The Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Index reveals that a whopping 97% of Indian enterprises expect container adoption to rise as AI drives modernisation; Shadow AI is responsible for creating governance risks; organisational silos are slowing AI execution; while data sovereignty remains a top priority for most Indian respondents
Nutanix, a leading provider of hybrid multicloud computing solutions, today announced the findings of its eighth annual Enterprise Cloud Index (ECI) survey and research report, which measures enterprise progress with cloud adoption. This year’s report examined the challenges IT executives face as they navigate rapid AI adoption alongside application and infrastructure modernisation.
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 87% of respondents globally report AI is accelerating their adoption of containers to improve speed, reliability, and scalability.
“The findings indicate organisations need enterprise-grade security, resilience, and portability as AI workloads can run anywhere,” said Lee Caswell, SVP, Product and Solutions Marketing at Nutanix. “Organisations would also benefit from a common operating environment for virtual machines and containers that enables IT leaders to scale AI confidently across hybrid environments.”
“Whilst AI is clearly the engine driving this modernization, the real challenge for Indian enterprises isn’t just adopting the technology, it’s breaking down the organizational silos that currently hinder execution. “
-Faiz Shakir, VP & Managing Director – India & ASEAN, Nutanix
“India has emerged as the global frontrunner in the shift toward modern, containerized architectures, outperforming every other market in its commitment to this transition. Whilst AI is clearly the engine driving this modernization, the real challenge for Indian enterprises isn’t just adopting the technology, it’s breaking down the organizational silos that currently hinder execution. To truly capitalize on the potential of AI agents and autonomous tools, we must move beyond isolated experimentation and build a unified, secure foundation that bridges the gap between IT and business units,” said Faiz Shakir, VP & Managing Director – India & ASEAN, Nutanix.
Key findings from this year’s report, based on survey responses, include:
- Organisational silos create new AI risks: While AI adoption is driving innovation, it is also introducing operational challenges. 85% of respondents in India 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: 73% of respondents report encountering AI applications or agents being implemented by employees outside of IT functions. Most IT executives in India (96%) believe that the use of AI tools and agents outside official oversight creates business risk, particularly around the exposure of sensitive data and intellectual property. This sentiment is stronger in India than globally, where 87% of respondents share the same view. This highlights the need for closer collaboration between IT teams and business stakeholders to ensure AI deployments remain secure, compliant, and aligned with organisational goals.
- Agents unlock enormous potential for organisations: A majority of IT executives (68%) expect AI agents to enhance customer or employee experiences. 61% 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 82% of respondents, data sovereignty is a high priority when making infrastructure decisions including where to utilise containers. In fact, compliance obligations often drive organisations 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, primarily driven by customer and stakeholder expectations.
- Containers are the foundation of modern applications, with AI as the key driver: Organisations are turning to containers to support AI-enabled workloads and modern application development. 97% of respondents expect the use of containers for applications to increase over the next three years, while 82% say they are already building new applications in containers. Further, 87% percent 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: Eighty-seven percent of respondents say AI is meaningfully accelerating their organisation’s adoption of containers. Yet if their organisation needed to deploy AI workloads on-premises, 81% view their current infrastructure as not fully ready to support this.
For the eighth consecutive year, Nutanix commissioned a global research study conducted by Wakefield Research in November 2025 to assess the state of cloud adoption, containerisation, and AI application deployment.
The survey was conducted among 1,600 cloud, IT, and engineering executives across 14 markets: Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, U.K., and the United States, with an oversample of 100 Federal U.S. workers.
Executives who participated in the survey have a minimum title of manager at organisations with 500 employees or more. The India findings are based on responses from 100 executives.
