Nutanix Collaborates With Cyxtera, Intel and Other Technology Partners

Nutanix, Inc. and Cyxtera Technologies, Inc., in data center colocation and interconnection services, announced their partnership to launch the first Nutanix Federal Innovation Lab, powered by Cyxtera’s digital exchange and Enterprise Bare Metal.

The Federal Innovation Lab, located in a Cyxtera data center in Northern Virginia, provides US Federal customers as well as industry partners with an environment to build proofs of concept and test mission-critical applications using on-demand infrastructure that readily supports hybrid multicloud solutions via a single operating platform.

Developed and deployed in collaboration with Intel and other technology solution providers, the Federal Innovation Lab provides an ecosystem of dynamic, on-demand capabilities ready to help support testing of the most demanding workload requirements, at scale. It is a dedicated space focused on translating technology innovation into proofs of concept to simplify and automate US government agency IT environments for their journey to hybrid multicloud.

The Innovation Lab’s environment runs on the Nutanix Cloud Platform, certified for placement on the DoDIN Approved Products List which integrates compute, virtualization, storage, networking, security, and containers. The Nutanix Cloud Platform simplifies day-to-day management of a government agency’s IT environment – including over 80% faster deployment and less unplanned downtime, as well as nearly 60% more efficient infrastructure management – often resulting in cost savings and freeing IT’s time to focus on strategic efforts. The platform also supports extension from private cloud to the AWS GovCloud, providing a solution to help US Agencies adopt hybrid and multicloud architecture.

“The Nutanix Federal Innovation Lab is first-of-its-kind and allows our partners to come together immediately in a large, persistent Nutanix environment to quickly create IT results for Federal customers exploring our capabilities,” said Chip George, VP public sector, Nutanix. “This helps remove many of the obstacles involved in standing up real life IT workload tests so US Government customers can confirm their acquisition needs and meet mission and operations objectives more efficiently.“

Solutions developed in the lab environment can be migrated to production across Cyxtera digital exchange – a purpose-built, software-programmable, and massively scalable network

infrastructure solution designed to meet the needs of US Federal Agencies. With government security and compliance requirements in mind, the Cyxtera digital exchange includes processes, tools, and security controls tailored for federal government workloads and designated as FedRAMP Ready at the high impact level.

“The Federal Innovation Lab offers a dedicated space for agencies to safely ‘test-drive’ solutions to understand how different workloads perform in a cloud-like environment; without rising costs, or the loss of control,” said Leo Taddeo, president, federal group, Cyxtera. “Until now, Federal agencies have been constrained in their ability to test the latest technologies given stringent adherence to security and regulation guidelines. The capabilities of public cloud are alluring yet overshadowed with challenges and concerns about the safety and feasibility of government entities leveraging the shared platform. The Nutanix Federal Innovation Lab, powered by Cyxtera, will provide resources to the continued exploration, adoption, and productization of Intel’s latest innovations in compute, networking, memory and storage with the Nutanix software stack.“

This lab will provide an opportunity for government agencies to work with a next-gen hybrid multicloud environment to address the most critical IT requirements within the US government. Whether an agency is looking to support an infrastructure, end user computing, DevSecOps, or database requirements, it can provide these organizations with an environment that simulates the requirements of FedRAMP high controls on a single operating platform to confidently build and test solutions for the delivery of mission-critical applications.

“The Nutanix Federal Innovation Lab will use the latest Intel technologies, including Intel Xeon Scalable processors and Intel Optane persistent memory, to address mission critical challenges and deliver outcomes for government agencies,” said Greg Ernst, VP and GM of US sales, Intel Corp.

Combining Cyxtera’s colocation, automation, and rapid connectivity with the Nutanix cloud platform, the Federal Innovation Lab will support a variety of use cases and workloads including: private cloud; hybrid multicloud; end user computing; databases; dev/test; big data analytics; data protection and DR; ML/AI; ROBO and edge; enterprise and unstructured data solutions and storage.