This post was authored by Matthew Quill, Senior Principal Technology Alliances Manager at F5 Networks
Nutanix and F5 have built a relationship in recent years that reflects how enterprise IT is changing. That alliance. focused on a shared vision of simplifying the ever-increasing complexity of IT management, continues to grow and expand in scope.
The partnership was originally centered on the Nutanix Cloud Platform and F5 BIG-IP and F5 Distributed Cloud Services. It enabled enterprises to migrate to a cost-effective virtualization platform and to layer in security controls as those customers shifted workloads onto Nutanix infrastructure. (The journey behind the relationship is discussed in this June 2024 blog post.)
It’s been a win-win. Nutanix has amplified its enterprise-grade security and application delivery story, while F5 has extended its market prowess deeper into hybrid and multicloud deployments.
Nutanix and F5 are joining forces to deliver F5 NGINX Plus, a proven, enterprise-grade ingress and application delivery solution running on the Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP) solution.
The Nutanix and F5 partnership is now moving up the stack into the world of containers. The two are joining forces to deliver F5 NGINX Plus, a proven, enterprise-grade ingress and application delivery solution running on the Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP) solution.
New NKP platform named a Leader by Forrester Wave
NKP delivers a robust and enterprise-grade Kubernetes® solution designed to enhance the management and operation of cloud native applications. NKP is a unified platform for managing clusters across clouds, data centers, and edge deployments.
Nutanix’s efforts in the Kubernetes space have garnered significant industry recognition. The company was named a Leader earlier this year in The Forrester Wave: Multicloud Container Platforms, Q3 2025. Additionally, Nutanix was recognized as a Challenger in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Container Management.
“We’re just getting started,” Nutanix’s Steve Carter said about NKP in an August 2025 blog post on Nutanix.com. “As we enter year two, we’re building on our momentum by scaling our investments in sales, marketing, and support, while continuously enhancing our container management capabilities.”
The value for customers of NKP combined with F5 NGINX Plus is clear. NKP minimizes the operational burden of deploying and running Kubernetes clusters, while NGINX Plus ensures that the applications running on top of it can be delivered with the security, performance, and observability that regulated industries and large enterprises require.
For F5, the integration extends NGINX Plus into a new arena, tied directly to a platform that is gaining traction among organizations moving away from legacy platforms and modernizing their infrastructure on Nutanix. Partnering with F5 strengthens Nutanix’s Kubernetes story by pairing it with a trusted name in application delivery.
Enterprise-ready, accessible platform with security and reliability
Together, NKP and F5 NGINX Plus create a solution designed to make Kubernetes enterprise-ready while simplifying operations.
NKP takes the operational burden out of cluster creation, upgrades, and lifecycle management across enviornments and can be seamlessly integrated into Nutanix’s infrastructure stack. For IT leaders who want the agility of containers but lack the platform engineering resources to manage Kubernetes at scale, NKP provides a accessible on-ramp.
NGINX Plus complements that by handling one of the most critical, and often most challenging, aspects of Kubernetes: ingress. With enterprise-grade load balancing, session persistence, health checks, and TLS termination, NGINX Plus ensures applications running on NKP can be delivered securely, reliably, and with the performance today’s users expect.
It also adds observability and security features such as JWT validation and integration with F5 WAF for NGINX, giving customers in regulated industries the support that their compliance and protection programs require.
The result is a unified platform that combines simplified Kubernetes operations with proven, enterprise-grade application delivery. For organizations modernizing away from other virtualization platforms or extending existing F5 and NGINX investments into the cloud-native world, NKP and NGINX Plus offer a trusted path forward.
It’s a partnership that lowers barriers to container adoption while raising confidence that workloads will run securely and at scale.
More collaboration from Nutanix and F5 ahead
The Nutanix and F5 relationship continues to expand and evolve. Stay tuned for more joint solutions in the future.
To learn more, visit our F5 and Nutanix partner page.
©2025 Nutanix, Inc. All rights reserved. Nutanix, the Nutanix logo and all Nutanix product and service names mentioned are registered trademarks or trademarks of Nutanix, Inc. in the United States and other countries. F5 and other F5 product and service names referenced herein are registered trademarks or trademarks of F5, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Kubernetes is a registered trademark of The Linux Foundation in the United States and other countries. All other brand names mentioned are for identification purposes only and may be the trademarks of their respective holder(s).