Thomas Herrguth now leads Nutanix’s new EMEA Central region. In an interview with SSCG, he discusses integrating Eastern Europe with a strong focus on Poland, AI cost control via NAI Gateway, and digital sovereignty as a top priority.
Since August 1, 2026, Thomas Herrguth has led the newly created Nutanix EMEA Central region as General Manager. According to the hybrid-cloud and AI vendor, Herrguth previously served as General Manager of Nutanix Germany. Alongside Germany, Austria and Switzerland, the new region includes numerous countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia — around 24 additional markets, the company says, including Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. Stein Inge Bruland continues as Sales Director for Austria and Switzerland.
Speaking with Security Storage und Channel Germany, Herrguth explained the rationale behind the new regional footprint: Germany, Austria and Switzerland already form a shared-language DACH community, and many German customers already operate data centers in Poland or the Czech Republic. Linking Eastern Europe, he said, creates synergies in customer support.
Personnel-wise, Herrguth said little changes for now: existing functions — such as marketing under Lina Schuckert or the partner business under Silvia Niederfahrenhorst, who becomes Director Channel & Ecosystem EMEA Central — now take on responsibility for the whole region. New for Austria and Switzerland is a country manager whom Herrguth says he knows from his time at Cohesity, where he held a similar role. He is supported by a Sales Engineering lead with eleven years of Nutanix experience. Early results are already visible, Herrguth said: the team gained a new sales representative, Melanie Ritschgar, and partner feedback has been positive.
On staffing, Herrguth said he favors continuity over rapid growth: he intends to expand the team only once business volume justifies it, so partners and customers keep consistent points of contact.
For Eastern Europe, Nutanix has opted for a transitional model, according to Herrguth: colleagues there initially report to a team lead based in Poland who speaks the language, who in turn reports to Marcel Naumann, Commercial Leader for the German SMB business. The reasoning, he said, is the similarity between the strongly partner-driven Eastern European business and the German SMB segment. Herrguth said he expects to consider a standalone sales leadership structure for the region in the medium term, once business volume supports it. Employees who previously covered Russia and Ukraine have not been let go, he said, but reassigned to other countries to preserve their expertise. Eastern Europe is also receiving its own marketing budget for the first time, funding partner events and trade shows in Poland and the Czech Republic among other things; a dedicated public-sector role is planned for Poland.
For Germany, Herrguth is not currently planning to hire a separate country sales lead and says he continues to cover the role himself, citing ongoing joint projects with major existing partners.
Cost control around AI usage was another topic in the conversation: with token prices rising, Nutanix says it now uses its own NAI Gateway solution internally to make the costs of public and on-premises AI usage transparent and controllable at the infrastructure level. The company says it has developed a solution portfolio with partners that lets customers introduce a similar cost-control layer into their infrastructure without operating large language models themselves.
Herrguth described digital sovereignty as one of the most important topics for customers in the region. Nutanix has developed a position paper on the subject together with public-sector customers and is pursuing EAL4+ certification, which the company says meets the highest security standard recognized by Germany’s BSI. The company is also preparing for requirements under the Cyber Resiliency Act.
“That is the core of digital sovereignty, which alongside AI implementation is among the top priorities of our customers in the EMEA Central region,” said Sammy Zoghlami, Senior Vice President EMEA at Nutanix, commenting on the reorganization.
As a goal for the current fiscal year, Herrguth cited winning market share from established competitors and expanding the reference-customer list across the region. For his team, he said, he has set the internal KPI “Customer First.”
On the economic momentum in Eastern Europe, Herrguth noted that countries such as Poland are visibly catching up economically, while also showing what he described as a more open attitude toward AI topics than in some German sectors. Several joint partner events in Poland and the Czech Republic, including on AI, are already planned for the first half of the fiscal year. The region was previously co-managed out of Benelux, which Herrguth said did not match the right structure.
Dr. Jakob Jung is Editor-in-Chief of Security Storage and Channel Germany. He has been working in IT journalism for more than 20 years. His career includes Computer Reseller News, Heise Resale, Informationweek, Techtarget (storage and data center) and ChannelBiz. He also freelances for numerous IT publications, including Computerwoche, Channelpartner, IT-Business, Storage-Insider and ZDnet. His main topics are channel, storage, security, data center, ERP and CRM.
Contact via Mail: jakob.jung@security-storage-und-channel-germany.de