Nutanix today made available its hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) software stack on bare metal Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

The new hybrid cloud service, called Nutanix Clusters on AWS, allows customers to move legacy applications to the AWS public cloud (and back on-premises, should they so choose) without having to retool any code. It uses a built-in integration with the AWS networking layer, which also allows customers to use their existing AWS accounts, including unused credits, virtual private clouds, and subnets.

Additionally, Nutanix offers license portability from private to public clouds, which means customers don’t need to buy additional software licenses for Nutanix Clusters on AWS.

And customers can manage their infrastructure as well as their applications across AWS and privates via a single interface: Nutanix Prism.

Monica Kumar, SVP of marketing at Nutanix, said 16,580 customers use Nutanix’s HCI software stack. “We’re taking that same architecture and actually enhancing it, and extending it to the public cloud,” she said. “In this case, it happens to be AWS.”

Yes, that does mean that similar hybrid cloud partnerships with Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud are likely to come.

Nutanix Clusters on AWS is available to customers in 20 AWS regions. In addition to being able to port their existing Nutanix licenses, customers can choose between Cloud Commit and pay-as-you-go financing models. Plus, they can manage cloud costs though Xi Beam, which gives visibility into public and private cloud usage and related spending.

On Nutanix’s most recent earnings call in May, CEO Dheeraj Pandey said HCI will become the “killer app” for moving workloads to the cloud. “We’ll make a strong case in the next three to five years for how HCI becomes a killer app for all things lift and shift, with no change to applications or operating systems, similar to virtualization 15 years ago,” he said.

In fact, lift and shift is one of four key use cases for Nutanix Clusters on AWS, Kumar said. Clusters eliminates the need to re-architect applications, which translates into cost and time savings to customers, she explained. Additionally, Nutanix Move provides application mobility between non-Nutanix environments and Clusters to further simplify the process.

“DR for business continuity is another very important use case for many of our customers,” she said. Customers can now use AWS for disaster recovery without having to manage multiple cloud environments or stand-alone disaster recovery.

“In addition, our customers have told us they like on-demand elasticity of cloud, but it’s been hard for them to use cloud to burst on demand because of the way current hybrid cloud solutions are architected,” Kumar said. “But now, with Nutanix Clusters, it can be a piece of cake. It’s literally our customers being able to create a hybrid cloud in less than 30 minutes.” This busting capability allows customers to support seasonal demands, or — in a particularly COVID-19 friendly use case — expand virtual desktop infrastructure resources.

And in the final use case: customers can use AWS cloud-native services with existing on-premises applications without having to re-architect them. “They can actually easily modernize existing apps using features like AI, machine learning, analytics, etcetera,” she said.

While Nutanix has been talking about its hybrid cloud strategy for years now, it’s taken awhile to extend its software stack to the public cloud. Meanwhile, its top competitor VMware already boasts hybrid cloud partnerships with AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, IBM, and Oracle Cloud, among others.

Kumar says Nutanix’s hybrid cloud service takes on VMware Cloud on AWS by making it easier to manage workloads across hybrid clouds. And it costs less compared to VMware because of Nutanix’s license portability and features built into Nutanix Clusters that can hibernate a customer’s entire AWS cluster when it’s not in use. “It’s architected very differently. And it’s much easier to use” than VMware, she added.

“Our customer base is our crown jewel,” Kumar said. “And we absolutely want to make sure it’s really simple for them to build and manage hybrid clouds. But that said, that’s not the only target for us. Any organization, whether they’re enterprise, or SMB who want to build a hybrid cloud and was struggling because of the complexity and because of the cost, any of those organizations would be able to take advantage of Nutanix clusters.”