News

2025 Nutanix Cloud Index Marks 'An Inflection Point with GenAI'

• By David Ramel
• 02/05/2025

GenAI dominates the new Nutanix Cloud Index, the latest in a years-long series of surveys the hybrid multicloud specialist publishes to measure global enterprise progress with cloud adoption. The 2025 report published today reveals that GenAI is changing organizations' priorities, with security and privacy being a primary concern.

"Many organizations have reached an inflection point with GenAI implementation and deployment," said Lee Caswell, SVP of product and solutions marketing, of the company's seventh annual Enterprise Cloud Index (ECI) survey and research report. "This year's ECI revealed key trends that we're hearing from customers as well, including challenges with scaling GenAI workloads from development to production, new requirements GenAI creates for data governance, privacy, and visibility, and integration with existing IT infrastructure. To successfully unlock ROI with GenAI projects, organizations need to take a holistic approach to modernizing applications and infrastructure and embrace containerization."

In fact, application containerization as the new infrastructure standard is the very first key finding listed by the company out of five that all have to do with GenAI.

"Nearly 90% of organizations report that at least some of their applications are now containerized, and this number is expected to grow with the rapid adoption of new application workloads like GenAI," the report said. "Simply put, 94% of respondents agree that their organization benefits from adopting cloud native applications/containers. This approach to infrastructure and application development should be considered the gold standard for delivering seamless, secure access to data across hybrid and multicloud environments."

Those application container implementations, however, come with some challenges.

Modern application development methods, especially for "cloud-native" environments, increasingly favor containerization because of several key benefits, with Nutanix listing:

• Containerization allows applications to be abstracted from whatever OS is hosting it—becoming portable in the process.
• Containerization helps abstract software from its runtime environment by making it easy to share CPU, memory, storage, and network resources.
• Containers are isolated in their host environment, so they are less vulnerable to being compromised by malicious code.
• Most containers comprise fewer software resources, run more quickly than traditional alternatives, and use system resources more efficiently.
• Effective management and orchestration allow containers to be more agile - and deployed more quickly than traditional software.

As far as overall GenAI application adoption and implementation, it continues at a rapid pace, with more than 80% of organizations having implemented a GenAI strategy while only 2% of organizations admitted they haven't started planning one.

Those implementation targets vary significantly, however, with most organizations believing GenAI solutions will help improve their organization's levels of productivity, automation, and efficiency. Real-world GenAI use cases, the report said, gravitate toward customer support and experience solutions, though organizations aspire to apply GenAI solutions to cybersecurity and data protection workloads in the near future.

In the data security and privacy realm, traditional norms will be challenged by GenAI adoption, with 95% of respondents saying it's changing their organization's priorities. More than 90% of organizations said data privacy is a priority for their organization when implementing GenAI solutions, but nearly all respondents -- 95% again -- still believe their organization could be doing more to secure its GenAI models and applications.

"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," the report said.

Another key finding of the report concerns infrastructure modernization to support GenAI at enterprise scale. Specifically, 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," Nutanix said. "Almost all respondents (98%) face challenges when it comes to scaling GenAI workloads from development to production. In fact, the #1 challenge organizations face when scaling GenAI workloads from development into production is integration with existing IT infrastructure. As a result, IT Infrastructure was chosen as the #1 area of investment needed to support GenAI."

All of the above will require changes to technology and people, said Nutanix, noting that 52% of respondents say their organization needs to invest in IT training to support GenAI. Also, 48% of respondents believe their organization needs to hire new IT talent to support GenAI.

"There is no denying organizations face acute skills shortages and competition for GenAI-related talent," the report said. "The good news? Many teams will embrace the challenge to adopt AI-related competencies and skills organically, as part of normal work. This year's survey shows that 53% of respondents believe advancements in GenAI will provide them with an opportunity to become an AI expert."

"The findings of the 7th Annual Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Index illuminate the profound shifts in enterprise IT strategies, driven by the rapid adoption of application containerization and Generative AI (GenAI) solutions," the report's conclusion said. "With over half of organizations fully containerizing their applications, this approach has emerged as the de facto standard, enabling scalability, portability, and agility across hybrid and multicloud environments. The symbiotic relationship between containerization and GenAI underscores the importance of adopting cloud native principles to meet the demands of these emerging workloads.

"Ultimately, the report underscores the need for a holistic approach to application and infrastructure modernization. By prioritizing security, fostering talent, and embracing orchestration platforms like Kubernetes, organizations can effectively navigate the challenges of scaling GenAI workloads from development to production. As enterprises continue to refine their strategies, the next frontier of innovation will be defined by their ability to integrate GenAI seamlessly into their broader IT ecosystems."

Nutanix commissioned Vanson Bourne in Fall 2024 to survey 1,500 global IT and DevOps decision-makers across industries on cloud deployments, containerization, and GenAI adoption. 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.