Hybrid multi-cloud computing giant Nutanix made several big announcements on Tuesday, unveiling new features within the Nutanix Cloud Platform designed to help organizations build out software-defined data centers and make it easier for enterprises to simplify data management. 

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Rajiv Mirani, chief technology officer at Nutanix, toldZDNetthat their customers are looking for cloud solutions that can adapt to their needs, with a focus on simplicity, flexibility and freedom to choose the right technology for each situation. 

"The Nutanix Cloud Platform continues to break down common silos within IT teams with the goals of simplifying operations so customers can focus on business needs. With these new features, we focused on addressing the common challenges many enterprises face in hybrid multi-cloud environments, including security, DR and virtual networking," Mirani said. 

"Customers require a variety of ways to store data -- both structured and unstructured -- and are looking for ways to simplify management without needing to rely on different vendors to do so. The new features in the Nutanix Cloud Platform extend our data-centric innovation to high-performance applications to deliver a unified platform with comprehensive data services for all workloads and all variety of data."

Nutanix is launching AOS version 6, software that provides enterprises with built-in virtual networking, enhanced disaster recovery and simplified zero-trust security that otherwise would require additional specialized hardware and software.

All of the platform's functions are managed through a single interface, making it easier for IT teams to handle. 

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Nutanix AOS 6 comes with a Network Virtualization offering called Flow Networking that allows organizations to create Virtual Private Clouds and offers VPN capabilities.

AOS 6 users also get access to new Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery capabilities as well as "the ability to leverage the public cloud as a secondary site, native metro clustering support for the built-in AHV hypervisor enabling automatic failover in the event of a disaster" and end-to-end encryption capabilities for DR traffic.

Nutanix added that it would offer customers integration with Qualys' vulnerability management detection and response solution. 

The company's AOS, AHV, and Files products were also approved by the Department of Defense and will now be placed on the Information Network Approved Products List after going through a rigorous set of cybersecurity tests. 

Eric Sheppard, research vice president of IDC Infrastructure Platforms and Technologies Group, said AOS 6, along with virtual networking and security innovations in the Nutanix Cloud Platforms, "deliver an enterprise-ready, end-to-end platform to run any application, including the most critical ones, on-premises and in public cloud." 

"The new features address many of the demands of enterprise customers looking to gain efficiency and reliability across clouds, to support their needs now and in the future." 

The virtual networking and enterprise-grade DR features are now available to customers, but the security features are under development.

Nutanix also announced that the Nutanix Cloud Platform would be able to offer unstructured data tiering from on-premises to cloud, up to a 2x storage performance increase for database workloads and 3x for big data workloads without requiring complex reconfiguration, as well as unstructured data governance service Nutanix Data Lens.

The company is also offering a new one-click storage scaling and rich role-based access control called Nutanix Era. 

Nutanix is adding a slate of new features to make it easier to run data analytics workloads and process data faster at a reduced cost. 

"Nutanix Objects, the company's S3 compatible object storage solution, supports high-performance petabyte-scale storage for building data lakes. Customers working with modern analytics applications, such as Apache Spark, will benefit from a dramatically increased query and large batch processing performance with S3 Select and optimized S3A support," Nutanix explained. 

"Simplified Storage Scaling and Governance for Databases Nutanix's database service, Era, manages the most popular database engines like PostgreSQL, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, and Oracle Database across hybrid multi-cloud environments. With Era, customers will be able to easily and quickly scale database storage online, turning days or weeks of work into a one-click operation." 

Era will also be able to support multi-region failover capabilities. The Nutanix Data Lens -- a new cloud service for unstructured data growth -- was included in the raft of announcements.

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