Exclusive: Nutanix charts cloud-native surge across APJ

Nutanix is reporting strong momentum in cloud-native and hybrid cloud adoption across the Asia-Pacific and Japan (APJ) region, reflecting shifting enterprise priorities around modern application development, artificial intelligence (AI) workloads, and regulatory compliance.

"What I've learned about Nutanix is that it has evolved from a hyperconverged infrastructure company into a hybrid multi-cloud platform provider," said Jay Tuseth, Vice President and General Manager, Nutanix APJ.

"The transformation is profound, and it is enabling our customers to manage complex IT environments more efficiently."

Containers and modernisation

Adoption of Kubernetes and container-based platforms is accelerating in APJ, as hybrid IT environments become standard across enterprises.

"Adoption of containers is occurring at a faster pace in APJ relative to other regions globally," said Tuseth. "Organisations are increasingly combining virtualisation and containers, which requires new skills and operational approaches."

The transition is not without challenges. Tuseth noted that IT teams must carefully evaluate their workforce capabilities to ensure they can manage hybrid environments effectively. "As teams adopt containers alongside existing virtualisation infrastructure, they are assessing whether they have the right skills to succeed," he said.

Nevertheless, he added that enterprises are adapting rapidly. "This skills gap is gradually closing, and organisations are becoming more comfortable managing these hybrid platforms," he said.

Resilience in distributed environments

AI workloads and containerised applications deployed at the edge are increasing operational risk, making resilience a key priority for enterprises.

"The greatest challenge is ensuring resilience, particularly when deploying AI and containerised applications at the edge," said Tuseth. "Edge environments are often more distributed and harder to control than centralised data centres or public cloud infrastructure."

Nutanix is addressing this challenge with its integrated platform, which provides unified virtual machine and container management. "True resilience demands more than just deploying containers; enterprises need integrated data protection, automated upgrades, and self-healing capabilities," he said.

"Our platform delivers all of this across every location, ensuring reliability at scale."

Hybrid cloud in practice

Hybrid cloud adoption is growing across APJ as enterprises seek flexibility and regulatory compliance.

"A recent example is Karnataka Bank in India, which adopted our cloud platform as part of a comprehensive IT modernisation strategy," said Tuseth. "All of its critical applications run on our platform, including a cloud-native digital currency application."

The bank's deployment demonstrates the potential for hybrid platforms to support both traditional enterprise workloads and innovative digital services within a single environment.

Simplifying AI and infrastructure

Generative AI and enterprise automation are adding pressure on IT teams, which must deliver new capabilities quickly and efficiently.

"AI is often a board-level priority where productivity and innovation goals are set, but IT teams are expected to implement the solutions," said Tuseth.

"Organisations need platforms that simplify deployment and management."

Nutanix provides a solution that allows enterprises to deploy AI models with minimal complexity.

"Our platform enables customers to select from an app store of large language models and integrate them into their environment using clicks rather than code," he said.

"This reduces operational overhead and accelerates adoption."

Regional trends and regulatory impact

Adoption patterns for cloud-native and AI workloads vary across APJ markets.

"Singapore is leading adoption, Australia is experiencing significant momentum around generative AI, and India is emerging as a regional leader," said Tuseth. "Across APJ, Kubernetes adoption is outpacing many other global markets."

National regulations are also influencing enterprise strategies.

"Regulatory bodies are tightening rules on data protection, cyber resilience, and cloud governance, with stricter penalties for non-compliance," said Tuseth. "Many organisations start developing AI applications in public clouds but move workloads to private cloud environments to meet data sovereignty and resilience requirements."

Nutanix's hybrid platform supports this flexibility. "Our customers can start in one environment and migrate workloads as needed, without disruption," he said.

What's ahead?

Tuseth predicts that hybrid cloud and cloud-native adoption will continue to grow as enterprises pursue digital transformation, AI innovation, and resilience in distributed IT environments.

"Organisations across APJ are increasingly recognising that hybrid cloud, containerisation, and AI are not optional - they are critical to staying competitive," he said.

"The role of platforms like Nutanix is to simplify complexity and provide reliable, flexible solutions across all IT environments."