Alex Alvord

I put AI systems into real infrastructure, and I explain them to the people who have to run them and pay for them. For the last five years I've helped build Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) from an incubation team of fewer than twelve people into a global organization of more than 250. Today I'm one of a small group of Americas solutions architects for NC2: I lead pilots, proofs of concept and production migrations for some of the largest customers in the Americas, and I carry what the field learns back to Product Management, Engineering and Technical Marketing. My current focus is AI infrastructure: sizing GPU nodes, designing the storage and network substrate underneath them, and building the operating model that decides where inference and fine-tuning should run, on-prem or in the cloud. I publish reference implementations instead of slideware: NC2 on AWS from console to first VM, and NC2 on Azure fully as code. Outside work I run a lab where AI agents do the operating, as a study in how teams will work with agents: multiple agents with clear roles, models matched to tasks, and every "done" checked against the real system. Before cloud, I spent seven years as a finance and operations controller. It's why every design I build starts with what it will take to run. I founded the Seattle Nutanix User Group, I mentor, and I speak. Always open to a good problem. Focus areas: cloud architecture and cloud strategy; hybrid and multicloud on AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and Nutanix NC2; AI infrastructure (GPU, inference, large language models, agentic AI); cloud migration and data center exit; infrastructure as code (Terraform, OpenTofu, Pulumi); cloud cost optimization and FinOps; disaster recovery and business continuity; technical leadership, executive presentations and go-to-market with product teams. cloudlabworks.dev · Kidcast Native (a cloud-native podcast for kids)