Great. Thank you to the next, I guess, the audience here for joining this fireside. I'm happy to say that we have with us the management team from Nutanix, CFO Rukmini Sivaraman, as well as the Head of IR, Rich Valera. Thank you to both of you guys for joining us. We really do appreciate your participation here, and just for the audience, we have 40 minutes set aside here for a fireside format. I have questions drafted on my side, but you should have a Q&A box in front of yourselves. Please lob in questions, and we'll make sure that we can get to them while we have the management team here.
With that out of the way, Rukmini, just the easiest question you're going to get all day, but just for people who are maybe dusting off the story or getting reacquainted, as a reminder, what does Nutanix do? What is the market the company is addressing today?
Mike, I appreciate you all hosting us today. So thank you. Great to be here. And thank you, everybody, for joining and for your interest. So Nutanix is an infrastructure software company. We are helping our customers deploy that infrastructure in an easy, streamlined, efficient, high-performance way so they can then focus on what they should be focused on, which is their applications and their business. So in terms of where we are in the stack, so if you think of any application or workload that any of your companies might be using, so think of it as anything as simple as this Zoom application that we are on. It could be more complex things too, like a trading application, right? If you're a financial services institution, you can think of a lot of the medical applications that hospitals have.
So, all of these virtual desktops, AI is, of course, the most modern app. All of these need to run on infrastructure, and historically, the architecture has been you'd need storage, you'd need networking, and you'd need some kind of compute power, and so companies historically, and this is still a lot of this out there, but the old way of doing things was to have these three silos of storage, compute, and networking, and then a hypervisor or a virtualization layer on top. What we pioneered, what Nutanix pioneered, was something called hyperconverged infrastructure, which was to really converge all of those three and simplify them with our software, so our software effectively virtualizes all of that.
You can buy a simple server, an x86 server, which costs way less than any of those storage arrays or other gear, and our software will do a lot of the heavy lifting for you. So it simplified things for our customers. It also saved them a lot of money. Our TCO, total cost of ownership reduction, can be upwards of 40%-50%, depending on what your environment selects. There's significant cost savings, and it's a really high-performing solution, so that's what we do, Mike, and that's where we started. We've since evolved our value proposition to be able to run what we call Run Anywhere , which is it can run on your data center, on-premises. If it's a private cloud and we provide a cloud-like experience on-prem, it can also run on the public cloud.
We have solutions with AWS and Azure and others around running our software on bare metal. We also can run on the edge. Edge meaning retail locations, Navy ships, things like that, where they're on-site on edge. All the infrastructure needs to be there, right? It can't be sort of sitting somewhere else where there's a lot of latency. We have now expanded our vision to do that. We can also run both VMs and containerized applications. We've expanded our vision to become a much broader platform. Our ultimate goal is to be able to run any application that our customers want to run and manage their data anywhere, regardless of where it sits.
Excellent. Excellent, and I know we're coming up on QP here at the end of the quarter, but just because the last data points we had were a couple of months ago at this point, can you just tease out potentially quick highlights from the most recent call? Let's go back to the October quarter as far as execution and the performance the company's been driving.
Yep, so we have talked about our overarching sort of approach, if you will, around continuing to drive durable growth while also driving profitability. We have lived by that principle. Last fiscal year, our fiscal year was July 31. We finished with a Rule of 40 score of 43. To your question, Mike, on the most recent quarter, the October quarter, it was a good quarter. We beat our high end of our own guidance across both revenue and op margin, which we guide to on a quarterly basis. What we saw was that we had, if you think of our business, we also can think of it as there's a renewals base. So customers that have purchased from us before and come to renew with us. There's land, which is landing new logos, and there's an expansion with existing customers.
Renewal continues to do really well. People like our solution. Our Net Promoter Score is 90, and it has been for a long time. Renewals continue to do well. We saw good performance in land, which is landing new logos. We give you our new logo number of customers we have so you can calculate the new logo. That saw a nice increase year over year in the October quarter. Where we did have results below our expectations was in the expand portion. One thing we called out, as you'll remember, Mike, was that our federal business is seasonally strong in this October quarter because, of course, U.S. Fed has their year-end in September. That was weaker than we would have liked. Now we did have a strong compare to the year ago, October quarter, which was a really great U.S. Fed quarter.
This one, not so much. So we did see a decline year over year in the U.S. Fed. And a good portion of that, we believe, is because of these continuing resolutions that we've had leading up to that September that delayed budgets and so on. So we talked a little bit about that to give people color on what we were seeing. We do expect in this quarter for U.S. Fed to get back to more normal levels for the January quarter, right? So just to be clear, it's not sort of a catch-up for the year or anything like that, but we do expect this to be a more normal January quarter relative to what we've seen in the past. And so those are some of the dynamics.
We did maintain our full year numbers for the top line, Mike, where we were able to take up our free cash flow and our op margin guide for the full year. We maintained the top line despite a good beat on revenue, and that's simply because it's still early in the year. We're only one quarter in at this point, and we think there's enough moving pieces between things that are going well. The new administration is taking office, of course, here in a few days, and so enough moving pieces that we chose to keep that top line guide the same while growing our free cash flow, while increasing our free cash flow and op margin guides for the full year.
Great. And just coming to the demand for a second, or what the environment is like out there. Obviously, we're rolling into a new calendar year here, right? Even though you're just a quarter into your fiscal, we'd just be curious, how have customer conversations trended? Is there any change in tone? And even taking a broader look, now that we know that we'll have a Trump administration for the next four years, is that in any way coming up in conversation? Or what is a change in administration? Has that historically impacted Nutanix's business?
So a few things there, Mike. I'll maybe talk about two or three different things. So one is, I think, overall interest level in Nutanix remains good and high. There's people who are interested in our solution. We can talk more about market and competitive dynamics specific to us. So that continues to be the case. So that's good. And no real change there, right, in terms of interest level or overall tone, I would say, is broadly unchanged. Now, there are, to your point, some questions around, well, there's an administration change in the U.S. What does that mean? And I think the short answer is we don't know because there is, I think, a lot. There's been a lot put out there in terms of what the administration might prioritize. There's been a lot of talk about what the Department of Government Efficiency might decide to do.
But it's also unclear how it might actually play out in terms of what they would like to do versus what they might actually have the power to do, right? So there's, I think, still a fair number of unknowns, Mike, in terms of how that will all play out. And then, look, inflation, interest rates, we've all, I think, probably read everyone on this call probably reads all the same sort of financial news. And so that has also continued to evolve, right, in terms of how many cuts and what that could look like. Is it higher for longer? So I think there are some moving pieces, certainly, from a macro perspective, whether that's sort of just interest rates in the U.S. and inflation.
And in terms of the new administration, Mike, we don't know anything much more than, I think, what we're all reading and trying to glean from what's being said. So yeah, we'll have to see how it plays. And that was one of the reasons why we also chose to keep our full year guide where it was because there's, like I said, enough uncertainty. But overall, in terms of tone of conversations we're having with prospects and customers, those haven't changed in terms of interest level and so on. So I would say that we didn't see sort of a big change from December to January or anything like that, right? Largely kind of unchanged in terms of that interest.
Excellent. And again, I want to make sure that we come to the tech and some of the evolution of the platform here. But I think one of the things that a lot of investors are focused on is obviously the competitive dynamic, given some announcements that have taken place out there. Super high level, with some of the industry M&A that's occurred, can you talk about how the shape or size of some of these customers or the pipeline of Nutanix has changed?
Yes. So we have said, Mike, that our pipeline mix has moved more towards larger deals. So the mix of larger deals in our pipeline has grown, right? It's still a minority of the pipeline, right? When you think of million-plus opportunity and things like that. But the mix of those deals has grown over time. And that's, I think, at least two things impacting that. One is we ourselves have chosen to go more up market, up market meaning towards larger customers because that's where a lot of the spend is. And so we've said, look, the nice thing about our platform is that it's broadly applicable, right? So if you have IT needs and you're trying to, and if you're large enough of an organization to have an IT department, you probably do need. There's a need for Nutanix there or someone like Nutanix.
And so that's the good thing. But we have to be mindful of where we put our resources, right? So we've deliberately chosen to direct our sellers more up market and have carved out a segment with some of the smaller, higher volume customers for the channel, for example, because they can help us bring in that. And that's still early days, but they are starting to contribute in terms of that mix working. So that's one that's contributing to the growing mix of larger deals. The other factor, which is what you alluded to in terms of industry M&A, is Broadcom's acquisition of VMware, which, to be clear, we've competed with VMware for many, many years. And so that in itself is not new.
What is new in the market is Broadcom's acquisition and some of the changes they have made in terms of how VMware is going to market. And so what that's meant is that many customers, excuse me, sorry about that. Many VMware customers are considering alternatives more so than ever before. So they might have been happy with VMware, but now with some of the changes that Broadcom has made, they're saying, well, is this the long-term partner that I want? Are they innovating enough? They have effectively increased prices for customers, and we can talk more about that. So what does this mean for them, right? So that has opened the door in some ways. It has given us an opportunity to go after doors that were previously closed but are now more open to us. So that is, we view as a multi-year opportunity for us.
It's not going to be a step function. We can talk more about why it'll be multi-year, but we do think it's a multi-year tailwind for us in terms of accelerating that sort of TAM and our ability to go capture that available market. So that is sort of what's happening, and it's reflecting in our pipeline, Mike, right? So to your point on pipeline, as even the larger customers sort of think about, well, what does it mean for me? Do I want to be committed to someone like Broadcom as my primary vendor? They are opening the door to us, which means that, again, we have more larger deals in the pipeline. Now, I will say that that's a good thing. It's by design. But these deals are also more variable in terms of timing and size and deal structure and so on, right?
So that's also something we've talked about, which is that it does create more variability in terms of when they will actually convert into bookings. But overall, we're happy with those opportunities coming our way and intend to make the most of converting them.
Got it. And apologize. I got a cranky radiator here in the New York City office today. So sorry if there's any background noise on my side. But just wanted to call out as far as that pipeline and these deals that are coming in, can you talk about what you guys are then seeing? Because that is a different dynamic, right? I'm sure that you guys are tracking how those deals move through the pipeline, what the conversion is over time for those deals. But how is it you guys are then implementing the rigor processes on your side to ensure those deals flow through? And then any comments as well? It would stand to reason that those sales cycles are longer in some capacity.
But any flavor as far as how those sales cycles compare to what a traditional, yeah, I guess a traditional sale for Nutanix would be?
Yeah. So traditionally, we've said it's about 9 to 12 months from when kind of an opportunity gets created to when we actually get the booking, the purchase order from the customer. What is, as you point out, with these larger opportunities, they do tend to take longer, especially if it's a new logo, right? Meaning a customer we haven't transacted with before. So in addition to all the technical work, there's a proof of concept, there's all the technical validation, there are security checks. All of that needs to happen. In addition, there is also the vendor onboarding. If you're a new vendor, right? There's procurement, of course, will have a big process, and then there'll be all the approvals.
We give one example, Mike, of an eight-figure, so $10 million+ ACV transaction that we booked in the April quarter of last year that was two years in the making. And that went with a Fortune 50 financial services company, and that went all the way to the CEO for approval. So CEO of Fortune 50 company. That's a lot of approvals. And so, yeah, so we are seeing some of those take longer. And I think part of your question was, how do we try to move things along and do everything we can in our control to make sure that that's happening?
So, we have done a few things that are now, and this is, I think it's intuitive we do this, but we have these deal teams, deal pursuit teams we call them, that are cross-functional teams that have everybody from, of course, the sales team, but also it will have finance, for example, because there might be things along the way that we might need to approve in terms of deal structure and things like that. It would likely have a product management person. So it has a cross-functional team that's whose goal is to keep this moving forward at pace. And so we are effectively being really responsive and pushing the customer where we can to make sure this is going as quickly as we can. The other piece, Mike, I would say, is we've always asked customers and tried to understand internally why Nutanix and why now.
Those two questions get asked when we think of pipeline. So that's always been the case. But the why now question now has a few more sub-questions, as you can imagine, right? Especially if it's sort of a VMware displacement, like, well, when's the VMware renewal due? Because that will give us a sense of timing, just how much time does this customer have and when do they exactly need an alternative? If it requires a hardware change, then we have trained our people to ask, when is your hardware depreciated? When did you purchase your hardware last? Or what is your depreciation cycle on that? Because that might affect when they're able to go say, okay, now we can go retire that hardware and buy new or hardware for the new architecture. Even though we don't sell hardware, right? Customers do run our software on servers.
So that's another question. Another question might be, what happens if they don't purchase us in a given quarter? Meaning, one answer might be, well, we lose budget, right? And that tells you, okay, well, this would be motivated to do this now. And whereas if someone else says, well, this is the most strategic investment for us, so it could come in this quarter or it could come in. Well, nothing would happen if it slips, right, from their perspective. So then it gives us a way for us to moderate our own expectations, but also to get precise with the customer so that we can make them successful, right, in what they are trying to accomplish because they probably have a timeline in their minds too.
And us trying to understand that, one, allows us to make sure we're giving them everything we need and are being responsive and moving this along, but also helps me as I think about, well, when is this deal going to come in and when can we think about confidence level, right, and predictability of the business overall?
And I know you, I guess, were partially already addressing this, but one of the things that we're trying to think through on our side is, as these deals are larger, some of these deals in the pipeline are increasing in size and scope just based on competition or how your platform has evolved in the strategic decision to move up market, the persona. And so have you seen a meaningful shift then as far as the type of the buying center that you're engaging with or the amount of red tape you need to go through to get that deal closed? I know you had cited that eight-figure contract with the CEO as an example, but is that still maybe not the norm? I'm trying to see how far up the ladder this needs to go.
Right. And so, I think it depends is the answer, Mike. So yeah, we don't do eight-figure basically as a matter of we don't do them every day, let's say. And so that was, it was a great one, of course, and it's a great testament, I think, to the platform and to, I think, the value the customer sees in us. But yeah, we don't do those all the time. And I think in terms of who we are selling to, Mike, one of the things we've tried to do is make sure we have relationships even at the more senior levels, right? So previously, let's say it was the VP of infrastructure. How do we also make sure we're talking to the CIO, right, or to the CFO or whoever else might be involved in that decision? So that's been an evolution for the company as well.
So we have now our customer advisory board, things like that, that are making sure that we have the more senior folks also involved so that to the point that I think I made earlier that you referenced where to the extent ultimately the PO does need to get approved by, and it depends on the company and the size of the order, of course, that everyone's aware of the value that we can bring and that they have had a chance to be brought on board with why Nutanix is being purchased. And so when they get that PO, hopefully there's not a lot of questions at that point, right, in terms of why are we investing with this vendor. So yes, that's an effort we've made deliberately to try and make sure we are getting to as many of the decision makers as we can, including the CIO.
And these larger companies, it may be the CEO, for example, right? So our CEO, Rajiv, will reach out and make sure that he's connected to the people there. So they also feel, the customer also ultimately feels that they have all the connections within Nutanix that they can call if they have a question or if they ever need help, right? So there's that sort of making sure we have all the right connections at all the right levels at these customers.
Makes perfect sense. You had also alluded to pricing earlier, and I didn't want to leave that hanging, right? So can you talk about what your competition has done from a pricing perspective, how Nutanix has responded? Just curious to flush that out as well.
Yeah. So our primary competitor, or the most direct competitor, has been VMware for a while. And of course, we're displacing the legacy sort of three-tier architecture. You could argue those are also the folks that we are saying, look, we can do better, right? And so you could argue they are as well. But from a direct portfolio perspective and our offering, it has been VMware. And so them being acquired by Broadcom, they made a few changes. So you could buy before a perpetual license from VMware for their vSphere, which is their hypervisor offering. So we believe, by the way, the majority of VMware customers were purchasing the standalone hypervisor that VMware pioneered. And so they were selling perpetual licenses before. So if you were a customer, you could have just been paying annual support on that perpetual license.
And so in terms of what has happened in the market with Broadcom, since that question I said that, well, look, by and large, you cannot buy a perpetual license anymore. You have to switch to a subscription-based license. And so that effectively appears like a price increase to customers. And then secondly, by and large, again, there's been some, I think, nuances around this, but they've also said, look, you have to purchase VCF or VMware Cloud Foundation, which is their full stack and is, frankly, the most comparable, right? So VCF has, yes, it has their hypervisor, but also has their HCI offering, which is very comparable to our full stack. And so those have been effective price increases. Now, we have historically not sold our hypervisor standalone. We've had a successful hypervisor, right?
Like 70% of our customers use our own hypervisor, but we haven't sold it standalone for a bunch of reasons, including it. There wouldn't have been a big need for it historically. So if we just stick with that for a moment, their VMware Cloud Foundation stack is what effectively we have gone to the market with for a long time, which is encouraging customers to adopt the new, more modern architecture of HCI. And so compared to that, we've been pretty competitive even historically, Mike, and are still competitive in that. So we've been viewed as a premium product actually in the market. And so that continues to be the case. And look, we want our customers to think of us as a long-term partner for them, right?
So when we would, yes, of course, price is important, and we want to make sure that customers know that we intend to be a long-term partner for them. We're willing, for example, to give customers more visibility into what their price might be at renewal. We sort of charge inflation-like price increases at renewal. If you shorten your duration, then we might adjust that because obviously longer duration, more commitment gets a better annual price. But that's been our philosophy. And so giving from a pricing perspective, we try to actually start with the customer more on, here's why we are a better partner for you. And that includes things like, why is our product superior? We have a data-focused mindset. It's a much more simplified architecture. We offer the full of flexibility of choice in terms of platform. Our customer NPS is 90.
And so we are a much better long-term partner for you, customer. And we are priced to reflect that. So that's how we've approached this. There are a lot of changes day to day in the market. It's quite dynamic, Mike. And so we'll continue to watch that. But our intent at this point is also be flexible when it's a new logo, when customers sort of want to make this work for them, we want to work with them, right, to make it a successful deployment, not just today, but years in the future. Because the other thing that Broadcom has said is they have also set very aggressive EBITDA targets, which has meant that they have had to reduce some investments, right, both on the R&D side and on the go-to-market. So I sort of think about innovation. We are embedding in containerized offerings.
We are investing in GenAI, and we intend to continue to do that because we are an innovative company and intend to stay that way. So we would argue that we are the much better longer-term partner for our customers and prospects than anybody else in the market.
Great. Great. And on the technology front as well, one of the bigger items that we receive questions on, and I know how nascent it is, but GPT-in-a-Box. And I know that you guys have the 2.0. Just as a refresher for the audience, can you talk about what are the capabilities that this offering is bringing to the market today?
Yeah, Richard, do you want to take that one?
Sure. Thanks. Yeah, Mike. So GPT-in-a-Box, and I'll just say in general before we go 1.0 versus 2.0, is our solution for simplifying the deployment and management of GenAI solutions within an enterprise. And this distinguishes from some GenAI sort of baked into solutions like a Microsoft Copilot versus actually taking your data within the enterprise, sort of cleaning up that data, and then wanting to run your own sort of GenAI application on it to try to get some improvement in productivity. So we really simplify and streamline that process of downloading the LLM, fine-tuning it, and then exposing the APIs in that LLM to your actual application, and then actually running the inferencing within your environment. So we really make that much simpler for you to do and get you to actually having a sort of productively deployed GenAI application quicker.
The 2.0 version, we had some increased integration with NVIDIA for their NIMs, their inference and microservices, and an integration with Hugging Face, which is a provider of LLM libraries. And we also had a better user interface. And then we also decoupled that GenAI automation piece, which sits on top of our stack from our hybrid cloud platform. And we said that's what we call now Nutanix Enterprise AI. And that can run not just on top of our stack as it does in GPT-in-a-Box 2.0, but now we can actually run that in the public cloud natively as well. So if you wanted to run a GenAI application both sort of on-prem and in the public cloud, you could use that same NAI sort of automation piece in both places, whether you're running it sort of natively in the public cloud or on the enterprise.
So that's kind of up to date with where we are and what we're offering.
Okay. And for GPT in a box, again, with the understanding that it's early, how has customer feedback been? And then I guess a tangential point there, but one of the big things we're hearing about inferencing is that organizations are worried, worried is maybe the wrong word, but they're trying to figure out latency, right? So can you tackle that latency element as well in the context of that customer feedback?
Yeah, that speaks to the kind of notion of where is GenAI going to take place. And our CEO, Rajiv, likes to say he thinks there's going to be a lot of data gravity with GenAI, i.e., it's probably going to take place where the data is. So if you have data on-prem and if for regulatory or performance reasons, you want to keep that data on-prem or at the edge, that's probably where your sort of GenAI inferencing compute is going to take place as well. So that's why we really like sort of our solution because we obviously run very well on-prem. We run very well at the edge. And now we can also run natively in the public cloud with sort of NAI.
So we feel like we can really support that very well, running where the data is and making sure you have the highest performance environment. In terms of engagement with the customers, lots of engagement. And I think we would say most enterprises are still in the exploratory phase, right? Not many have deployed production applications, but lots are exploring. First thing is to sort of get your data, clean it up, and then try to figure out what is your app, what's it going to do, and then fine-tune that app. So we're helping customers do that. We're seeing some decent wins. We try to highlight them in the earnings calls, but still early, and we think a lot to come on that front.
Great. And I do want to be true to my word here. I know that we did get an inbound from one of the clients. Thanks for the participation. So the question is around virtualization. And I think it's the idea that, hey, market share and virtualization for you guys relatively low. Do you think that the company can drive or what would need to happen for you to get 10% market share and virtualization, if that's even possible? What would you guys need to do?
I think maybe the question is targeted because virtualization is a big word. You can virtualize a lot of things. But I'm assuming the question is around the hypervisor virtualization, if I think that makes sense. And so I'll assume that's the question, but please clarify if that was not the case. So I think the point is a good one, right, which is that historically, VMware has really owned this market. And everyone else is sort of around the edges, right? Like small folks, I know Microsoft tried it. I think they still have their Hyper-V hypervisor. We have our own, like I said, called AHV, Acropolis Hypervisor. And that, as I said earlier, today, 70% or so of our installed base of our customers who use our platform use our own hypervisor.
I think it's safe to assume, given the presence that VMware has in this market, that all of those 70 were using VMware before or almost everybody. It's moved over to our hypervisor because it was a really good hypervisor. It made sense because they were on our stack anyway. So using our hypervisor, which we have historically included in our platform, so we haven't monetized it separately, made sense for our customers because they got great performance, and it was included as part of our stack. So that's how I think we ended up where we are. But I think the point is that if you looked at sort of just hypervisor market share, yeah, 70% of our installed base, it's still a small % of the overall market. I think that's where the question's coming from, which is a good one.
Look, our view more generally on the market is that this hypervisor or the compute virtualization is going to get commoditized if it already has not been, okay? And so think about VMware, yes, they own that market. That was their genesis. That was their prime innovation. And then over time, if you think about why did they go and build out VCF and all the other things that they built out, because that market they had already taken. Now, for us, our intent is not to go and get share. We're not setting out to say, "Oh, let's how do we get more share in the hypervisor?" That's not the goal.
I think for us, the genesis has been, like I said, more on the data side and more on this new modern architecture around hyper-converged and then giving people a cloud-like experience on the private side, on the private cloud, and then really being a platform to run apps and manage data anywhere, whether it be on-prem with a private cloud, whether it be at the edge, or whether it be on a public cloud platform, right? So that has been, that is our vision, and so for us, what we do with the hypervisor is more, how does it fit into this overall vision rather than how do we gain market share in hypervisor, right? That's not a goal that we have set ourselves historically or one we set ourselves now. So that's the vision. So that's one.
And we think AHV is greatly positioned to do that because it's a great offering and our customers who use it love it. Maybe what's changed in the more recent few months has been our decision to actually offer a standalone hypervisor, which we have not done in the history of the company. So it's been a change.
That has been driven by what Broadcom is doing in the market and where we have had a lot of customers and prospects come to us and say, "Could you give us a plug-and-play replacement to what we were buying from VMware before and we can no longer buy for the most part, which is a standalone hypervisor?" Our view has been in response to that, it makes sense for us to introduce it so we can help customers and have a chance to have Nutanix be part of their environment sooner rather than waiting for an architecture refresh and a hardware refresh. That first offering will be supporting the Dell PowerFlex storage array, which is coming out later this calendar year. We said first half of calendar 2025, actually. That's the time frame.
And when that comes out, we'll be able to go to customers who are using Dell PowerFlex and say, "Look, here's a Nutanix hypervisor that you can use today." And it's a very simple migration. And then over time, of course, our intent would be to have them deploy our entire full stack, right, with the entire HCI platform. So that's sort of, but again, the goal there is not to sort of gain share, right, just to answer the question more specifically. The goal is sort of how can we be helpful to customers and find a way for us to have Nutanix be seated in that account and help them with their immediate needs with the intent of growing into what we've always done, which is to deploy the full Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure platform.
Great. And I know you're talking about PowerFlex there. I think the two things I wanted to touch on is the recent AWS partnership as well as the Dell partnership, where I believe you have two agreements there now, right? So if you could just tackle those in front of the audience here as well, how, I guess, what are the agreements and then how have they trended so far?
Right. So let's start with this. I was just talking about that. So one of the pieces, Mike, as you rightly point out, is this partnership with Dell PowerFlex, which is one of their big storage platforms. And the agreement is to offer our hypervisor to run on that storage array. That's not in the market yet, but expected first half of this calendar year. The other agreement, which is already live and in the market as of a few months ago, is for Dell to effectively OEM our Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure, the full platform on their servers. And so that is, we announced that a few months ago. That's been in the market.
So early days, Mike, but we do expect that to start to contribute to our top line in this fiscal year, probably towards the latter part of the fiscal year because it takes some time for us to build the pipeline and get their sellers all enabled, which is all happening, and continue to grow beyond that. So Dell has been a good partner for us. So we have that two-pronged relationship with them. On AWS, this is an expanded agreement that we have signed more recently with AWS. And this is focused on migrating workloads onto AWS on our Nutanix Cloud Clusters or NC2 platform. And so as part of this, AWS has agreed to provide promotional credits to support customer migrations and proofs of concept to facilitate this migration. And so that's the new and expanded AWS partnership that we announced.
And if you think of it from their perspective, why do they want to partner with us? Look, they know that for existing workloads, and I think some large percentage, 80%, 90% of all existing workloads are still on-prem. So for them to have to migrate workloads, we are a great option because we can help customers do that without having to refactor their applications, which takes resources. It takes both time and money. And so we can be the easy button for them. So it's a bit of a win-win. So when customers have used this, we have given some examples before where it's a win for the customer because they can move these with minimal effort and a much faster timeline. It's better for AWS because what they care about is consumption on their bare metal, and this allows that to happen more quickly.
Of course, great for us because we are able to have our NC2 platform out there. I'll just remind folks that it's the same license, right? We have complete license portability. Customers who are running us on a private cloud are able to seamlessly move over to something like AWS in a very seamless way.
Excellent. And again, it makes sense just given the volume of announcements we've seen out of the hyperscalers where they all do seem to be competing for those incremental workloads and applications. I think maybe the last question we'll really have time for here, but on the topic of investment and the sales work, right? We're talking about some of these partnerships, but what are the incremental investments that Nutanix is making in sales work, whether it's to help support channel or help support its internal go-to-market personnel?
Yep. And you already touched on a couple of things there, Mike. So we had a period from 2020, fiscal year 2020-2023, where we were very careful about investments. Our total OpEx actually was flat during that time. And then last year, fiscal year 2024, we started to invest. And this year, if you look at our implied OpEx that's implied by our Op margin and revenue guidance, you'll see that there is an expected increase in operating expenses this year as well. So we are investing both in sales and marketing and in R&D. And on the sales and marketing side, to answer your question, a few different areas. So starting kind of towards second half of last fiscal year, we added a few more reps, field sellers, because that was an area we felt we could do with a few more folks.
So those folks are ramping now, and we will be more or less at those levels for this year. There are more system engineers or sales engineers that we intend to bring on board because these are the folks that are making the technical pitch, right, to customers. It's important that we have enough of those folks. Channel, you mentioned, Mike, and the channel is both program spend and enough people to be able to help onboard channel partners with the level of interest that we're seeing. And then some of the marketing side as well. I've talked about on the marketing side how we've tried to make our presence more visible in the market because we are often the smaller, if you look at the Magic Quadrant that came out last year, Distributed Hybrid Infrastructure , we're the smallest player in the leader quadrant.
And we take that as an opportunity, right, for us to sort of really be out there. So we have amped up the volume on our marketing, the brand awareness, all of that, and some new logo incentives for our channel partners. So a few different areas, both program and people that are underway. The only other area I would point out is on our specialist product portfolio specialist sellers who we added kind of over the course of end of last fiscal year into this start of this fiscal year. And those folks are ramping now as well as we try to sell more of the overall portfolio to our customers. So a few different areas, but we're trying to be mindful about areas where we think we can get the best return and targeting these investments towards those areas.
That's great. That's great. And I know we'll have to leave it there, but thank you so much for the time, guys, and thank you to the audience for tuning in. Really appreciate it.
Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you, Mike.
Thanks for hosting, Mike. Appreciate it.
Thank you, everybody.
Talk soon. Bye.
Bye.