Nutanix Study Finds AI, Security, and Sustainability Are Major Drivers for IT Modernization

Nutanix announced the findings of its sixth annual global Enterprise Cloud Index (ECI) survey and research report, which measures enterprise progress with cloud adoption. It revealed that a notable surge in the use of hybrid multicloud is anticipated by Indian respondents.  It also showed that hybrid multicloud remains the dominant deployment model in India, with 44% of companies using it, surpassing all other ECI countries surveyed.

As organizations continue to grapple with the complexities of moving applications and data across environments, the ECI report highlighted the growing importance of hybrid multicloud infrastructure. The report highlighted that the primary reasons for shifting applications between environments in the past year were the need to enhance control over applications and to bolster security posture while meeting regulatory requirements. Respondents in India identified data security and ransomware protection as their number one priority, followed by implementing AI strategies for 2024. As AI further takes center stage for businesses, nine in 10 (90%) organizations plan to increase investment in AI strategy support as per the report.

“Indian businesses are leading the global shift towards cloud-smart IT strategies,” said Faiz Shakir, MD at Nutanix India. “Our latest ECI report found that a staggering 99% of Indian IT professionals surveyed are focused on this approach. This cloud-smart strategy, which involves using the optimal IT environment for each application, is critical for driving security and innovation, which our study also highlights as among the top priorities for Indian decision-makers.”

Other Key findings for the Indian market:

• Focus on cloud-smart deployments: The vast majority (99%) of IT professionals in India surveyed said they are focused on taking a “cloud-smart” approach to their infrastructure strategy. Cloud-smart deployments involve leveraging the optimum IT environment for each application and/or workload. The 99% figure in India outpaces the global cross-industry response pool (90%).

• Hybrid multicloud adoption is evolving in India. Many organizations already leverage hybrid multicloud, making it the dominant IT operating model. However, the data suggests a shift within the model. On-premises infrastructure use is expected to decline (from 56% to 18% in 1-3 years) as organizations move towards hosted private IT services (20% currently, expected to reach 46% in 1-3 years). This suggests a preference for managed services for the on-premises component of the hybrid multicloud model.

• Top challenges for Indian IT teams: The top five application and data management challenges cited by respondents in India are:
  1. Data privacy (61%)
  2. Ransomware protection and data security (60%)
  3. Linking data from multiple environments (49%)
  4. Following guidance on data storage and usage (e.g., GDPR) (47%)
  5. Cloud cost control (44%)

• Planned investments to address IT challenges: The top five areas slotted for increased investment by respondents in India during 2024 are:
  1. Data security and ransomware protection (55%)
  2. Implementing AI strategies (48%)
  3. Optimizing operations (43%)
  4. Implementing the right hybrid IT operations (42%)
  5. Minimizing cost/ Sustainability (39%)

• Data privacy remains a top concern: Data privacy was ranked as a major data management challenge by 61% of respondents in India according to the ECI report. This aligns with previous findings about the drivers behind infrastructure choices in India, where data privacy and sovereignty were a more prominent concern compared to global averages.

• High containerization adoption rate: Containerization adoption is high in India, with 63% of respondents indicating that they have containerized at least 50% to 99% of their applications.
• Sustainability a top priority: In India, 94% of respondents said they expect investment in sustainability efforts and technologies to increase. Those in India ranked IT infrastructure modernization (70%) and improvements in identifying areas for reducing waste products (69%) as their top two sustainability initiatives during the past year.