After several false starts, hyper-converged infrastructure developer Nutanix on Friday finally completed its IPO.
And, in a time when tech IPOs have not been doing well, Nutanix's IPO stands out for a surprising opening day success.
Nutanix, which by many accounts is the leading hyper-converged infrastructure vendor, late Thursday priced its IPO at $16 per share, which was a considerable jump from the $11.00 to $13.00 a share it had been expected to offer when it filed its fifth amendment to its S-1 last week with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
[Related: 23 Powerful Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Products]
Investors like what they saw in Nutanix, which trades on the NASDAQ exchange under the ticker symbol NTNX. The company's share prices opened Friday at $26.50 per share and closed at $37.00. Prices held at that level in after-hours trading.
Based on last week's filing, Nutanix had been expected to bring in about $209 million. But with the higher price, the company on Friday raised about $238 million.
Jeff Guenthner, director for solutions architecture at CMI, a Mill Valley, Calif.-based solution provider and Nutanix channel partner, told CRN via email that Nutanix has been an incredible partner for his company, and that he expects Nutanix to continue to grow as it disrupts the IT market.
"They are just getting started. We also believe that the IPO clears the way for re-validation that the market space for HCI [hyper-converged infrastructure] is here to stay and will only mature. Expect some market consolidation in the next 24 months as the old-world technology companies look to reposition their offerings while enhancing them through M&A. Case in point: Dell-EMC," Guenthner wrote.
Nutanix noted in last week's S-1 that Dell, which is also an OEM partner for Nutanix, could - through its acquisition of EMC - become an even stronger competitor given its leading server and now leading storage businesses.
Dell, with the EMC acquisition, gains control of VMware's VxRail and VxRack hyper-converged infrastructure technologies that compete with Nutanix.
It's expected Dell will want to combine the VxRail and VxRack software with its server hardware. Just what that might mean for the Dell-Nutanix relationship remains to be seen.