Enterprise AI is accelerating demand for tightly integrated ecosystem partnerships as organizations confront a rapidly expanding landscape of platforms, hardware choices and agentic workloads.

The shift from simple hyperconverged infrastructure to multi-layered AI factory deployments has made ecosystem diversity a strategic imperative for platform companies and their hardware partners alike. But as the number of integration points multiplies, the companies that streamline choice and interoperability for customers will capture the next wave of enterprise spending, according to Gregory Lehrer (pictured, right), vice president of business development and ecosystems at Nutanix Inc.

“If you don’t have a strong ecosystem, if you don’t have integration, you cannot scale because the customer needs are very diverse,” Lehrer told theCUBE. “I grew up in a world where you have one stack Microsoft Corp. or one stack Dell Technologies Inc. or one stack whatever. [That] world is done, it doesn’t exist anymore. All of us need to be very interchangeable.”

Lehrer and Todd Lieb (left), vice president of cloud partnerships at Dell, 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 how ecosystem partnerships are reshaping enterprise AI infrastructure delivery across AI factories, Kubernetes and hybrid cloud environments. (* Disclosure below.)

Ecosystem partnerships scale AI factory deployments

The Dell-Nutanix relationship illustrates how ecosystem partnerships have evolved from simple hardware certification into strategic, multi-layer platform co-engineering. With more than 4,000 customers deploying the Dell AI Factory, the demand for integrated software platforms on top of that infrastructure is surging, Lieb explained.

“In my mind, the Dell AI Factory is a platform, and then at the top there’s models and use cases,” Lieb said. “Nutanix is the platform that sits in the middle, and that’s very powerful. For enterprises to bring AI to life, you got to have the AI factory platform from Dell, the Nutanix platform in the middle with all the controls and tools, and then you run on top.”

Nutanix added more than 1,000 new customers in its most recent quarter — the highest number in eight years — and is racing to keep up with certification demand, Lehrer noted. The backlog of Independent Software Vendors seeking certification on the Nutanix Cloud Platform reflects how rapidly the AI ecosystem is expanding.

“My number one priority is to resolve a backlog of ISVs [that want] to be certified on the Nutanix platform,” Lehrer said. “This is a condition of success because it’s not about the number of logos, it’s about the quality — what the customer wants.”

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. Sponsors of theCUBE’s event coverage do not have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE