.NEXT 2026 Chicago Recap

Introduction

As I, meanwhile, have been able to recover from this impressive yet exhausting and bursting event, and some additional jet lag, of course 😅, we were now able to write a recap about this event. I'll summarize the moments and experiences during my trip that remained the most outstanding for me and what you'll want to consider as you're planning towards the future.

Hot off the press

Partner Central

As some of you were already aware, last year, Nutanix announced Partner Central as the successor of the formerly called Partner Portal. With this enhancement and announcement, the functionalities and collaboration between Nutanix and its partners in general will and already have significantly improved.

Numerous functionalities got added over time, and some of them, such as PartnerGPT and Deal Coach, will allow partners to ask numerous questions and obtain insights that were previously a lot harder to obtain or visualize.

These tools will, for example, allow you to ask why a certain deal would be worth it, what room for improvement there is, what the risks or consequences of not doing this are, and so forth. In simple terms, see it as your personal assistant to guide you through the enormous amount of data, products, hardware, and so forth.

Nutanix Service Provider Central

On top of that, Nutanix Service Provider Central also got announced, which will be really promising for, as the name implies, service providers.

This allows service providers to really leverage the true power of multi-tenancy, providing an entirely isolated environment for each customer.

This can be things such as VPCs, VMs, containers, images, IDPs, … in short, the possibilities this unlocks are endless.

The platform focus

As you may have already noticed, Nutanix is no longer limited to or known for its extensive HCI solutions and design, which is what made it stand out in the first place back then.

It has grown to a whole platform with its ecosystem. This has only once more been proven with the ever-so-expanding list of integrated 3rd-party solutions it supports. Examples of these, but not limited to, are the announcement for support to integrate NetApp and Dell PowerStore and many more for external storage, bare metal, and so on. In essence, we can see Nutanix broadening up its 3rd-party support even more than ever before.

This aligns with the focus they're shifting to, being a platform rather than just one sort of specialization or niche.

Certifications

At the event, as planned before, I also had the opportunity to do some exams while being there. I've decided to give the NCP-BC certification a shot, which basically focuses on Nutanix its disaster recovery functionalities, such as protection policies, recovery plans, availability zones, … Since this is a beta exam, the results will only be announced within 4 to 6 weeks, so we still have to wait for the final results.

Next to that, I attended a prep course for the NCP-CN certification, which basically focuses on Kubernetes and, more specifically, the Nutanix Kubernetes Platform. Since my expertise of Kubernetes is more limited, the course was really beneficial for this use case, giving a good crash course and refresher about these materials.

I'm also glad to mention that I was able to successfully pass the NCP-CN exam, so that's an additional certification I was able to add to the list.🥳

Events, parties, receptions …

As mentioned before, what would a conference be without the relevant receptions, and parties? 😅

The first day we had an internal reception/meetup with some folks from the Exclusive Networks distributor in the Three Dots and a Dash bar. Really nice start to the event and a great place to catch up with some folks.

Next up, the day after, we had the EMEA reception at the VU Rooftop Bar. These receptions were based on a specific region and organized a dedicated community for attendees from these regions. Really great opportunity to catch up with folks from EMEA, including some people I met a while before at the NMCID bootcamp in Munich.

Last evening, we had the .NEXT party at the Radius Chicago nightclub. A blast to end the streak. I truly enjoyed that one as well.

Goodies

As mentioned before, these events are always a nice opportunity to grab some goodies, whether they are stickers, branded bottles, decorative pins, or something else. It's always fun to extend the collection.

And next?

As you've probably already seen or heard, the next location for .NEXT 2027 was announced during the event itself. This time we're heading to the fabulous Las Vegas. So you can already imagine this will be one for the books again for sure.

I'll definitely aim to be there!

If you haven't pre-registered yet, be sure to do so, as this allows you to benefit from a potential exclusive price for the event.

You can pre-register on the official Nutanix .NEXT page.

Hope to see you all there next year!