Hybrid cloud is no longer just a bridge between old and new systems — it’s the foundation of enterprise reinvention.

As organizations shift from static infrastructure to dynamic, AI-ready environments, hybrid cloud is becoming the architecture of choice for scaling innovation without sacrificing control. It’s not just about moving workloads anymore — it’s about orchestrating across edge, core and cloud with platforms that support legacy systems while enabling new, containerized and intelligent applications. Enterprise IT leaders are rethinking where and how value is created, and hybrid cloud is giving them the flexibility to run smarter, faster and more securely across every environment, according to Tarkan Maner (pictured), chief commercial officer of Nutanix Inc.

“We are all in the same ecosystem, delivering value for our customers because we’re customer-obsessed, but we want to make sure that customers realize we have the best migration tools, best tools for security and manageability with AWS,” Maner said. “Basically giving them a modern platform, basically taking them from legacy virtualization-centric universe into a container hybrid cloud, AI-driven universe with AWS.”

Maner spoke with theCUBE’s John Furrier at the AWS Mid-Year Leadership Summit, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed how hybrid cloud is becoming the essential infrastructure model for enterprises balancing legacy systems with modern AI-driven applications across edge, core and cloud environments. (* Disclosure below.)

Hybrid cloud platforms are evolving to meet AI’s enterprise demands

As AI adoption matures, hybrid cloud platforms are playing a pivotal role in enabling enterprise-ready use cases. Companies need to manage both traditional workloads and modern AI-driven applications — including those running at the edge or reliant on large language models. With a hybrid approach, businesses can integrate these demands while maintaining security, data governance and performance consistency, Maner explained.

“For a business to be successful, for a partnership to be successful, you need to have customer-partner ecosystem intimacy,” he said. “You need to have a portfolio IP differentiation that’s different, that’s meaningful, that drives outcomes, and you need operational excellence on how you do things from customer service to customer support.”

This dual-platform strategy is increasingly critical as workloads become more distributed. Enterprises are navigating complex migrations, not just lifting and shifting but transforming applications for new AI workloads. Nutanix’s long-standing investment in hybrid architecture, coupled with strategic collaborations such as with Amazon Web Services Inc., gives customers options for building, running and optimizing across environments, according to Maner.

“These applications can be legacy applications, even mainframe applications. These applications can be virtual applications,” he said. “These applications could be new generation, Kubernetes-driven microservices applications, container applications, especially now, enterprise AI-driven applications that we are also working with AWS and companies like Nvidia in a big way to deliver outcomes around AI for our customers.”

The hybrid cloud model not only enables application portability but also improves developer agility and platform openness. By avoiding vendor lock-in, organizations can evolve infrastructure in sync with fast-moving innovation cycles while also retaining control of cost, sovereignty and compliance mandates. The AWS-Nutanix alliance focuses on providing secure, manageable infrastructure that integrates easily with industry-standard tools and partner ecosystems, according to Maner.

“Most importantly … there are a lot of issues related to data gravity, security, you mentioned GDPR, privacy, hugely important issue,” he said. “We are providing the tools for managing these systems and applications running on these systems better than on-prem or off-prem and most likely hybrid cloud fashion with AWS.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the AWS Mid-Year Leadership Summit:

(* Disclosure: Nutanix Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Nutanix nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE