Nutanix Tech Connect 2026: More Than Technology, It’s About People, Ideas and What Comes Next….

There are some technology events you attend, listen to a few presentations, take some notes and then head home.

Then there are events that leave you genuinely thinking about where technology is heading, what it means for the environments we manage today, and how our roles are going to change over the next few years.

For me, Nutanix Technology Champions Tech Connect 2026 was definitely that!

Having attended and presented at a number of Nutanix events over the years, I already knew that Tech Connect was going to be different from a traditional conference. Bringing a relatively small group of Nutanix Technology Champions together at Nutanix HQ in San Jose creates a completely different dynamic.

It isn't thousands of people sitting in a keynote hall.

It’s a room full of people who work with the technology, have implemented it, broken it, fixed it, challenged it and, perhaps most importantly, aren't afraid to ask difficult questions.  Add Nutanix product managers, engineers and senior leadership into that mix and you get some incredibly interesting conversations.

And for me, that was ultimately what made Tech Connect 2026 so valuable.

From HCI to something much bigger

I've been involved with Nutanix technology for many years and have seen first-hand how much the platform has evolved.

Like many people, my introduction to Nutanix was very much around Hyperconverged Infrastructure. Compute, storage and virtualisation brought together in a platform designed to remove infrastructure complexity.

But Nutanix today is increasingly a much broader proposition.  That became very clear during Tech Connect.

There were conversations around Kubernetes, cloud-native applications, security, GPUs, AI infrastructure and autonomous agents.

It made me think about how much our own industry has changed.

Over the years we've been told that physical infrastructure would disappear because everything was becoming virtual.  Then virtual machines were apparently going to disappear because everything was moving to containers.  Then everything was going to public cloud.

Now everything is apparently going to become AI.

The reality, as those of us who actually operate enterprise infrastructure know, is very different.  None of it really disappears.  Instead, the next layer gets added.

Physical infrastructure still exists. Virtual machines still exist. Kubernetes and containers are growing rapidly. Public cloud has its place. GPUs are becoming increasingly important. And now AI workloads and agents are arriving as yet another component that IT teams need to understand, secure and ultimately support.

That is why I believe the real challenge isn't:

Can we run it?

The much more important question is:

Can we keep it running?

Anyone can deploy something in a lab.  Anyone can run a successful proof of concept.

The real test comes six months later when the person who originally built it has moved onto another project and somebody else needs to upgrade, secure, monitor, troubleshoot and recover it at 2am.

That's where my infrastructure mindset normally kicks in.

Whenever I see new technology, my first questions generally aren't just about functionality.

·         How do we patch it?
·         How do we monitor it?
·         How do we secure it?
·         How do we back it up?
·         How do we recover it?

What happens when something underneath it fails?

And how do we operate it consistently at scale?

That is why I found the discussions around the Nutanix Kubernetes Platform particularly interesting.  Kubernetes is incredibly powerful, but Kubernetes at scale introduces its own operational challenges.

Running a couple of clusters is one thing.  Running dozens of clusters while maintaining consistent security policies, certificates, configurations, upgrades and visibility is a completely different proposition.

The focus on simplifying upgrades, pre-flight checks, security visibility and configuration management therefore really resonated with me.

Because ultimately, good enterprise technology isn't technology that only works on day one.  It needs to work on day 1,000.

NKP Metal really caught my attention 

One area that particularly interested me was the discussion around NKP Metal. 

The ability to combine virtualised and bare-metal Kubernetes node pools opens up some genuinely interesting possibilities, especially as organisations start investigating much larger AI and GPU workloads.

e.g., why dedicate expensive GPU resources to every part of your Kubernetes environment if only certain workloads actually require them?

Being able to run the control plane and standard workloads efficiently on AHV while introducing GPU-dense physical infrastructure where it makes sense feels like a very pragmatic approach.

Enterprise environments are rarely greenfield.

Most of us aren't starting with an empty datacentre and an unlimited budget. We are balancing existing infrastructure, new requirements, security constraints, application dependencies, business expectations and cost.

Having choices matters.

Rather than asking organisations to completely redesign their environments for AI, I think the more powerful approach is enabling AI to become another workload that the existing platform can accommodate.

AI is coming, but infrastructure still matters. 

Unsurprisingly, AI featured prominently throughout Tech Connect.

It is almost impossible to attend a technology event in 2026 without AI being somewhere in the conversation.

But what I particularly enjoyed was getting beyond the question of what AI can do and into the much more interesting question:

How do we actually run it?

Because enterprise AI is much more than connecting an application to a model.

    ·         There are GPUs.

·         There is networking.
·         There is storage.
·         There is data.
·         There is scheduling.
·         There is model serving.
·         There is security.
·         There is identity.

·   And somebody eventually needs to be responsible for the whole thing.

Technologies around the NKP AI ecosystem, including GPU operators, scheduling, model serving and the wider AI/ML toolchain, start to make that infrastructure much more consumable.

And personally, I think that is where infrastructure teams have an enormous role to play in the AI journey.

AI doesn't make good infrastructure practices obsolete.

Quite the opposite.

·      ·        Capacity planning still matters.
·         Availability still matters.
·         Security still matters.
·         Backups still matter.
·         Disaster recovery still matters.
·         Monitoring still matters.
·         And governance definitely matters.

AI might be changing the applications we're running, but many of the principles needed to operate those applications safely haven't changed at all.

Agents change the security conversation

One of the areas I left Tech Connect thinking about most was AI agents.

We've become comfortable with the idea of a chatbot answering a question.  But agents potentially take this much further.

An agent may access corporate data, interact with an API, invoke a tool, communicate with another agent or take an action on behalf of a user.

That changes the risk considerably.

Suddenly some very familiar security questions come back into focus.

·      ·     Who is the agent?
·         What identity does it have?
·         What data can it access?
·         What tools can it use?
·         What applications can it communicate with?
·         What is it allowed to change?
·         And can we audit exactly what it did?

These aren't really new security principles.

They are the same conversations we have been having around privileged access, service accounts, APIs and automation for years.

 

Identity. Authentication. Authorisation. Least privilege. Logging. Governance.

The difference is that AI introduces a completely new consumer of those controls.

This is why the concept of an Agent Gateway really caught my attention.

As organisations begin adopting more agents, I think having a central point where interactions can potentially be governed, controlled and observed will become increasingly important. 

Without those controls, it isn't difficult to imagine an environment where dozens or hundreds of agents have their own connections to models, tools and corporate data.

From a security and governance perspective, that could become complicated incredibly quickly. 

For me, AI innovation and AI governance therefore have to develop together.

We shouldn't be trying to prevent innovation.

But equally, we shouldn't have to compromise the security of the enterprise to achieve it.

Tech Connect wasn't just about technology

For everything technical that came out of Tech Connect, one of my biggest personal takeaways was actually something completely different.

The people.

The NTC community has always been one of the aspects of the Nutanix ecosystem that I've valued enormously.

Tech Connect gave me the opportunity to meet fellow NTCs from around the world, build new relationships and strengthen existing ones.

And some of the best conversations didn't necessarily happen during a formal presentation.

They happened over breakfast, coffee, beer, Over lunch and Over dinner.

Or when somebody mentioned a problem they were experiencing and a group of people immediately started discussing how they had approached something similar.

Those conversations are incredibly valuable.

Everyone brings different experiences.

We may be running similar technology, but we're using it in different industries, at different scales, with different requirements and different constraints.

Being able to have those open conversations and learn from each other is one of the biggest benefits of being part of a community such as the NTC programme.

Having an open conversation really matters

Another personal highlight was simply being able to engage directly and openly with Nutanix leadership, product managers, engineering teams and Rajiv (CEO).

 

One of the real highlights for me was having the opportunity to spend time with Nutanix CEO Rajiv in a relaxed and open discussion. Rajiv shared his perspective on where Nutanix is heading, what he is seeing across the wider IT industry, and how organisations are evolving in this new age of AI. It was particularly interesting to hear his thoughts on why some companies are successfully embracing AI and transforming their businesses, while others are struggling to adapt.

What I appreciated most was that this wasn't a formal executive presentation. It was an open and honest conversation where we had the opportunity to ask questions, exchange views and discuss what we are seeing ourselves within the industry. For Rajiv to personally give his time to the NTC community was hugely appreciated and, for me, demonstrated how much he values the NTC programme, the community behind it and, importantly, the feedback we provide.

It wasn't a case of somebody standing at the front of the room presenting slides while everyone else listened.

·      ·        There was discussion.
·         There were questions.
·         There was disagreement.
·         There was feedback.

·     And there were some really relaxed conversations.

That is exactly how these events should work.

 

As someone who uses Nutanix technology in the real world, I value the opportunity to say:

"This works really well."

But equally:

"This doesn't work for us."

Or even:

"Have you thought about doing it this way?"

Having that direct connection between the people building the product and those of us using it every day is incredibly powerful.

It also reinforces something I've always felt about good technology communities. 

They shouldn't simply exist so customers can promote products.

There should be value in both directions.

• ·         We advocate.
• ·         We test.
• ·         We provide feedback.
• ·         We share experiences.
• ·         We challenge ideas.

And hopefully, in some small way, we influence where the technology goes next.

My biggest takeaway from Tech Connect 2026

So, after two days of technology, discussions, AI, Kubernetes, infrastructure, security and conversations with some incredibly knowledgeable people, what was my biggest takeaway?

Infrastructure isn't becoming less important. It is becoming more important and considerably broader.

Our world used to be relatively easy to define.

• ·         Servers.
• ·         Storage.
• ·         Networking.
• ·         Virtualisation.

Now add Kubernetes.

•            Cloud-native applications.
• ·         GPU infrastructure.
• ·         AI models.
• ·         AI agents.
• ·         New security boundaries.
• ·         And entirely new governance challenges.

The job of infrastructure teams is changing with it.

But I'm genuinely excited about that.

Because underneath all of these new technologies, the same principles I've always believed in remain relevant.

• ·         Keep it simple.
• ·         Make it resilient.
• ·         Make it secure.
• ·         Understand how it fails.
• ·         Automate where it makes sense.
• ·         And never stop learning. 

Tech Connect 2026 reinforced all of those things for me.

But perhaps more importantly, it reminded me that technology is ultimately a people business.

The technology will continue to change.

The products will evolve.

AI will undoubtedly transform parts of our industry that we haven't even considered yet.

But getting knowledgeable, passionate people together in the same room to openly share ideas, challenge one another and learn from each other's experiences remains incredibly powerful.

And for me, that was the real value of Tech Connect 2026.

And finally all of this would not be possible without a great community leader; Angelo.  Without his time, commitment and drive this event could not happen, he's so invested into the NTC program and he's a reason why the NTC program is the best technology program out there!

On that note I leave you with the below……

 

If you know – you know…………