enterprise IT strategy, solution design, systems integration, migration projects and ongoing service delivery. Eligible SIs and consulting partners can now earn referral rewards for identifying and developing Nutanix opportunities, even when another partner is responsible for completing the sale.

Seven Areas of Partner Incentives
The expanded Elevate Partner Programme provides eligible partners with opportunities to earn incentives across seven areas:

• Land: Rebates on qualifying transactions involving new Nutanix customers.
• Expand: Applicable rebates for introducing additional Nutanix solutions into existing customer environments, including enterprise AI, cloud-native technologies and databases.
• Grow: Benefits recognising qualifying year-over-year business growth.
• Reward: Incentives for eligible partner sales and technical employees who help identify or secure qualifying new business and expansion opportunities.
• Retain: Incentives for qualifying renewals completed on time.
• Refer: Referral rewards for qualifying opportunities introduced by eligible systems integrators and consulting partners.
• Differentiate: Opportunities to establish verified service capabilities through Powered by Nutanix: Verified Services, with eligible partners able to access Earned Business Development Funds for qualifying go-to-market activities.

All incentives, rebates, referral rewards and business development funding remain subject to programme requirements, eligibility criteria and regional availability.

Greater Focus on Partner-Led Services
Nutanix is also expanding its support for partner-led professional services through Powered by Nutanix: Verified Services. The initiative is intended to help eligible partners establish recognised capabilities in areas including migrations, deployments and ongoing customer support.

Partners will have access to standardised Service Delivery Kits and opportunities to work alongside Nutanix experts through shadowing arrangements. These resources are designed to strengthen technical expertise and delivery capabilities, enabling partners to expand their professional services offerings.

“A partner can spend months helping a customer work out what technology they need, plan a migration or prepare for AI, but they don’t always get paid for the work that goes into making a sale happen,” said Sven Schoenaerts, Vice President EMEA, Channel and Technology Alliances, Nutanix. “We want to change that. Partners should be able to earn money for bringing us new business, helping existing customers do more with Nutanix and providing the services those customers need. That’s especially important for systems integrators and consultants, who often do much of the work before a customer is ready to buy.”

The expanded programme also builds on the flexibility of the Nutanix Cloud Platform, particularly as organisations navigate hardware availability constraints, rising infrastructure costs and major technology upgrades.

Support for selected external storage configurations, including applicable Dell, Everpure and NetApp technologies, gives partners additional options for modernising customer environments while retaining existing infrastructure investments.

Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) also enables partners to help customers run and move supported workloads between on-premises infrastructure and supported public cloud environments. This provides an alternative for organisations facing hardware availability or capacity constraints.

AI Tools to Support Partner Engagement
Alongside the programme changes, Nutanix is investing in AI-powered capabilities to simplify partner engagement and help identify business opportunities. Deal Coach, scheduled for introduction through Nutanix Partner Central later in the current fiscal year, is designed to support partners throughout the sales cycle.

Further planned capabilities include authorised visibility into selected customer environment health, adoption and lifecycle signals. Subject to customer authorisation, these insights are intended to help partners provide more effective customer support and plan renewals.

“Across the Middle East and Africa, partners are playing an increasingly strategic role in helping organisations modernise their IT environments, embrace hybrid cloud and prepare for enterprise AI. With this expansion of the Elevate Partner Program, we are creating more ways for our partners to turn their expertise into business growth – whether by identifying new opportunities, expanding existing customer relationships or delivering the services that help customers realise greater value from their technology investments. By extending the program to systems integrators and strengthening incentives for services and customer expansion, we aim to build a more collaborative ecosystem that rewards partners for the value they bring throughout the customer journey and positions them to capture emerging opportunities across the region,” concluded Shaista Ahmed, Director, Channel & Ecosystem – Middle East and Africa at Nutanix.