Nutanix study reveals that GenAI is changing organizations’ priorities, driving a new era of application and infrastructure modernisation

Nutanix, a hybrid multicloud computing player, has announced the findings of its seventh annual Enterprise Cloud Index (ECI) survey and research report, which measures global enterprise progress with cloud adoption. This year’s report sheds light on Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) adoption, investment priorities, and benefits along with key challenges organizations in Singapore and globally face to meet the demands of these emerging workloads.

Singapore organizations have eagerly embraced GenAI, viewing the technology as a key enabler of productivity, automation, and innovation. This echoes sentiments across Asia-Pacific-Japan (APJ) and globally. Nearly 90% of Singapore organizations expect to break even or make a gain on their GenAI projects over the next one to three years, compared to just 80% of global respondents.

While Singapore organizations are actively exploring GenAI’s potential, opportunities for further optimization remain. More than 70% of Singapore organizations continue to work through implementation challenges, alongside their APJ (64%) and global (68%) counterparts. In particular, infrastructure modernization has emerged as a key focus area—nearly 80% of Singapore organizations say their current IT systems need substantial upgrades to support GenAI applications.

“GenAI’s true potential lies not just in its capabilities, but in an organization’s ability to operationalize it effectively. To unlock the full value of GenAI, organizations must modernize applications and infrastructure while embracing containerization for scalability, security, and agility,” said Ho Chye Soon, Singapore country manager at Nutanix. “Many businesses in Singapore understand the urgency of this transformation but face challenges in integrating and scaling GenAI workloads due to infrastructure limitations. We are thus committed to helping organizations accelerate their shift to cloud-native architectures, ensuring they have the agility and resilience needed for seamless GenAI adoption.”

Key findings from this year’s report include:

• GenAI application adoption and implementation continue at a rapid pace in Singapore and worldwide. In Singapore, 85% of Singapore organizations have already developed a strategy for GenAI, however 31% have yet to implement it. This echoes the trend in APJ and globally. Cybersecurity, fraud detection and loss prevention, as well as code generation and code co-pilots emerged as top GenAI workloads used by Singapore respondents today.
• Infrastructure modernization to support GenAI at scale. Running cloud native applications at enterprise scale requires an infrastructure that can support the necessary requirements including security, data integrity and resilience. Emerging GenAI applications are no exception to this rule. Nearly all Singapore organizations face challenges when it comes to scaling GenAI workloads from development to production, similar to their APJ and global counterparts. To address this scaling challenge, Singapore organizations are prioritizing investments in IT infrastructure, recognizing it as crucial for supporting their GenAI initiatives.
• Application containerization is the new infrastructure standard worldwide, but Singapore lags behind. More than 60% of Singapore organizations report that at least some of their applications are now containerized, compared to more than 80% in APJ and globally. Although Singapore trails in adoption, nearly all decision-makers agree that their organization benefits from adopting cloud-native or containerized applications. Application containerization should be considered the gold standard for delivering seamless, secure access to data across hybrid and multicloud environments, so this shift is expected to accelerate with the rapid adoption of new application workloads like GenAI.
• GenAI adoption will challenge traditional norms for data security and privacy. Nearly all Singapore respondents agree that GenAI is changing their organization’s priorities, with security and privacy emerging as primary concerns. While this sentiment is also shared by their APJ and global counterparts, Singapore organizations lag behind in security readiness. Less than half of Singapore decision-makers feel they have the necessary skills for security and ransomware protection, compared with more than 60% from both APJ and global peers. Security and privacy will remain a major challenge for organizations as they seek to justify the use of emerging, GenAI-based solutions and ensure that they adhere to traditional security norms, as well as new requirements for data governance, privacy, and visibility.

• GenAI solution adoption requires changes to technology and people. Only 42% of Singapore organizations state having the necessary skills needed to support GenAI adoption, compared to nearly 60% of their APJ and global peers. There is no denying organizations face acute skills shortages and competition for GenAI-related talent. The good news? Many teams will embrace the challenge to adopt AI-related competencies and skills organically, as part of normal work. Singapore respondents recognize that advancements in GenAI will not only increase their productivity and efficiency, but also provide them with an opportunity to become an AI expert.

For the seventh consecutive year, Nutanix commissioned a global research study to learn about the state of global enterprise cloud deployments, application containerization trends, and GenAI application adoption. In the Fall of 2024, U.K. researcher Vanson Bourne surveyed 1,500 IT and DevOps/Platform Engineering decision-makers around the world. The respondent base spanned multiple industries, business sizes, and geographies, including North and South America; Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA); and Asia-Pacific-Japan (APJ) region.

About Nutanix

Nutanix is a global leader in cloud software, offering organisations a single platform for running applications and managing data, anywhere. With Nutanix, companies can reduce complexity and simplify operations, freeing them to focus on their business outcomes. Building on its legacy as the pioneer of hyperconverged infrastructure, Nutanix is trusted by companies worldwide to power hybrid multicloud environments consistently, simply, and cost-effectively. Learn more at www.nutanix.com

(This article was adapted from a press release)