Nutanix CEO Dheeraj Pandey Retiring Amid Continuing Disruption

Nutanix CEO Dheeraj Pandey, company co-founder and chairman of the board, is retiring — but not before the next Nutanix leader is appointed. Pandey departs Nutanix on a high note in a crowded field that his successor will have to navigate.

Nutanix’s Dheeraj Pandey

Nutanix channel partners are no strangers to disruption at the company. Most recently, in June, the channel team added Christian Goffi as vice president, Americas channel sales. He replaced Christian Alvarez, who in May the company promoted to senior vice president of worldwide channels. Alvarez was only in his job for five months before getting the top channel slot at the company. Both Alvarez and Goffi left Juniper Networks for Nutanix.

This latest change in the channel comes on the heels of a tumultuous 2019. First there was the departure of Louis Attanasio, chief revenue officer. He left after Nutanix stock fell 31% in March 2019. A short five weeks later, Rodney Foreman, Nutanix global channel chief, departed. Foreman held the job for 15 months. Nutanix announced in August 2018 the departure of Sudheesh Nair, president.

Disruption Then and Now

In an interview with Channel Futures, in May 2019, Pandey said this about the churn at the company:

“Success is never a straight line and Wall Street is so elastic in the way it makes decisions. One day they’ll hate you and the other day they will love you. One day they will dump you and the other day they’ll actually go on a buying frenzy. They are memory-less. That’s good about Wall Street. The deal is we have more money in the bank than we had a year ago. The company is successfully transitioning as a software company and every quarter we are growing and talking about subscriptions. These are two big transformations that we are doing in front of the public eye.”

To customers and partners, Pandey said, “Be patient.”

This week, the retiring Pandey said the following upon news of his departure from Nutanix:

“Co-founding and leading Nutanix for the last 11 years has been the single most rewarding experience of my professional career. Guided by a vision of making IT infrastructure so simple that it becomes invisible, our team has built Nutanix into a leader in cloud software and a pioneer in hybrid cloud infrastructure solutions.

“With our strong fourth quarter financial results, 29% growth in year-over-year run-rate ACV, a delightful software stack, and our recent launch of Nutanix Clusters on AWS bare metal, Nutanix is well positioned for the future. In addition, the $750 million investment from Bain Capital Private Equity announced today underscores the strength of our business and ensures a strong financial foundation to capitalize on the significant opportunities ahead. I am confident there is no better time for me to make this transition to a new leader who can guide Nutanix through its next decade of growth and success.”

Partners Strategic to Nutanix

Nutanix channel partners will again have to show patience; however, Pandey understands the strategic role partners play for Nutanix.

“In many ways, we consider channel partners as another Nutanix customer,” he said. “Whoever the next leader is, [he/she] will have to have extreme customer-centricity. We are so deeply involved with our channel partners that no new CEO would want to unravel that, and if anything, they will likely want to go deeper, simply because our customers are asking for those partners to be helpful in their cloud transformation.”

Nevertheless, partners will have to …