Nutanix has released its eighth annual Enterprise Cloud Index (ECI) report, providing insights into the current state of cloud adoption across enterprises worldwide.
This latest study highlights the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on container adoption, urging organizations towards infrastructure modernization. According to the report, 85% of surveyed participants acknowledge that AI is propelling their use of containers to enhance application speed, reliability, and scalability.
AI’s Role in Container Adoption
AI's rapid integration into enterprise operations is creating a need for updated infrastructure. Containers, now fundamental to application strategies, are increasingly adopted to meet AI demands.
Lee Caswell, SVP of Product and Solutions Marketing at Nutanix, emphasizes, "Organizations need enterprise-grade security, resilience, and portability since AI workloads can operate anywhere." Caswell also suggests that a unified operating environment for virtual machines and containers can facilitate AI scaling across hybrid setups.
Challenges with Organizational Structure
Despite the innovation driven by AI, the report identifies several operational challenges
Despite the innovation driven by AI, the report identifies several operational challenges. A majority, 82%, of respondents cite departmental silos as obstacles to effective technology strategies, prolonging project timelines and complexities.
Additionally, 79% face AI applications developed outside the IT purview, with 87% recognizing unauthorized use as a risk to data and intellectual property. These findings underscore the necessity for stronger collaboration between IT and business units to ensure secure and strategic AI deployment.
AI Agents and Data Sovereignty
AI agents are poised to significantly impact organizations, with 61% of IT executives predicting improvements in customer and employee experiences. Furthermore, 58% foresee gains in productivity and efficiency, while 57% anticipate new products and revenue channels.
The issue of data sovereignty also surfaces, with 80% prioritizing compliance in infrastructure decision-making, often keeping data within national borders due to security and regulatory requirements. Over half of respondents feel the need to run infrastructure within a single country, driven by data protection concerns.
Infrastructure Evolution Needed for AI
Moving forward, 59% of organizations plan to manage more than five AI applications in the coming years
With AI driving the increasing reliance on containers, 87% of respondents expect a rise in container usage over the next three years.
Already, 83% are developing new applications within containers. Yet, despite the momentum, infrastructure readiness lags, as 82% believe current systems are inadequate for on-premises AI deployment. Moving forward, 59% of organizations plan to manage more than five AI applications in the coming years, necessitating significant infrastructure advancements.
Global Insights on Cloud Adoption
This comprehensive study, conducted by Wakefield Research in November 2025, surveyed 1,600 executives in cloud, IT, and engineering fields across 14 countries, representing organizations with over 500 employees.
The findings offer a detailed global perspective on the convergence of cloud adoption, containerization, and GenAI application deployment, highlighting the evolving needs of the security and IT sectors.
Nutanix, a pioneer in hybrid multicloud computing, announces the findings of its eighth annual Enterprise Cloud Index (ECI) survey and research report, which measures global enterprise progress with cloud adoption. This year’s report looked closely at the challenges IT executives face as they navigate the rapid increase of AI use and need for application and infrastructure modernisation in the enterprise.
The rapid rise of AI adoption in the enterprise over the last year is forcing a wave of infrastructure modernisation, as companies race to build and run applications more efficiently. In fact, containers have become a core component of the enterprise application strategy with the survey showing that 85% of respondents report that AI is accelerating their adoption of containers to improve speed, reliability, and scalability.
Encounter AI applications
“The findings indicate organizations need enterprise-grade security, resilience, and portability as AI workloads can run anywhere,” said Lee Caswell, SVP, Product and Solutions Marketing at Nutanix. “Organizations would also benefit from a common operating environment for virtual machines and containers that enables their IT leaders to scale AI confidently across hybrid environments.”
Key findings from this year’s report, based on survey responses, include:
- Organizational silos create new AI risks: While AI adoption is driving innovation, it is also introducing operational challenges. Eighty-two percent of respondents believe silos between business units and IT make it difficult to effectively execute technology initiatives, slowing deployment timelines and increasing complexity.
- Shadow IT is creating AI challenges: Seventy-nine percent of respondents encounter AI applications or agents being implemented by employees in non-IT functions. Eighty-seven percent believe unauthorized AI use introduces risk, including exposure of sensitive data and intellectual property. This highlights the need for closer collaboration between IT teams and business stakeholders to ensure AI deployments remain secure, compliant, and aligned with organizational goals.
- Agents unlock enormous potential for organizations: A majority of IT executives (61%) expect AI agents to enhance customer or employee experiences. Fifty-eight percent also anticipate that AI agents will improve productivity and efficiency. Additionally, some believe that AI agents can play a deeper role with 57% seeing potential for AI agents to create new products, services, or revenue streams.
- Data sovereignty is non-negotiable: For 80% of respondents, data sovereignty is a high priority when making infrastructure decisions including where to utilize containers. In fact, compliance obligations often drive organizations to keep data physically within the country where it was collected. More than half (57%) feel the need to run their infrastructure within a single country, whether on-premises or through a local cloud region, largely due to security or data protection concerns.
- Containers are the foundation of modern applications, with AI as the key driver: Organizations are turning to containers to support AI-enabled workloads and modern application development. Eighty-seven percent of respondents expect the use of containers for applications to increase over the next three years, while 83% say they are already building new applications in containers. Further, 85% of respondents believe AI is accelerating container adoption which highlights why enterprises need to evolve their infrastructure strategies to handle containerised workloads.
- The directive to deploy AI applications comes from the top, but infrastructure is not ready to fully support it: Fifty-nine percent of respondents anticipate that their organization will have more than five AI-enabled applications in the next three years. Yet if their organization needed to deploy AI workloads on-premises, 82% view their current infrastructure as not fully ready to support this.
GenAI application deployment
For the eighth consecutive year, Nutanix commissioned a global research study to assess the state of cloud adoption, containerisation, and GenAI application deployment. Conducted in November 2025 by Wakefield Research, the survey gathered responses from 1,600 cloud, IT, and engineering executives with at least a manager-level title.
Respondents represent organizations with 500 or more employees across Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
