Episode Overview
When Mandy Dhaliwal arrived at Nutanix as Chief Marketing Officer, she quickly noticed something missing in the company’s go-to-market story.
For a business that runs 100 percent of its revenue through partners, partner marketing hadn’t yet earned its rightful seat at the center of the marketing engine.
That realization launched a transformation – not just of how Nutanix markets, but of how it orchestrates the entire ecosystem.
“Part of my mission was to bring the partnering aspect of what we do closer to the center of the marketing orbit,” Mandy told me at the CMO Huddles SuperHuddle in Palo Alto.
Bringing Partner Marketing to the Core
Today, Nutanix is a multi-billion-dollar hybrid-multicloud software leader with more than 30,000 customers and thousands of employees worldwide.
Its business depends on a global network of channel partners, OEMs, and strategic alliances that bring Nutanix solutions to market.
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Early in her tenure, Mandy saw that these partners needed to be embedded in every launch, campaign, and demand program – not looped in afterward.
“A hundred percent of our business goes through the channel,” she said. “We’re a software vendor that partners with every major server vendor out there. So partners have to be right there alongside us in everything we do.”
Two Distinct Playbooks: Channel vs Alliances
As Nutanix scaled, Mandy and her team realized that “partners” weren’t one monolithic group. Each type required a different motion – and different metrics for success.
1️⃣ Channel Partners – Extension of the Sales Force
For the channel, Nutanix treats partners as a true extension of its own sales organization.
Every campaign, product launch, and enablement program mirrors what the internal sales teams receive.
“There’s no wall between us,” Mandy explained. “The campaigns we build and the launches we do include the channel teams from the start. They get the exact same materials and blueprints that our direct teams use.”
This approach ensures consistency in message, positioning, and execution. Whether a deal comes through a direct rep or a partner, the story and experience for the customer remain unified.
It’s a simple premise – but in practice, it’s a major cultural shift. Instead of treating partner marketing as a derivative function, Mandy’s team now integrates it into every major go-to-market motion.
2️⃣ Alliances and OEMs – Interoperability as the Core Value
For OEMs and strategic alliances, however, the playbook looks very different.
Here, the marketing strategy centers on interoperability – demonstrating how Nutanix and partners like Dell, HPE, Cisco, Pure Storage, and Nvidia work together to create seamless, high-performance environments.
“We wouldn’t be able to go to market without the interoperability of our solutions,” Mandy said. “With the server vendors, it’s a different play. We’re selling on those servers. With the strategic alliance partners, we’re powering AI factories and joint blueprints that go to market together.”
These partnerships rely on joint development and co-marketing, where Nutanix’s platform becomes the connective tissue enabling partners’ hardware or cloud systems to deliver more value.
Rather than simply extending Nutanix’s reach, these alliances extend the solution itself – creating new categories of demand where both companies share the stage.
Building the Partner Playbook
Across both playbooks, Mandy’s team follows a repeatable structure that begins with enablement.
Before a campaign hits the market, both sides’ sales and marketing teams invest in deep training and messaging alignment.
“We start with enablement,” she said. “Our teams enable the partners – and vice versa – so everyone understands what we’re selling, to whom, and why.”
From there, Nutanix and its partners co-create campaigns, appear together at major events like AWS re:Invent and Dell World, and drive joint demand programs.
Each step reinforces two constants: customer value first, partner integration always.
Partnering as a Force Multiplier
Mandy calls partnerships Nutanix’s force multiplier – a phrase that captures both the scale and the philosophy behind the model.
By treating the channel as part of the company and alliances as part of the product ecosystem, Nutanix amplifies its reach far beyond what a single organization could achieve alone.
The result is a marketing motion where every partner touchpoint contributes directly to customer success – from first engagement to long-term adoption.
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The AI Layer: Building for Machines and Humans
Of course, no conversation with a modern CMO would be complete without talking about AI.
Mandy shared how Nutanix uses AI both within its platform and across its marketing stack.
Her team is integrating AI into content creation, design, and pipeline progression – but with a disciplined approach.
“Let’s not just add more tools until we understand the journey,” she said. “Let’s architect that first and then slot in the tools.”
The company’s One Mind AI avatar now greets visitors on Nutanix’s homepage – answering questions and handing off to sales when needed.
Internally, every marketer now has an “agent” on their org chart.
“We’re building for machines and humans – it’s the new world order.”
Lessons for Partner Leaders
Asked what advice she’d give to partner executives trying to collaborate more effectively with marketing, Mandy didn’t hesitate:
“If we galvanize around the needs of the customer, we’re going to win together.”
For her, great partnerships start with shared curiosity, open collaboration, and testing ideas with customers before scaling them.
She encourages marketing and partner teams alike to keep experimenting – especially as AI reshapes how every function operates.
“We could author a book in real time about all the experiments,” she laughed. “Six months from now we’ll look back and see how far we’ve come.”
Closing Thoughts
Mandy Dhaliwal’s leadership at Nutanix shows what happens when marketing and partnerships truly integrate.
By recognizing the difference between a channel extension play and an alliance interoperability play, her team has built a GTM model that’s both scalable and adaptable – and deeply aligned around the customer.
In an industry where ecosystems define success, Mandy’s blueprint is clear:
Unify around customer value, empower every partner, and never stop experimenting.
Because when marketing and partnerships move in sync, growth multiplies.
Podcast
Guest
Mandy Dhaliwal
Mandy Dhaliwal is a pedigreed technology marketing executive with over 25 years of experience in cloud and software markets. As the Chief Marketing Officer for Nutanix, the industry-leading hybrid multicloud platform, she leads the global marketing strategy that accelerates the adoption of Nutanix's software solutions. She leverages her expertise in enterprise B2B product marketing, demand generation, brand strategy and customer advocacy to drive growth and innovation for Nutanix and its customers.
Episode Transcript
Mandy Dhaliwal
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Mandy Dhaliwal: [00:00:00] Two lenses: the channel organization are effectively an extension of us.
So the campaigns we build and the launches that we do, we bring in the channel teams to ensure that they are getting the exact same materials and blueprints that we have go going to market on a direct basis. With the alliances and the OEMs, slightly different playbook, right? So the business development teams work closely with the likes of Nvidia, with the likes of HPE, Dell, Cisco, Pure Storage, you name it. We've got a really robust system. Yeah. And we wouldn't be able to again, go to market without the interoperability of our solutions.
Chip Rodgers: You're a CMO, you are working with your partner team at Nutanix all the time. Any advice that you would have for partner leaders?
Mandy Dhaliwal: Yeah. And I think it's go both ways. We don't have all the answers right. But I think if we galvanize around the needs of the customer, we're gonna win together.
Chip Rodgers: Hey everyone, Chip Rodgers back again for Inside [00:01:00] Partnering. And we're here at the super huddle. These, the CMO Huddles SuperHuddle in Palo Alto at the El Prado Hotel. Beautiful little hotel here and.
Mandy Dhaliwal: Yes. Yeah. Hi Chip. Great to see you.
Chip Rodgers: Yeah likewise. I'm so excited to be joined by Mandy Dhaliwal and Mandy is EVP and CMO at Nutanix.
And gosh, you're now four years into the role and many years in marketing and technology companies and Boomi previously, and a number of other technology companies. And here you are now, Nutanix is a big. Big company, big job as CMO. How are things going?
Mandy Dhaliwal: Yeah. First off, thank you for having me, Chip.
Things are going really great. We're a multi-billion dollar enterprise, publicly traded, massive ecosystem. Over 30,000 customers, about seven to 8,000 of us globally. And its employees and the company has been progressively transforming itself. So it's been a fun ride.
Chip Rodgers: That's fantastic.
You and I have known each other since, as [00:02:00] before, before you were joining actually. And as a part of the our, CMO Huddles activities and connections. How, let's start with your role as CMO and Nutanix, as you mentioned, has a huge ecosystem of partners.
How do you think, as our audience are, partner leaders. So I wanna tie a little bit of the, the marketing go to market with partner partnerships and how you're working with partners today.
Mandy Dhaliwal: Yeah, certainly. I lead a full stack marketing organization and during my time at the organization, I think it's super interesting and very enlightening for me when I first got there.
Obviously a partner marketing leader, product brand, all the things that you'd expect, demand gen, et cetera, et cetera. But partner marketing was always an afterthought. At Nutanix. Yeah. And yet a hundred percent of our business goes through the channel. We are a software vendor that partners with every server ven vendor out there.
And yet it was always an afterthought. So part of my mission was to bring the partnering aspect of [00:03:00] what we do closer to the center of the marketing orbit. So let's think through how we're launching products. Let's think through how we're launching campaigns and demand gen programs and ensure there's a route to market with partners as well.
So there's been a massive transformation underway at Nutanix and really partners and customers, of course, are always at the center, but partners are right there alongside because we know without our partners, we just wouldn't have the force multiplication in our business that we need.
Chip Rodgers: Yeah. And I love that term.
I think that's exactly right. Anyone that's not doing that is missing out the opportunity. Force multiplier is perfect. And I think one of the challenges and, leading marketing, you have an organization that you need to you have product marketing that's going to package the message for customers.
That's typically. What they're doing right? But there's also this like how are you gonna communicate to partners and to the partner field organizations so that they understand and the message is a little different. How do you think about that?
Mandy Dhaliwal: I think, two, two lenses the channel organization are effectively [00:04:00] an extension of us.
So the campaigns we build and the launches that we do, we bring in the channel teams to ensure that they are getting the exact same materials and blueprints that we have go going to market on a direct basis. So our partners are enabled with our technology, with all of our launch materials, et cetera, et cetera, positioning to ensure that they can effectively represent us.
I think that's really important. There's no wall between us. And even on the demand gen program, there's a lot of interesting things we're doing with ai, but I'm sure we'll get to that in a little, in, in a little bit. With the alliances and the OEMs, slightly different playbook, right? So the business development teams work closely with the likes of Nvidia, with the likes of HPE, Dell, Cisco, Pure Storage, you name it. We've got a really robust system. Yeah. And we wouldn't be able to again, go to market without the interoperability of our solutions. So with the server vendors, different play, we're selling on those servers with the strategic alliance partners like the Dells, we're powering AI factories [00:05:00] with Cisco as well.
We have joint go-to-market blueprints. That we run. So very complicated, GTM and really partner specific in terms of how we action the marketing into the market.
Chip Rodgers: How do you think about that? Of the, marketing market to, through, through partners, which we're talking about the channel, channel partners and then market marketing two partners as well, because there's a lot of that.
Where you're really trying to get, they have a lot of partners that they're working with, and so how do you get top of mind for them as you're going to market?
Mandy Dhaliwal: Yeah. Couple of ways to, to address that. I think with the alliances, it's all about the momentum that we have as a technology, right?
And so they're not gonna go drive our business forward, we have to go do that, but we bring them along and we pull through demand through them. With our joint solutions. So we still have to go do the heavy lift to get the Nutanix value prop of run anything anywhere. We're software defined infrastructure.
And so we make sure that we run that through, but also in terms of our capabilities as a hybrid multi-cloud platform and the value we deliver to [00:06:00] the customer, that goes clearly out to the market with the partner. And so the demand gen programs play a role there, but. If I were to back up a little bit, we've announced a lot of partnerships during my tenure at the company from an ISV perspective.
And all of those partnerships have a couple of things in common as far as a blueprint. Yeah. And a playbook. So we start with enablement, our teams go in and enable the partners and vice versa with critical, right? So we have to all understand. What we're selling to whom and why, right?
So really get down to the fundamentals. Once you get that mind share going, we work and get out into the ecosystem and into the market. There's a lot of events, like for example, Dell has their world tours. We have our own user conference, we partner with AWS. We're going to be at re:Invent. So we go out together and tell a joint story together, and then we work on the demand gen side.
So you gotta create the brand. To get the demand in. So it's the same playbook, but it's how it's orchestrated into the market is critically important to drive the success. And even then, [00:07:00] continuous enablement is required with the selling organizations. Yeah. Ours and our partners.
Chip Rodgers: I was gonna say,
Mandy Dhaliwal: right?
Chip Rodgers: Is that your own
Mandy Dhaliwal: right? We have to be top of mind because these folks are incredibly busy and they've got lots of, deeply technical and lots of opportunities coming their way. It's a challenge. You've got to use them as a constitu constituency as well for marketers. And not only do we have to get out to the market with the customers and prospects, the partners and our reps are absolutely critical to ensure that folks understand the latest and the greatest.
Chip Rodgers: Yeah. Fantastic. Like you said, complex business, a lot of things going on, right? That's amazing. Mandy, I'm curious again, if you're a, if someone is a partner, leader, that's that's watching, you're a CMO, you are working with your partner team at Nutanix all the time. Any advice that you would have for partner leaders about how to work with the marketing organization with CMOs and, any things that you see maybe that they could, learn from.
Mandy Dhaliwal: Yeah. And I think it's go both ways. We don't have all the answers right. But I [00:08:00] think if we galvanize around the needs of the customer, we're gonna win together. Yeah. And so I think the message that I have for our teams and for our partners is always come to us. Let's ideate together.
You understand what good looks like for your technology. We understand what good looks like for us. One plus one may not. necessarily equal two. And so we really have to figure out the positioning together and then also go vet it with the customers and prospects to ensure that it fits their needs, right?
And so it's really about that third party validation and testing the market before you go big. And I think that only happens with open collaboration.
Chip Rodgers: I like that. And as you said, make sure that it resonates with the customer, with the joint value proposition.
Mandy Dhaliwal: Why are we here? Yeah.
Without them we're nowhere.
Chip Rodgers: Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned earlier AI, so talk a little bit about how Nutanix is is leveraging AI in your. Products and go to market.
Mandy Dhaliwal: Yeah. We have multiple ways that we leverage AI within the company. We have AI within our platform, right?
We run AI workloads on our platform as well. And then we leverage AI as a business. So we've got all the enterprise [00:09:00] tools. We're in the midst of bringing all sorts of technology That's really game changing for all of us as far as productivity goes. From a marketing perspective. I am skilling up my entire marketing organization by, our second half of our fiscal, which we're in right now everybody's going to be enabled. And the marketers, the bogey for them is let's innovate or else we're gonna be left behind. Yeah. But really, as far as the go-to market stack, again, the theme goes back to we have to architect to fulfill the customer, need. The customer
no longer that buyer journey. No longer matters that there's a handoff between sales and marketing or success. The end of the day, the customer need is the need, and we have to be equipped to have our workflows meet those customer needs. So we're reimagining how a customer interacts with us. We have an agent on our homepage already. We have a great technology called One Mind. It's a superhuman, so you can actually have a conversation with an AI avatar and get the answers you need quickly. 24 by seven. On the website. On the website. It's there now. And, so we start there and then [00:10:00] we're able to hand off to sales if we need to or answer questions or have community additions of our software.
Providing access easily. And from there we use machine learning as well to be able to go progress our opportunities. We are, we. We have a significant amount of pipe that we're trying to progress, and so we're looking for ways to automate that. We also have content creation, a design, all of those technologies in the stack.
So really for me, the conversation I'm having with my leaders is, let's just not go add more tools or build tools until we really understand the journey. Let's architect that first and then be able to slot in the tools. So that's where we're at. We're a big ship. We're 300 plus marketing person organization, so it takes us a little bit to, to pivot the entire org.
But as we've adopted these technologies, we're already starting to see some great results. And everybody on my team now has agents on their org charts. And so it's fun. We're building for machines and humans and it's the new world order.
Chip Rodgers: That's exciting. Yeah. And as we've been hearing today in some of the sessions, a lot of experimentation, right?
It's like [00:11:00] you gotta just try it and see what works and get a feel for it.
Mandy Dhaliwal: Yeah. And that's the beauty of, events like this because we're able to have inspiration things that we never thought of. And also learn from other people's experiments. So it's a great way to get involved in the marketing leader community.
And that's another shout out to folks if you're not, part of these groups or even on any social media that's, where they're sharing some of these best practices and tips. And also the fails, I think it's critically important for us. We're in a deep learning. Situation right now in the industry, and I think it's really important for all of us to embrace it.
Chip Rodgers: I agree. CMO Huddles is terrific. I think, some of the things I was blown away earlier today when everyone went around each of the tables said, okay, what are some experiments that you're running and. It was incredible. All the different, and everyone's writing notes, oh, lemme try that.
Lemme try that.
Mandy Dhaliwal: Yeah. I think we could author a book in real time about all of the experiments, right? Yeah. And we'll probably look back six months from now and go, oh my gosh, we were so off the mark, but at least we got it outta the way and move forward to a better solution. Yeah. Terrific. Yeah.
Chip Rodgers: Mandy, [00:12:00] this has been fantastic.
I really appreciate you taking some time and sharing your thoughts and experience and expertise as a CMO of huge company Nutanix. Many many, many things going on hugely successful. So thanks Mandy.
Mandy Dhaliwal: Thank you, chip, and thank you for doing this and sharing our stories. We really appreciate you.
Chip Rodgers: Thank you. Thanks Mandy, and thank you all for joining another episode of Inside Partnering and we will see you. See you soon. Hit the subscribe button and we'll talk soon. Thanks everybody.
Chip Rodgers
🚀 CMO | Chief Partner Officer | B2B SaaS Growth & GTM Leader | Ecosystem Strategy | Demand Gen | Podcast Host 🎙
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