Indian enterprises embrace hybrid multi-cloud, Nutanix Survey

Hybrid multi-cloud remains the dominant deployment model in India with 44 per cent of companies using it, according to the sixth annual global Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Index (ECI) survey and research report.

The annual ECI survey measures enterprise progress with cloud adoption. It highlighted the growing importance of hybrid multicloud infrastructure. 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 ten (90 per cent) organisations plan to increase investment in AI strategy support as per the report.

“Indian businesses are leading the global shift towards cloud-smart IT strategies. Our latest ECI report found that a staggering 99 per cent 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,” said Faiz Shakir, MD at Nutanix India.

The study suggested a shift within the hybrid cloud model. On-premises infrastructure usage is expected to decline to 18 per cent in 1-3 years from 56 per cent as organisations move towards hosted private IT services. This indicates a preference for managed services for the on-premises component of the hybrid multi-cloud model.

Data privacy was ranked as a major data management challenge by 61 per cent of respondents in India according to the ECI report. Other challenges cited by respondents in India are ransomware protection and data security (60 per cent), linking data from multiple environments (49 per cent), following guidance on data storage and usage (47 per cent) and cloud cost control (44 per cent).

The report found areas for increased investments during 2024 including data security and ransomware protection, implementing AI strategies, optimising operations, implementing the right hybrid IT operations and minimising cost/sustainability.

It also noted a high containerisation adoption rate in India, with 63 per cent of respondents indicating that they have containerised at least 50 per cent to 99 per cent of their applications.

Moreover, 94 per cent of respondents said they expect investment in sustainability efforts and technologies to increase. They ranked IT infrastructure modernisation and improvements in areas for reducing waste products as their top two sustainability initiatives during the past year. The Hindu BusinessLine