Nutanix Study Reveals Security and Privacy as Primary Concerns for Organizations
Nutanix announced the findings of its seventh annual Enterprise Cloud Index (ECI) survey and research report, which measures global enterprise progress with cloud adoption. This year’s report sheds light on Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) adoption, investment priorities, and benefits along with key challenges organizations face to meet the demands of these emerging workloads.
“As highlighted by the survey results, the adoption of GenAI presents both significant opportunities and challenges for organizations in Saudi Arabia,” says Talal Alsaif, Sales Director, Central Gulf & North Africa at Nutanix.
Key Findings from Saudi Arabia:
- Application Containerization: 100% of Saudi Arabia respondents in this year’s ECI study say their organization is at least in the process of containerizing their applications. 96% agree that their organization benefits from adopting cloud-native applications/containers, with databases being the most-containerized application, followed by Generative AI applications and Dev/Test apps. Challenges include IT infrastructure modernization, application development, and skilling.
- GenAI Strategy Implementation: 100% of Saudi Arabia organizations already have a GenAI strategy in place, with 60% actively in the implementation phase. Despite increased productivity, innovation, automation, and efficiency as top goals, 26% expect to break even or make a loss on GenAI projects over the next year, and 35% over the next 1-3 years.
- Challenges in GenAI Adoption: 98% of respondents face challenges scaling GenAI workloads from development to production, primarily due to a lack of skills needed to deploy and operate AI. 78% believe GenAI adoption will be a challenge, driven by gaps in skills and experience. 62% report a need to invest in IT training to support GenAI applications/workloads over the next 1-3 years.
- Performance & Scalability vs. Data Privacy and Security: Privacy and security concerns are top challenges associated with GenAI workloads. 98% of respondents say their organization could do more to secure its GenAI models and applications. 92% agree that GenAI is changing priorities, with security and privacy becoming higher priorities.
“As highlighted by the survey results, the adoption of GenAI presents both significant opportunities and challenges for organizations in Saudi Arabia,” says Talal Alsaif, Sales Director, Central Gulf & North Africa at Nutanix. “While there is a clear eagerness to harness GenAI for improved productivity, automation, and innovation, companies must first address critical gaps in data security, skill sets, and IT infrastructure. To ensure success in GenAI implementation, we recommend immediate action to close these skill gaps, either through direct hiring or collaboration with service providers. Additionally, it’s essential to evaluate the business value of GenAI projects with a long-term view, focusing on sustained ROI rather than short-term payback. Finally, IT modernization should be prioritized to facilitate smoother application containerization and GenAI deployment. By eliminating manual IT tasks, organizations can free up resources, enabling IT teams to build the necessary skills and reallocate budgets to the specialized tools and services that will drive the success of GenAI initiatives.”
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 Asia-Pacific-Japan (APJ) region.
