"The purpose of Nutanix is to replace conventional three-tier architecture and hypervisors with a more cloud-like framework. So you have rack mount servers that have direct-attached storage, either spinning disc or solid-state and a software mechanism that unifies all of those direct attached storage devices into a single pool of storage resource that is then virtualized and offered up through the hypervisor to your VM workloads." - Patrick Conaway, Account Manager, Nutanix