Containers have become a core component of enterprise application strategies, with 82% of organizations in Singapore reporting accelerating their adoption of containers for AI to improve speed, reliability, and scalability, along with organizations globally.
This is one of the key findings from Nutanix’s 8th annual Enterprise Cloud Index (ECI) survey and research report, which measures the progress of global enterprise cloud adoption. This year’s report takes an in-depth look at the challenges faced by IT executives in Singapore and around the world as they address the rapid growth in AI use and the need to modernize applications and infrastructure within their enterprises.
In Singapore, 66% expect to see five or more AI-enabled applications in the next three years, reflecting similar momentum across Asia Pacific Japan (APJ) and globally. This is driven by expectations that AI agents will unlock huge potential for organizations, from creating new products, services, and revenue streams (64%) to increasing productivity and efficiency (62%).
Despite this enthusiasm, 77% of organizations in Singapore believe their current infrastructure is not fully ready to support the deployment of AI workloads on-premises. Therefore, the rapid increase in enterprise AI adoption over the past year is driving a wave of infrastructure modernization as companies race to build and run applications more efficiently.
“As Singaporean organizations rush to scale AI, they are running into operational complexity walls, from data sovereignty requirements to shadow IT risks,” said Jay Tuseth, vice president and general manager, Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ), Nutanix. “To move from experimentation to enterprise-grade AI, organizations need a unified operating platform that bridges the gap between containers and virtual machines. Providing this consistency is the only way IT leaders can scale AI across hybrid environments with the security and governance they need.”
Key findings for Singapore from this year’s report include:
- Organizational silos create new AI risks. While the adoption of AI is driving innovation, it is also creating operational challenges. Almost all organizations in Singapore (93%) believe that silos between business units and IT make it difficult to effectively execute technology initiatives, delay implementation timelines, and increase complexity. This is higher than the global average of 82%.
- Shadow IT creates challenges for AI. 78% of organizations in Singapore have encountered AI applications or agents implemented by employees outside the IT department. At the same time, almost all organizations in Singapore (94%) believe that misuse of AI poses risks such as leaking sensitive data or intellectual property. This trend is reflected globally and highlights the need for close collaboration between IT teams and business stakeholders to keep AI deployments secure, compliant, and aligned with organizational goals.
- Data sovereignty is non-negotiable. 86% of organizations in Singapore consider data sovereignty a top priority when making infrastructure decisions, including where to use containers. This view is shared globally, and compliance obligations often force organizations to physically store data within the country in which it was collected. In Singapore, customer and stakeholder expectations (57%) and security or data protection concerns (56%) are driving the need for organizations to run infrastructure within a single country, either on-premises or through a local cloud region.
- Containers are the foundation of modern applications, and AI is a key driver. Organizations are turning to containers to support AI-enabled workloads and modern application development. 88% of organizations in Singapore expect the use of containers in applications to increase over the next three years, and 87% say they are already building new applications with containers.
The survey, conducted by Wakefield Research in November 2025, gathered responses from 1,600 cloud, IT, and engineering executives with at least manager-level positions. Respondents represent organizations with more than 500 employees in Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
