Nutanix Inc. CEO Dheeraj Pandey flatly denied rumors that his company is about to be acquired by Cisco Systems Ltd. in a statement on Monday, saying if he ever decided to sell up, Dell Inc. would be given the first opportunity to make a bid.

“You may have seen recent press speculation of Cisco acquiring Nutanix. There is no truth to those rumors,” said Pandey in a statement addressed to “Team Dell” and reported by The VAR Guy. “With the ever-increasing attention on convergence and cloud, we will continue to see press and analysts put forward their guesses on mergers and acquisitions in this space.”

The rumor mill has been buzzing all weekend, ever since Jared Rinderer, senior research analyst at the independent research firm Equity Capital Research Group, spilled the beans last Friday, saying Cisco would announce the acquisition at Nutanix’s customer and partner conference in June. Rinderer refused to divulge who his sources were, however.

Now, Pandey has effectively shot down any idea that he might be willing to sell up to Cisco in a statement that highlights his company’s growing allegiance to Dell.

“We are also firmly committed to the Dell partnership,” Pandey said. “Competition sees this as an opportunity to seed doubt amongst genuine allies. As I’ve always said, ‘let’s move the enemy from within to the outside’. A cluttered mind is the biggest weakness of people at war.”

Pandexy further said that he envisages Nutanix becoming one of the next “iconic” software companies, adding that there’s an “immense” market opportunity for it in the hyper-converged infrastructure world.

“Nutanix is on the path to become a public company in the not-so-distant future, and has weighed every scenario to chart its course of independence,” Pandey continued. “If we ever decide to be part of another company, Dell will have a front-row seat in the bidding for it. That is my word to Michael Dell and a part of our agreement. We don’t want to a bidding frenzy.”

If Cisco did go ahead and acquire Nutanix, it would be an extremely expensive acquisition. Nutanix was valued at over $2 billion following its most recent $140 million financing round last summer, and Cisco would probably need to pay a significant premium on top of that to entice Pandey to sell up.

But an acquisition would certainly make sense for Cisco, which has been fighting an ugly battle with EMC Corp. and its subsidiary VMware Inc. As Business Insider notes, Cisco and EMC/VMware were once close partners, but the companies are now increasingly in competition with one another. EMC even bought out Cisco’s stake in VCE, a joint venture they had, and now the word is that VCE is dragging its feet over selling Cisco’s products, instead favoring those made by VMware. Meanwhile Nutanix is embroiled in its own battle with VMware, and is doing rather well, as this analysis from The Register points out. Most recently, Nutanix joined forces with other companies in a complaint that caused the government to back out of a $1.6 billion contract.

So if Cisco could buy out Nutanix it would be a major coup for the company. More importantly, Cisco has the cash to make it happen, with reported reserves of $53 billion stuffed away in the bank.

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