Argentine market in 'wait-and-see' mode, says Nutanix

Business and projects in Argentina are in "wait-and-see" mode as the market considers possible further weakening of the country's currency and fiscal situation, and as concerns grow of more intense spillover effects into the "real" economy.

This is according to US hyperconverged appliance maker Nutanix, whose Latin American VP Andres Hurtado (pictured) and other executives received the press for a lunch in São Paulo during a company event in the Brazilian city.

"We're on stand-by. There are a lot of good projects in Argentina that have been affected by the FX crisis and by a slowdown in public investments. But it's not that Argentina will be a new Venezuela or anything. We see Argentina coming out of this crisis soon," Hurtado said in response to a BNamericas question.

Nutanix does not report regional or country-specific figures. Created in 2009, the company arrived in Latin America in 2014. According to Hurtado, the Latin American market as a whole and Brazil in particular are growing at a faster pace than other regions. Brazil and Mexico are currently neck-and-neck to be Nutanix's biggest Latin American market, said the executive.

HYPERCONVERGENCE

Nutanix develops customized computing devices that combine server, storage, and networking functions – a segment that it has grown rapidly in many different parts of the world.

According to IDC's latest report on this market, worldwide converged systems revenues surpassed US$12.5bn in 2017, growing 9.4% year-on-year. But sales of hyperconverged systems alone expanded by 64.3% to US$3.7bn in 2017 compared to 2016, with DellEMC, Nutanix and VMware leading the line.

As a result of the positive momentum, Nutanix crossed the US$1bn-revenue threshold and the 10,000-client milestone in its 2018 fiscal year, ended July 31.

Raja Mukhopadhyay, the company's products management VP, says that Nutanix was the true "inventor" of the hyperconvergence concept. Nevertheless, while Nutanix still struggles to be a profitable firm, direct competitors such as VMware and RedHat have more solid financials.

"As NTNX phases out their pass-through hardware sales, they will begin to focus solely on their software business, which generates higher margins and has much greater visibility into future revenues," financial market platform Seeking Alpha said in a recent report.

More recently. Nutanix's shares took a new hit following rumors that its yearlong on-premise and hybrid cloud partner Google could soon build a private cloud product itself, which Google denied.