Which established manufacturers will kick on this year? We asked executives from VARs and MSPs including Softcat, OCSL and ANS for their tips
Kevin Timms
CEO, EACS
Tip: Nutanix
Nutanix has experienced ups and downs since its IPO in September 2016, but its shares have been on the rise in recent months as fears that the hyperconverged infrastructure player was losing share to bigger rivals subsided. Its revenues flew up 46 per cent year on year to $276m in the first quarter of its fiscal 2018.
It also added 760 new customers during the quarter, an achievement that chimes with the experiences of EACS CEO Kevin Timms (pictured), who picked out Nutanix as the vendor most likely to enjoy a bumper 2018.
EACS' Nutanix business is already worth £1m annually despite the partnership being less than a year old, Timms said.
"We looked at Nutanix as a means of improving the performance and capability of our hardware stack as we were going into on-prem solutions," he explained.
"We were getting quite a few orders to architect, and we found the performance of hyperconverged technology was significantly greater than standard technology stacks.
"Nutanix will be a really big player in the coming years. We've had a lot of marketing support from them, and they are talking at our Optimise event in March. They've been very good and positive in the channel for us and we've got a big installation - over £1m - going in at a company down in Kent."