Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Index: AI Drives Container Adoption

Nutanix, a hybrid multicloud computing company, has published the findings of its eighth annual Enterprise Cloud Index (ECI) survey and research report.

The report looked at the challenges IT executives face as they navigate the rapid growth of AI use and the increasing need for application and infrastructure modernization in the enterprise.

Scaling AI confidently across environments

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. 

According to Nutanix, widespread AI adoption has triggered “a wave of infrastructure modernization” across the channel, as organizations race to build and run applications more efficiently. 

To support this shift, the report found that containers have become a core component of enterprise application strategies. The survey showed that 85 percent of respondents say that AI is accelerating their adoption of containers to improve speed, reliability, and scalability. 

“The findings indicate organizations need enterprise-grade security, resilience, and portability as AI workloads can run anywhere,” said Lee Caswell, senior vice president of 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,” Caswell added.

Key findings from this year’s report include:

• Organizational silos create new AI risks: 82% of respondents believe silos between business units and IT make it difficult to execute technology initiatives effectively, 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. Meanwhile, 87 percent believe that unauthorized AI use poses risks, including the exposure of sensitive data and intellectual property. 
• Agents unlock enormous potential for organizations: A majority of IT executives (61 percent) expect AI agents to enhance customer or employee experiences. Fifty-eight percent also anticipate that AI agents will improve productivity and efficiency. Additionally, 57 percent believe that AI agents could create new products, services, or revenue streams.
• Data sovereignty is non-negotiable: For 80 percent of respondents, data sovereignty is a high priority when making infrastructure decisions, including where to utilize containers. Compliance obligations often drive organizations to keep data physically within the country where it was collected. More than half (57 percent) 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 as AI drivers amid a lack of infrastructure

The ECI research also reinforced the notion that containers have become the foundation of modern applications, with many organizations using them to support AI-enabled workloads.

“Eighty-seven percent of respondents expect the use of containers for applications to increase over the next three years, while 83 percent say they are already building new applications in containers,” Nutanix said in an official statement.

In addition, 85 percent believe AI is accelerating container adoption, which highlights why enterprises need to evolve their infrastructure strategies to handle containerized workloads.

However, the research also revealed a gap between leadership expectations and infrastructure readiness.

59% of respondents anticipate that their organization will have more than five AI-enabled applications in the next 3 years. However, if their organization needed to deploy AI workloads on-premises, 82 percent viewed their current infrastructure as not fully ready to support this. 

Last year, Nutanix launched Nutanix Partner Central, an intelligence-driven platform designed to enhance the partner experience. Learn more about how the platform unifies resources and tools to boost partner collaboration.