2025 Enterprise Cloud Index: The Need for Infrastructure Agility

Conclusion and Recommendations

The findings of the 7th Annual Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Index illustrate the profound shifts in enterprise IT strategies driven by the rapid adoption of application containerization and Generative AI (GenAI) solutions.

The survey results also highlight the dual challenges and opportunities posed by GenAI adoption. While organizations are eager to leverage GenAI for productivity, automation, and innovation, they also face critical hurdles in the form of data security, skills gaps, and IT infrastructure modernization. Based on country-level results from Singapore respondents, we offer the following recommendations regarding application containerization and GenAI implementation:

Address data security challenges to avoid potential data breaches that could derail organizational buy-in on GenAI initiatives by prioritizing hiring efforts for key security disciplines and to accelerate internal IT development. Augment internal efforts by engaging third-party security specialists and technology partners to add additional layers of protection to IT infrastructure.
Engage IT services and consulting firms to raise organizational awareness on the business benefits of using cloud-native/containerized applications as part of application development efforts.
Target near-term use cases of containerized applications with GenAI workloads to expedite value realization. This approach will increase the success of less-mature containerized application programs and allow for greater ROI of GenAI projects by reducing budgetary needs during development and test processes.
Prioritize identifying GenAI-related skills gaps that need to be addressed via netnew hiring in combination with launching reskilling initiatives for the existing workforce. Consider supporting these efforts with third-party IT specialists to augment internal skillsets.
Maintain focus on IT modernization efforts to reduce technical hurdles associated with deploying and scaling GenAI. Increase use of containerized applications to overcome challenges associated with application portability between on and offpremises environments.

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Data Security and Privacy

Country Findings Compared to Global/Regional Results

1. Singapore organizations would benefit from vendor training and support on containerized applications as their program maturity is well behind global peers.

The 7th Annual Nutanix Enterprise Cloud index (ECI) Report highlights an important industry milestone: more than half of organizations (54%) report that all their applications are now containerized (Q2). This milestone has not been achieved in Singapore, as only 29% of decision-makers report that all applications, both legacy and newly developed, are containerized. (see Figure 1).

Current State of Application Containerization: (Q2)

All applications are containerized,
both legacy and newly developed

54%

52%

29%

Just our newly developed applications

27%

22%

21%

Just our legacy applications

7%

6%

11%

We are in the process of containerizing our applications

9%

16%

28%

We have no intent to containerize
our applications

2%

3%

11%

Global

APJ

Singapore

Figure 1: Current State of Application Containerization: (Q2)

The findings indicate Singapore organizations are further upstream on their application containerization journeys compared with global counterparts. Specifically, 28% of Singapore respondents stated they are in the process of containerizing their applications, compared with just 9% of global respondents. While many Singapore organizations have container programs in-flight, surprisingly, 11% of Singapore decision-makers report they have no intent to containerize their applications, compared with just 2% globally.

This suggests a lack of awareness on the business benefits of containerization may be delaying projects or causing Singapore decision-makers to altogether overlook the technology. To overcome this knowledge gap, Singapore organizations would benefit from engaging technology vendors and IT service providers versed in containerization strategies. For reluctant adopters, technology partners could help align containers to their overarching business goals. Likewise, for organizations who have container projects in flight, experienced partners could help identify opportunities to scale initiatives to optimize their broader IT environment.

To dig deeper into what may be impeding their maturity, we asked Singapore decisionmakers about the challenges their organizations face regarding application containerization: 68% of Singapore respondents find cloud-native/container application development challenging, slightly higher than the 64% of respondents from Global & APJ (Q7). Singapore decision-makers reported technical challenges, such as the need for IT infrastructure modernization and application portability difficulties, combined with a need to expand the skills of their workforce to support container adoption. (see Figure 3).

Key Challenges Organizations Face Regarding Application Containerization:

0%

of Singapore organizations believe the portability of applications between clouds and on-premises environments is challenging (Q7).

0%

of Singapore organizations stated they do not have all the necessary skills to support cloud-native applications and containers compared with 36% of Global respondents (Q24)

0%

of Singapore organizations feel their current IT infrastructure requires at least a moderate improvement to fully support cloud-native applications and containers (Q23).

Figure 2: Key Challenges Organizations Face Regarding Application Containerization:
Showing Singapore Results Only (n=95)

Despite a litany of perceived organizational and technical challenges associated with application containerization, 94% of Singapore decision-makers agree that their organization benefits from adopting cloud-native/containerized applications(Q24). To understand further, we asked respondents what workloads they are containerizing today: GenAI applications was the #1 containerized workload, followed by dev/test and enterprise-critical apps (non-database apps(Q4).

Looking more specifically into deployments, we see 19% of Singapore respondents using just one Kubernetes environment today. In Singapore, the majority of respondents (81%) say their organization uses more than one Kubernetes environment, on par with the percentage of global (78%) and APJ (83%) respondents that prefer multi-environment use. (see Figure 3).

Number of Kubernetes Environments Deployed Today: (Q5)

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Don't use Kubernetes environments

Global

APJ

Singapore

Figure 3: Number of Kubernetes Environments Deployed Today: (Q5)

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Summary

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GenAI in the Enterprise

Singapore is on par with global and APJ peers in implementing their GenAI strategy, viewing the technology as a key enabler to their organizational goals.

This year’s survey results show that 98% of Singapore organizations already have a GenAI strategy in place, with only 2 of 95 respondents stating they have not started planning their strategy. However, when it comes to actively implementing that strategy, Singapore decisionmakers remain slightly behind their Global and APJ peers. (see Figure 4).

Current State of Enterprise GenAI Strategy Development/Implementation: (Q9)

We have a strategy in place and are actively implementing it

55%

60%

54%

We have a strategy in place but have
not yet started implementation

30%

26%

31%

We are in the early stages of developing our strategy

13%

14%

We have not started planning our strategy yet

2%

1%

2%

We aren’t going to develop a strategy

0%

Global

APJ

Singapore

Figure 4: Current State of Enterprise GenAI Strategy Development/Implementation: (Q9)

0%

of organizations already have
a GenAI strategy in place

More optimistically, 100% (95 out of 95) of Singapore respondents said their organization is leveraging GenAI apps/workloads today (Q8). Cybersecurity, fraud detection and loss prevention, and code generation and code co-pilots were all tied as the #1 GenAI workload being used by Singapore respondents today, followed by content generation. Highadoption of GenAI for code-generation and code co-pilots could help accelerate the maturation of Singapore organizations’ cloud-native/container application strategies. For instance, GenAI as a developer augment could help overcome reported skills shortages as an adoption challenge in respect to containerized applications.

Findings also indicate that Singapore organizations are identifying synergies between GenAI and their broader organization goals: 100% of respondents reported that GenAI supports their organization’s overarching business goals and strategies(Q18). Simply put, as Singapore organizations grow more familiar with GenAI, so too does their understanding of how the technology can impact their business. (see figure 5)

Top Business Goals/Strategies Supported by GenAI: (Q18)

Increasing productivity

57%

58%

60%

Increasing automation and efficiency

51%

54%

Increasing innovation

49%

53%

55%

Customer retention and support

42%

47%

42%

Decreasing operational costs

38%

40%

36%

Employee onboarding

37%

44%

45%

Industry differentiation

35%

39%

37%

GenAI does not/could not support our overarching
business goals and strategies

1%

0%

Global

APJ

Singapore

Figure 5: Top Business Goals and Strategies Supported by GenAI: (Q18)

Similar to global and APJ rank orders, increasing productivity was the #1 business goal supported by GenAI in Singapore. In contrast to global counterparts, increasing innovation ranked #2 for Singapore respondents. In addition to recognizing the organizational value that GenAI can bring, Singapore respondents are also cognizant of the impact GenAI will have on their role, with 100% of Singapore respondents stating they believe GenAI will impact their job (Q16). The top benefits of GenAI on their job cited by Singapore respondents were (#1) “increasing productivity/efficiency” and (#2) “providing me with the opportunity to be an AI expert.”

To further understand the potential value of GenAI on business results, respondents were asked specifically about their organizations’ expectations for ROI when it comes to GenAI projects. 38% of Singapore respondents expect to break even or make a loss on GenAI projects over the next year, compared with 42% of global peers (Q13). While on par with global peers on near-term ROI, over a longer term, Singapore respondents are more optimistic: 86% of Singapore respondents expect to break even or make a gain on GenAI projects over the next 1-3 years, compared with 80% of global respondents (Q13).

Perceived challenges in deploying GenAI is likely contributing to a grounded view of nearterm project ROI, with 72% of Singapore decision-makers reporting that GenAI adoption is challenging to their organization, compared with 68% and 64% of global and APJ respondents, respectively (Q7). When asked where their organizations needed to invest in improving support for GenAI initiatives, IT infrastructure ranked #1 followed by IT training, cybersecurity, and IT talent hiring (Q17). In short, Singapore organizations understand the innovation potential of GenAI and what it can do for their organizations but are not ignorant to the upfront costs they’ll face in unlocking the value of GenAI.

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Country Comparison

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Implementation

Singapore decision-makers grapple with skills challenges and a need for IT modernization as they scale GenAI workloads from development to production.

Results from this year’s ECI survey indicate that almost all respondents (98%) face challenges when it comes to scaling GenAI workloads from development to production. All (95 of 95) Singapore respondents agree there are challenges in scaling GenAI workloads from development to production, with a lack of skills to deploy and operate AI being their #1 challenge (Q19) (see Figure 6).

Challenges Faced when Scaling GenAI Workloads from Development to Production (Q19)

Integration with existing IT infrastructure

Lack of skills needed to deploy and operate AI

Cost of ownership/Return On Investment (ROI) visibility

Regulatory and compliance hurdles

Limited computational resources

We have not faced challenges/would not face challenges when scaling GenAI workloads from development to production environments

Global

APJ

Singapore

Figure 6: Challenges Faced when Scaling GenAI Workloads from Development to Production (Q19)

When Singapore decision-makers were asked if they have the necessary skills to support GenAI adoption, only 42% reported having the necessary skills they need compared with 59% of global and 58% of APJ peers (Q24). To address these GenAI skills shortages, 71% of Singapore organizations report they are actively hiring. Further, Singapore decision-makers recognize the opportunity in using GenAI to help accelerate the onboarding of new-hires. This is evidenced by the 54% of Singapore respondents who stated GenAI supports employee onboarding business goals at their organization, compared with just 37% of global peers (Q18).

Outside of resource challenges, survey results suggest that Singapore decision-makers feel their organizations’ IT infrastructure and systems are not where they need to be to support GenAI adoption. Specifically:

44% of Singapore decision-makers believe that limited computational resources will impact their ability to scale GenAI workloads from development to production (Q19).
79% of Singapore respondents feel their Current IT infrastructure requires at least moderate improvement to support GenAI applications(Q23).

In addition to perceived skepticism on the readiness of their IT posture, Singapore decision-makers also feel their IT processes and tooling are not where they need to be to support the GenAI lifecycle. When asked if their organization has the necessary processes or tools in place to manage the lifecycle of GenAI models from development to deployment and maintenance, only 61% of Singapore respondents agreed they do compared to their global (75%) and APJ (71%) peers (Q20).

0%

of Singapore respondents feel their Current IT infrastructure requires at least moderate improvement to support GenAI applications(Q23).

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GenAI in the Enterprise

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Data Security and Privacy

Summary of Country
Findings: Singapore

Globally, over 50% of organizations report that all their applications are containerized. But Singapore organizations remain well behind their Global peers in terms of containerized application maturity, as only 29% of respondents state all applications are containerized Q2). Survey results from Singapore indicate that organizations are more upstream on their containerized application journeys, as 28% of respondents report they are in the process of containerizing their applications, compared with just 9% of global peers. More optimistically, Singapore decision-makers are beginning to recognize the synergies between cloud-native/containerized applications and their GenAI initiatives, as respondents state GenAI is the #1 workload being containerized today (Q4).

More than half of Singapore decision-makers (54%) state that their organization is actively implementing a GenAI strategy (Q9). Given Singapore organizations are on par with their Global and APJ peers in adopting GenAI, this synergy could help accelerate containerized application efforts. By intertwining containerized applications with GenAI initiatives Singapore organizations will also be better positioned to cut down on dev/test costs to strengthen near-term ROI of GenAI. Specifically, in identifying ways to reduce development costs, Singapore decision-makers will be better able to drive greater organization buy-in to scale and increase their utilization of GenAI workloads.

As Singapore organizations begin driving GenAI adoption, a litany of challenges are coming to the forefront centered around ensuring IT readiness. When asked where their organizations needed to invest to improve support for GenAI initiatives, IT infrastructure ranked #1, followed by IT training, cybersecurity, and IT talent hiring (Q17). Singapore decision-makers are hyper-focused on data security and cybersecurity, with 94% of Singapore respondents agreeing that GenAI was changing priorities for their organization, making security & privacy a higher priority (Q25). In addition to technology challenges, Singapore respondents recognize significant skills challenges with respect to security, GenAI, and containers, including:

Only 48% of Singapore decision-makers feel they have the necessary skills for security and ransomware protection, compared with 62% from Global & APJ peers(Q24).
Only 42% of Singapore respondents state having the necessary skills they need to support GenAI adoption, compared with 59% and 58% of their global and APJ peers, respectively (Q24).
48% of Singapore respondents feel they do not have all the necessary skills to support cloud-native/containerized apps compared with 36% of global respondents (Q24).

This report highlights several of these country-level findings in greater detail and provides comparisons with both global and regional results for context.

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Country Comparison

For the seventh consecutive year, Nutanix commissioned a global research study to learn about the state of global enterprise cloud deployments, application containerization trends, and GenAI application adoption. In the Fall of 2024, U.K. researcher Vanson Bourne surveyed 1,500 IT and DevOps/Platform Engineering decision-makers around the world. The respondent base spanned multiple industries, business sizes, and geographies, including North and South America; Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA); and AsiaPacific-Japan (APJ) region.

This report is supplemental to the global findings of the 7th Annual Enterprise Cloud Index (ECI) and highlights key results of surveys conducted with 95 IT professionals in Singapore. It also compares results from Singapore to the rest of the APJ region and Global averages.

©2025 Nutanix, Inc. All rights reserved. Nutanix, the Nutanix logo and all Nutanix product and service names mentioned are registered trademarks or trademarks of Nutanix, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other brand names mentioned are for identification purposes only and may be the trademarks of their respective holder(s).

Certain information contained in this content may link or refer to, or be based on, studies, publications, surveys, and other data obtained from third-party sources and our own internal estimates and research. While we believe these third-party studies, publications, surveys, and other data are reliable as of the date of publication, they have not independently verified unless specifically stated, and we make no representation as to the adequacy, fairness, accuracy, or completeness of any information obtained from a third-party. Our decision to publish, link to or reference third party data should not be considered an endorsement of any such content.

Perceived IT infrastructure issues among Singapore organizations are compounded by data security challenges when it comes to expanding GenAI utilization.

On par with their global and APJ peers, Singapore decision-makers ranked privacy and security concerns of using LLMs with sensitive company data as the top challenge when it comes to expanding utilization of GenAI workloads. When viewed against earlier cited IT infrastructure challenges in respect to supporting GenAI adoption, it is clear that Singapore respondents are highly focused on IT readiness as they pursue AI initiatives at their organizations. (See figure 7)

Challenges Associated with Leveraging or Expanding Utilization of GenAI Workloads Today (Q26)

38%

36%

39%

Privacy and security concerns of using LLMs with sensitive company data

31%

33%

28%

Complexity and lack of expertise to build a GenAI environment from scratch

24%

26%

24%

Lack of use cases for utilizing GenAI

2%

1%

2%

None of the above are/ could be challenges

5%

6%

All of the above are/ could be of equal challenge

Global

APJ

Singapore

Figure 7: Challenges Associated with Leveraging or Expanding Utilization of GenAI Workloads Today (Q26)

Additionally, 94% of Singapore decision-makers agreed when asked if GenAI was changing priorities for their organization, with security and privacy becoming higher priorities. Further, 94% of Singapore respondents stated they could be doing more to secure their GenAI models and applications (Q25). Unsurprisingly, when Singapore respondents were also asked what the most important data-related aspects were for GenAI Application/Workload Implementations, privacy/security ranked #1 (see Figure 8).

0%

of Singapore respondents stated they could be doing more to secure their GenAI models and applications.

Most Important Data-Related Aspects of GenAI Application/Workload Implementation (Q14)

Privacy/security

Performance

Scalability

Governance

They are of equal importance

Global

APJ

Singapore

Figure 8: Most Important Data-Related Aspects of GenAI Application/Workload Implementation (Q14)
Note: showing responses ranked first

Delving deeper into the challenges associated with implementing GenAI, it is clear that Singapore decision-makers are hyper-focused on data privacy and security. This perceived risk has resulted in accelerated hiring efforts compared with their global peers. Specifically, when asked if their organization had all the skills needed to address security and ransomware protection, only 48% of Singapore respondents said they have the skills needed, compared with 62% from both global and APJ peers (Q24). Likewise, 78% of Singapore respondents stated they are hiring for security/ransomware skills, compared with 70% of global counterparts.

Shoring up perceived data security gaps will be crucial for Singapore decision-makers to execute a growing backlog of GenAI initiatives at their organization. Addressing these gaps will be critical in gaining organizational buy-in, particularly if respondents are in highly regulated industries like Financial Services. While hiring efforts will help shore up gaps, organizations should also work with third-party security organizations to provide another layer of protection to help reduce risk. Further, engaging IT services firms and technology partners will provide Singapore decision-makers with valuable resources to address potential gaps in their IT environment that may be exposed by GenAI initiatives.

0%

of Singapore respondents stated they are hiring for security/ransomware skills

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Conclusion

7th Annual Nutanix

Enterprise Cloud Index

Singapore’s GenAI InitiativesPresent an Opportunity to Kickstart TheirContainerized Application Journey Which isWell Behind Global Peers

Conclusion and Recommendations

See How Easily You Can Deploy and Secure GenAI Apps.

Country Findings Compared to Global/Regional Results

1. Singapore organizations would benefit from vendor training and support on containerized applications as their program maturity is well behind global peers.

Current State of Application Containerization: (Q2)

Key Challenges Organizations Face Regarding Application Containerization:

Number of Kubernetes Environments Deployed Today: (Q5)

Singapore is on par with global and APJ peers in implementing their GenAI strategy, viewing the technology as a key enabler to their organizational goals.

Current State of Enterprise GenAI Strategy Development/Implementation: (Q9)

0%

of organizations already havea GenAI strategy in place

Top Business Goals/Strategies Supported by GenAI: (Q18)

Singapore decision-makers grapple with skills challenges and a need for IT modernization as they scale GenAI workloads from development to production.

Challenges Faced when Scaling GenAI Workloads from Development to Production (Q19)

0%

of Singapore respondents feel their Current IT infrastructure requires at least moderate improvement to support GenAI applications(Q23).

Summary of CountryFindings: Singapore

Background & Research Goals

Perceived IT infrastructure issues among Singapore organizations are compounded by data security challenges when it comes to expanding GenAI utilization.

Challenges Associated with Leveraging or Expanding Utilization of GenAI Workloads Today (Q26)

0%

of Singapore respondents stated they could be doing more to secure their GenAI models and applications.

Most Important Data-Related Aspects of GenAI Application/Workload Implementation (Q14)

0%

of Singapore respondents stated they are hiring for security/ransomware skills

Singapore’s GenAI Initiatives
Present an Opportunity to Kickstart Their
Containerized Application Journey Which is
Well Behind Global Peers

of organizations already have
a GenAI strategy in place

Summary of Country
Findings: Singapore