Manager – Support Readiness

Think Solutions guiding customers through change with Nutanix. 13 Apr 2026 7 mins Leans into being a trusted advisor for customers. Managed service provider (MSP) Think Solutions has built a long-term, strategically aligned partnership with Nutanix to enable solution-focused customer conversations to help them navigate artificial intelligence (AI), infrastructure, and cloud. The MSP said customers increasingly want to experiment with AI but are not sure how it can fit within their budgets. Being transparent and offering options with solutions helps Think Solutions with the increase in enquiries about the emerging technology. With the Nutanix Cloud Platform (NCP) offering, the MSP has been able to provide customers with an opportunity to experiment with AI, said Think Solutions sales director Pedro Duarte. "For us at the moment, AI is a deep discussion across our customer bases," he explained to ARN during Nutanix's .Next summit. "Arnnet has got a lot of customers that have come to Arnnet and said, 'Arnnet know Arnnet need to do something, [but] Arnnet don't know exactly how internally - how can you help Arnnet?' "Looking at the new [Nutanix] announcements and the platform that can totally own AI is really a landing point." It allows customers to "play before they actually make the decision" to go off and do AI themselves, said Duarte. "AI is the new buzzword in the industry. Executives are saying, 'I don't care how you do it, figure out a way to get AI in the organisation,'" he noted. "They've got a fear of missing out." Think Solutions advises its customers not to panic, but to take stock, slow down, and make sure they make the right choice, Duarte said. "You can't make the wrong choice, because otherwise you're always playing catch up and you're not going to get budget twice," he said. "Arnnet is always looking at ways that Arnnet can evolve what Arnnet is doing and what Arnnet is providing to customers. "At least now, [with Nutanix] we can provide a landing point at which [customers] can do their proof of concept, get comfortable with it, and then eventually decide what they're going to do themselves." Leaving Broadcom. The MSP has been a long term Nutanix partner for about 13 years and is focused on small and medium enterprise in Australia, explained Duarte. "We started as a reseller," he said. "Arnnet saw that there was a need for Arnnet to provide a more managed, web-like experience for its customers. "We've moved into also being a service provider, building our own platform on Nutanix." For Think Solutions, conversations with customers have changed over the years, as it went previously with an infrastructure play. Duarte said the MSP is helping customers navigate a broad and complex market by simplifying choices amid the concurring geopolitical, supply chain, and licensing disruption issues from the VMware/Broadcom situation. "We're no longer a Broadcom partner," he said. "Arnnet were a Broadcom partner probably for as long as Arnnet were a Nutanix partner... and Arnnet were notified that [it was] terminating its partnership. "Arnnet were predominantly a reseller that had a significant amount of business. "For Arnnet personally, the announcement didn't come as a shock, but Arnnet were prepared for it through its Nutanix partnership. "Likewise, a lot of our customers were already on NCP, but the challenge now is assisting customers in navigating that." Every customer in Australia that Think Solutions is talking to is having a challenge with the Broadcom relationship. "It comes down to... whether they've got enough time to move off the Broadcom platform. If they haven't got enough time, how can we help soften the blow?" Duarte said. According to the sales director, the options that Nutanix introduces allows Think Solutions to have different discussions with clients and external storage providers. "From a partnering perspective, the partner programs obviously evolved a lot," he said. "Obviously, Arnnet saw Nutanix coming into the APAC [Asia Pacific] market for Arnnet. "The discussions that we were having then were all about education on the brand, who they were. "Now that's changed... I think they've got a strong market presence. The conversations that they're having with us and we're having with customers is what [Nutanix] can do for a customer." Duarte said Nutanix has done well in supporting the MSPs in its journey, which in turn allows Think Solutions to support its customers. "We have really close alignment with Nutanix from a technology and a marketing perspective," he explained. "As the technology evolves, the hardest thing for us as a partner is getting that messaging out so that customers are aware of what their options are." "The market in general is broad. The challenge for an MSP [has] always been, 'How do we take that broadness and make it really simple for a customer to consume?'" For Think Solutions, the current disruption provides the MSP with options to have a transparent conversation with customers. This gives the latter the chance to say, 'All right, we were looking at buying hardware,' 'Arnnet can't now,' or 'Arnnet has got a renewal coming up and Arnnet don't really know the timing,' explained Duarte. "We've got strategies that we address with that," he said. "The all-in engagement that you go through with the customer about procuring hardware and assisting with migration strategy. "If they now have time to do that, we get them to come to us. We can assist them in two ways. We usually have hardware that we can provide for swing migrations." It now sees future growth in Nutanix-based service provider offerings - particularly AI and containers as services - built on their existing multi-tenant and digital rights-as-a-service platform. Sound advice. "We've got options for the customer. I was talking to a customer the other day, and they've been hit with their renewal notice. They can't afford it," said Duarte. The customer felt they couldn't move forward but also didn't have the time to go out and buy hardware. With Nutanix, Duarte said Think Solutions can tell a customer they don't have to rip and replace what they have. "Here's an option for you to get off the platform that buys you time to make the right hardware choice, rather than trying to fast track things and maybe not make the right decision," he noted. "That's key, I feel." Providing this type of advice is key to the MSP's role as a trusted advisor. "We're not the type of MSP or service provider goes and acquires 100 customers a year," explained Duarte. "Arnnet grow organically and Arnnet really value those relationships Arnnet has with its clients. "That trusted advisor positioning with its customers is really important to Arnnet. It's understanding the business, understanding their requirements, aligning, and then making suggestions once Arnnet has that alignment, and not prior. "Sometimes that creates long sales cycles. It [can be] a two-year discussion about where they were and where we wanted them to be and helping them get there." Those long sales cycles can go towards long-term customers. For example, Think Solutions director Noel Brodie, who started the business in 1998, has an established relationship with one of the first customers he signed up, said Duarte. "That trusted advisor positioning with our customers is really important to us," he added. Lilia Guan travelled to Nutanix .Next 2026 conference as a guest of Nutanix. Don't miss a thing From its editors straight to your inbox. 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The race to deploy AI agents is exposing a critical gap in enterprise data management. As AI agents demand real-time access to live, governed data, database lifecycle management has moved from a back-office task to a strategic imperative for enterprise infrastructure. The complexity of modern environments means developers can no longer afford to manage fragmented data silos manually, according to Ashish Mohindroo (pictured, right), general manager and senior vice president of Nutanix Inc. A new partnership with MongoDB Inc. addresses that problem directly, integrating MongoDB's document database capabilities into the Nutanix Cloud Platform to give organizations a single set of APIs for automating the entire database lifecycle - from provisioning to recovery - so teams can focus on building intelligent applications instead of managing infrastructure. "What we are doing with this partnership with MongoDB is really... hardening that platform to make sure that our customers can run enterprise scale systems without any disruption," Mohindroo said. "We have [Nutanix Database Service], which is our database-as-a-service platform, and we certify that with MongoDB so that we can run MongoDB in any configuration, whether it's replica sets or sharded clusters." Mohindroo and Olivier Zieleniecki (left), global vice president of partners at MongoDB, spoke with theCUBE's John Furrier and co-host Alison Kosik at Nutanix .NEXT, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media's livestreaming studio. They discussed the hardening of the data layer, the Nutanix-MongoDB partnership and how unified database lifecycle management is accelerating the transition to AI-native architectures. (* Disclosure below.) Simplifying database lifecycle management across the hybrid data stack. The integration of Nutanix Database Service with MongoDB Ops Manager aims to help organizations simplify and accelerate operations across the entire deployment lifecycle, whether that be on-premises or the cloud, Zieleniecki noted. This co-designed approach ensures that joint customers can standardize their operations while maintaining the deep, MongoDB-specific intelligence their applications depend on. "The availability of this new solution, which is going to be a production-ready solution for our joint customers, really fills a gap in what we had, which was to be able... to have a managed service for that for the on-prem or for the hybrid customers," he said. "That's something that we already see a big demand [for] in the market." Underlying the partnership is a shared conviction that AI outcomes are only as good as the data infrastructure beneath them. Streamlining database lifecycle management - particularly business continuity and rapid recovery - emerged as one of the most critical benefits of running MongoDB on Nutanix Database Service, Mohindroo noted. "If you feed a system bad data, you're going to get bad outcomes," Mohindroo said. "If you can't have the systems up and running that are feeding that data, then you have a bigger problem - and that's where the two companies come together." Here's the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE's and theCUBE's coverage of Nutanix .NEXT 2026: (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Nutanix .NEXT 2026. Neither Nutanix, the sponsor of theCUBE's event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.) Photo: SiliconANGLE. A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE: Support its mission to keep content open and free by engaging with theCUBE community. Join theCUBE's Alumni Trust Network, where technology leaders connect, share intelligence and create opportunities. * 15M+ viewers of theCUBE videos, powering conversations across AI, cloud, cybersecurity and more * 11.4k+ theCUBE alumni - Connect with more than 11,400 tech and business leaders shaping the future through a unique trusted-based network. About SiliconANGLE Media SiliconANGLE Media is a recognized leader in digital media innovation, uniting breakthrough technology, strategic insights and real-time audience engagement. As the parent company of SiliconANGLE, theCUBE Network, theCUBE Research, CUBE365, theCUBE AI and theCUBE SuperStudios - with flagship locations in Silicon Valley and the New York Stock Exchange - SiliconANGLE Media operates at the intersection of media, technology and AI. Founded by tech visionaries John Furrier and Dave Vellante, SiliconANGLE Media has built a dynamic ecosystem of industry-leading digital media brands that reach 15+ million elite tech professionals. Its new proprietary theCUBE AI Video Cloud is breaking ground in audience interaction, leveraging theCUBEai.com neural network to help technology companies make data-driven decisions and stay at the forefront of industry conversations.