Nutanix Inc. has engaged China’s Lenovo Group Ltd. as a hardware partner for its hyperconverged software systems, giving it a big leg up as it looks to secure a sizable share of the lucrative Chinese market.

Lenovo is to build a family of hyperconverged appliances that will be capable of handling just about any workload you can throw at them, including Big Data analytics, databases, enterprise applications and virtualized desktops. The new gear will be based on the x86 server products Lenovo acquired from IBM last year, and will integrate compute, storage and virtualizations technologies into a scale-out appliance running Nutanix’s software.

The companies also revealed plans to invest heavily in platform engineering and development and in go-to-market efforts, with Lenovo planning to create a 200-person strong sales team dedicated to selling the wares.

The deal means that Lenovo becomes Nutanix’s second hardware maker after Dell Inc., and it’s reckoned that the partnership should give Nutanix a significant revenue boost once Lenovo starts selling its kit.

Brian Connors, vice president of strategic alliances and high-performance computing (HPC) at Lenovo, said in a blog post that we’re seeing a transition in data centers towards more manageable, cost-effective and innovative solutions.

“The rise of converged infrastructure—integrated server, storage and networking systems that are easy to purchase, implement and manage—is a direct response to these demands,” Connors wrote. “This trend continues to accelerate in the form of hyperconverged infrastructure as customers ask even more of their converged systems, adding software-defined capabilities to their integrated systems.”

Of interest is that Lenovo already acts as a reseller for products from SimpliVity Corp., Maxta Inc., and StorMagic, which rival Nutanix in the hyperconverged systems space.

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