Lief Morin, president of Key Information Systems, a Woodland Hills, Calif.-based solution provider, and long-time IBM channel partner, on the new partnership announced by Nutanix and IBM under which IBM will sell new turnkey appliances consisting of IBM Power-based servers and Nutanix's software stack.

"I have a great respect for Intel. We sell a lot. But people like a two-party system. In servers, we don't have one. Intel is 95 percent of the business. IBM is the only company with the technology, the intellectual property, the patent portfolio to create core chips that can compete with Intel in the long term."