In the highly competitive enterprise computing space, it’s necessary for infrastructure providers to go where the business is. Right now, customer IT operations are scattered among public and private clouds, as well as on-premises data centers. Nutanix Inc. has nimbly positioned itself as the management layer that sits over the multicloud environment, and it is why some analysts are bullish on the company’s prospects.

The company’s management tool for data center operations (Prism), an operating system for the hyperconverged infrastructure (Acropolis), and an app-centric IT automation offering (Calm) have put Nutanix in a prime position to be a major player for a while in enterprise software management.

“They’ve kind of gone from stack to pack. This combination of Prism, Acropolis and Calm is a whole other level,” said Martin Veitch (pictured), editorial director of IDG Connect Ltd.

Veitch visited the set of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s mobile livestreaming studio, and spoke with host Stu Miniman (@stu) during the Nutanix .NEXT EU event in Nice, France. They discussed the impact of regulatory compliance on the Nutanix strategy and the company’s partnership approach. (* Disclosure below.)

Regulation keeps focus on data center

The need for an effective enterprise management layer is also being driven by looming regulatory compliance. The General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, will go into effect for any business with European operations next May. And there is also PSD2, a European payment services directive that will require banks to open data about its customers to third-party companies. It also comes into effect next year.

The new laws may lead to greater enterprise reliance on data center operations for the time being. “Over here in Europe, GDPR is the thing that scares all the CIOs and CEOs witless,” Veitch said. “When you have these regulatory landscapes there’s a tendency to be very cautious, very calm and keep it behind the firewall.”

Nutanix is in an interesting position with Dell EMC being both a major partner and competitor in the hyperconverged infrastructure space. Perhaps mindful of this unusual competitive arrangement, Nutanix has not been shy about forming partnerships with other major firms.

Earlier this week, the company announced an extension of its partnership with Veritas Technologies LLC for data protection in virtualized workloads. Previous agreements allow a Nutanix customer to launch applications in Google Cloud from an on-prem platform powered by IBM.

“One of the ways we always try to judge companies is by the company they keep, and they’ve got some nice partners,” Veitch concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Nutanix .NEXT EU. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Nutanix .NEXT EU event. Neither Nutanix Inc., the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE