Nutanix has unveiled the Saudi Arabia findings of its eighth annual Enterprise Cloud Index (ECI), revealing that artificial intelligence is significantly accelerating enterprise container adoption while data sovereignty and AI governance are emerging as critical priorities for organizations across the Kingdom.
According to the report, 85% of Saudi IT executives expect application containerization to increase over the next three years, with 72% stating that AI is directly driving container adoption. Containers are increasingly becoming the preferred foundation for AI-enabled applications, enabling organizations to modernize workloads, improve portability, and accelerate digital transformation initiatives.
The research also highlights growing concerns around AI governance. Nearly 77% of IT leaders believe unsanctioned AI tools and agents create business risks, while 65% have already encountered employees deploying AI applications outside IT oversight. In addition, 70% of respondents believe organizational silos between business and IT teams hinder technology execution and AI adoption, underscoring the need for stronger governance frameworks.
Data sovereignty continues to shape infrastructure decisions in Saudi Arabia. The survey found that 78% of executives consider data sovereignty a high-priority requirement, while 53% prefer hosting infrastructure within the Kingdom to address security and regulatory concerns. Public cloud adoption also remains strong, with 52% of organizations running containerized applications on public cloud environments, compared with 43% using private cloud or on-premises infrastructure.
“AI success depends on strong governance, modern infrastructure, and data sovereignty working together.” – Talal Alsaif, Regional Director, Central Gulf, Nutanix
Talal Alsaif, Regional Director, Central Gulf at Nutanix, said the findings demonstrate that Saudi enterprises are rapidly moving beyond AI experimentation toward production-scale deployments. He noted that organizations require hybrid multicloud infrastructure, containerized applications, strong governance, and data sovereignty to maximize AI investments while maintaining security and operational control.
The global Enterprise Cloud Index surveyed 1,600 IT, cloud, and engineering decision-makers, including respondents from Saudi Arabia, to assess enterprise readiness across cloud adoption, AI deployment, and containerization. The findings reinforce Saudi Arabia’s growing commitment to building secure, AI-ready digital infrastructure aligned with the Kingdom’s digital transformation ambitions.
