The eighth edition of Nutanix’s annual Enterprise Cloud Index (ECI) report, which analyzes the progress of global enterprises in cloud adoption, examines the challenges facing IT decision-makers in the face of the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence and the growing need to modernize applications and infrastructure in the enterprise environment, especially in container-based environments.
The Enterprise Cloud Index report has revealed that the sharp increase in AI adoption over the past year is driving a new wave of infrastructure modernization. In this context, containers have established themselves as a central element of the enterprise application strategy. In fact, 85% of respondents say AI is accelerating container adoption to improve speed, reliability, and scalability.
“The results of the Nutanix report show that organizations need enterprise-level security, resilience and portability, as AI workloads can run in any environment,” said Lee Caswell, SVP Product and Solutions Marketing at Nutanix. “Likewise, having a common operating environment for virtual machines and containers would allow IT managers to scale AI with greater confidence in hybrid environments.”
New AI risks generated by organizational silos
Organizational silos create new risks around AI. While AI adoption is driving innovation, it is also creating new operational challenges. 82% of respondents believe that the existence of silos between business units and IT teams makes it difficult to effectively execute technology initiatives, delaying deployments and increasing complexity, especially in environments where container-based applications are managed.
“Invisible” technologies or shadow IT are generating new challenges related to AI. “Shadow IT” or the use of hardware, software, applications or services without the authorization, knowledge or supervision of the technology department has gained prominence with the emergence of AI. Thus, 79% of respondents claim to have detected AI applications or agents implemented by employees in areas other than IT. Additionally, 87% believe that unauthorized use of AI introduces risks, including potential exposure of sensitive data and intellectual property. This highlights the need to strengthen collaboration between IT teams and different business areas to ensure that AI deployments, including those using containers, are secure, compliant and aligned with organizational objectives.
Containers have established themselves as a central element of the enterprise application strategy
AI agents offer enormous potential for organizations. The majority of IT managers (61%) expect AI agents to improve the customer or employee experience. 58% also expect that they will contribute to increasing productivity and efficiency. Likewise, 57% believe that AI agents could play an even more strategic role, helping to create new products, services or revenue streams that, in many cases, will run on container-based platforms.
Data sovereignty is non-negotiable
For 80% of respondents, data sovereignty is a key priority in infrastructure decision-making, including where to deploy containers. In fact, regulatory compliance obligations often lead organizations to physically maintain data within the country in which it was collected. More than half (57%) consider it necessary to operate their infrastructure within a single country, either in on-premise environments or through a local cloud region, mainly for security and data protection reasons.
Containers, the basis of modern applications
Containers have become the foundation of modern applications, with AI as the main driver. Organizations are increasingly turning to containers to support both AI-enabled workloads and modern application development. 87% of respondents expect the use of containers for applications to increase over the next three years, while 83% say they are already developing new containerized applications. Additionally, 85% believe that AI is accelerating this adoption, highlighting the need to evolve infrastructure strategies to manage container-based workloads.
Infrastructure and preparation for AI
The push to deploy AI applications is coming from senior management, but the infrastructure is not yet fully ready. 59% of respondents think their organization will have more than five AI-enabled applications in the next three years. However, if they were to deploy AI workloads in on-premise environments, 82% believe that their current infrastructure would not be fully prepared to support it, especially in environments that require scaling container-based applications.
The complete report can be consulted on the Nutanix website.
