Realizing the benefits of hybrid multi-cloud, organizations across the Asia-Pacific are integrating resources to optimize their IT operations to achieve greater agility and scalability.
Aaron White, Nutanix’s General Manager and Vice President of Sales for the Asia-Pacific and Japan (APJ) region, says the adoption of hybrid multi-cloud environments has become imperative as organizations in the region reassess their cloud computing strategies.
“Customers are moving from public to hybrid multi-cloud and now starting to leverage the potential of AI and will dive into each of those factors,” he said during a Nutanix APJ media briefing last month.
In his opinion, artificial intelligence (AI) is definitely going to catalyze a whole new wave of initiatives focused on data governance and mobility initially.
“AI is coming. There are no two ways about it, and you’ll find it’s placed in every single data center and every single organization across the world, as the new mode of computing,” White said.
However, he cautioned that AI won’t be the panacea for everything. “Ultimately, cost, data, and people will continue to be of vital importance.”
Nutanix Inc is an American cloud computing company that sells software solutions for data centers and hybrid multi-cloud deployments.
Planning to upgrade AI capabilities
A recent survey of Nutanix customers showed that 99% of the respondents said they planned to upgrade their AI capabilities, according to White.
“All of those customers have already put their toes into the water with AI,” he said. “Initially, as a service, but with plans once they’ve understood the use cases to start to bring that in-house to be able to point out large language models at their corporate data in a very secure manner.”
He said Nutanix’s interactions with its customers revealed that many enterprises are struggling to identify the most efficient path to modernize their infrastructure to be able to support AI workloads.
“AI is incredibly hungry for resources — both computer analytics and data, as well as fast scale networks to provide the interconnect for large AI workloads,” he said.
“AI technologies are growing at a certain speed and scale. We’re definitely going to start to see the core infrastructure deployments and start to require a high degree of IT modernization,” White said.
“It’s an incredibly interesting time in the IT space with the rise of AI. And customers are certainly looking for support and help in terms of how they move forward into the next part of their modernization journeys,” he said.
He also gave some examples of Nutanix’s customers in the APJ region that started to modernize their infrastructure, move to hybrid cloud, and boost the ability to respond to their business requirements.
How AI impacts cloud industry
White says that as technologies are ushering in a new era of data and infrastructure modernization, the cloud industry has seen a “monumental shift” towards generative AI and machine learning.
“AI is definitely going to catalyze a whole new wave of initiatives focused on data governance and mobility initially,” he said.
When asked during the media briefing how AI impacts the cloud industry, the Nutanix executive said that because of the huge amount of resources that AI takes, he expected the industry to deliver huge amounts of what he called “AI micro services”. Also, he expected the cloud industry to see security and data sovereignty issues stemming from the generative AI process.
“Some customers are all in on AI and are starting to bump their heads into these challenges right now. Others are stepping back and waiting to see, and others are evaluating the current services that are available,” White said.
A key trend in the region
The executive also pointed to a key trend in the APJ region — hybrid-cloud moves to necessity in companies and IT organizations.
“The adoption of hybrid multi-cloud has become imperative as organizations in the APJ strategically reassess their cloud strategies,” White said.
“They may have made mistakes in the past, where they have deployed applications that are perhaps costing too much money in the cloud. and may save considerable money on a private cloud or on-premises.”
He said that embracing the hybrid multi-cloud approach gives the power back to organizations to unlock “super amounts of flexibility” by seamlessly integrating private, public and on-premises infrastructure.
Avoiding cloud repatriation
According to White, another key trend in the APJ region is that organizations are attempting to avoid cloud repatriation – a shift away from public clouds and back to on-premises or local cloud infrastructure.
He said organizations learn from past experiences with public cloud and develop a strategic plan to put the right application in the right place from both a cost and security efficiency perspective.
“Hybrid multi-cloud allows this approach, allowing seamless operations in terms of moving applications and datasets within multiple environments. By adopting a hybrid multi-cloud strategy, organizations can avoid costly and time-consuming refactoring efforts and approach their cloud strategy in a more calculated and methodical manner,” he said.
White pointed out that to prevent cloud repatriation, or moving workloads from the public cloud back to on-premises, it is essential to consider the benefits and suitability of hybrid multi-cloud instead of following everyone else to the public cloud.
Boosting efficiency & safeguarding data
White said Nutanix can help organizations improve efficiency and safeguard data security. “It shouldn’t matter where your workload is. What should matter is the efficiency and the security of that workload,” he said.
“Nutanix can help you intelligently distribute workloads and data across diverse cloud environments and organizations can optimize utilization and enhance operational efficiency. Why is this so important? It is because of the increased reliance on safeguarding data security in today’s business landscape.”
White said hybrid multi-cloud allows organizations to maintain the necessary security measures for their sensitive assets while taking advantage of the public cloud’s agility and cost efficiency.
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