Hyperconverged infrastructure vendor Nutanix has launched a pilot project in EMEA to test the sale of its new cloud bundles, which are combinations of the company’s flagship software designed to make it easier for small-to-medium-size business (SMBs) to use its products.

The Nutanix cloud bundles will be offered for sale through its distributors and channel partners in EMEA and will allow SMBs to deploy a unified management bundle for VMs and containers, files, computing resources, storage and networks, according to the company.

Nutanix’s Cyril Vanagt

“We are simplifying our offering for our channel partners to more easily and quickly propose a solution for customers,” Cyril Vanagt, the senior director of channel sales in EMEA for Nutanix, told Channel Futures. “Instead of having to give quotes on many products separately, we have created nine bundles for them to sell.”

The nine bundles come in three sizes for small, medium and large requirements, as well as in basic, standard and advanced packages, resulting in nine available configurations, said Vanagt. The basic package includes the company’s AOS enterprise cloud operating system, the AHV hypervisor, and Nutanix Prism end-to-end management. The standard package adds the company’s enterprise file storage solution, Nutanix Files, as well as administration automation features from Prism Pro. The advanced package includes all those components, as well as network security and microsegmentation functionality from Nutanix Flow.

“They are all software-only bundles that are compatible with any hardware we support today,” including from HPE, Fujitsu, Lenovo and others,” he said. “We are repackaging them in a simple way for our channel partners and customers.”

The cloud computing offerings are part of a wider focus Nutanix is planning for SMBs and come as an answer to market needs that partners have been sharing with the company, said Vanagt.

“They wanted to work in a more autonomous way, and we heard this mainly in EMEA,” he said.

The pilot program, which will continue for six months through the end of July in EMEA, will then be evaluated for its success by the company to see if it should be continued there and even expanded to other parts of the world, including North America, said Vanagt.

“It came about from strong requests from many partners in the EMEA region to be able to quote prices faster and to promote simpler packaging for our customers,” he said. “I am very confident in the success of this program because it came from requests from our partners.”

Nutanix is continuing to work with partners and distributors to train their staffs to sell and deploy the bundles, as well as provide lead generation and marketing help to boost sales. The bundles will only be available to new customers in EMEA.

Dan Olds, principal analyst with Gabriel Consulting Group, said the SMB-aimed bundles are a good idea for the company.

Gabriel Consulting’s Dan Olds

“This new Nutanix set of offerings gives their channel partners a much needed solution for smaller enterprise customers who are looking to have the same IT options and capabilities as their larger competitors,” said Olds. “To compete effectively, smaller businesses need to have access to more sophisticated IT infrastructures and functionality. This increases the value of their data because it is easier to manage and analyze and also reduces their time to implement new solutions to better acquire and service their customers.”

For EMEA partners who will offer the new bundles, they need to also focus on the business value of these products when talking to their customers, said Olds.

“This will allow them to convince a customer who is thinking, ‘if it’s not broke, don’t fix it,’ by showing them that the opportunities for higher business profitability and gaining more customers outweigh the cost and effort of moving to a new type of enterprise infrastructure,” Olds said.

Another analyst. Laurie McCabe of the SMB Group, agreed.

SMB Group’s Laurie McCabe

“Nutanix cloud bundles align with what we are hearing from SMBs — they’re dealing with more complexity and data in the business so they need more comprehensive solutions,” said McCabe. “But they have to be affordable, and easy to set up and use. These types of bundles help address help these needs.”

Nutanix is also making the new offerings easy for its partners, which is a good move, said McCabe.

“It looks like Nutanix focused on making it very channel-friendly too, which is very important in this market because most SMBs rely on the channel to help them to figure out which solutions will best satisfy their requirements. But it can still be very confusing for SMBs — so hopefully Nutanix will also provide its partners with content and resources to help them better educate prospects on the business benefits that these solutions provide.”