Wait-and-see approach to public cloud pays off

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

Nutanix leadership in APJ recently shared observations of businesses in the region ‘being at the crossroads with their IT infrastructure.’

Head of APJ and SVP Matt Young said, “(Businesses) are trying to figure out the next steps of their transformation journey. And the race is definitely not straight to public cloud, but finding that balance of hybrid, multi-cloud and being what we now call ‘cloud smart.'”

And the race is definitely not straight to public cloud, but finding that balance of hybrid, multi-cloud and being what we now call ‘cloud smart.'”

Nutanix has seen positive growth from this trend due to them having a platform that enables businesses to operate in whatever environment they choose, realise the benefits of hybrid multi-cloud, a well as support a workforce that is working in the office and remotely.

Three trends

Learning accelerated lessons

Field CTO of APJ, Justin Hurst, noted the narrative shift from cloud as a destination, to being more of an operating model now.

“It’s about finding a balance between privacy, security, cost control and location; whether it’s at the edge, the remote office, in the public cloud, the private cloud, the service provider – companies need to find a balance to choose the Where, How, and When, to choose the right place to store their data and run their workloads.”

This exemplifies the crossroads organisations are at, because they have yet to discover which is the right cloud and the right tool, for a specific job.

These organisations are learning lessons that first movers are experiencing around unanticipated cost, security, applications, and complexity.

Move to verticalised clouds

Justin noted also a shift beyond just enabling employees to work from home. Industries that have stringent regulatory requirements are exploring private industry clouds that are focused on meeting specific needs of the industry, in a country or in a region.

This is due in part to organisations realising they need to be strategic in order to attract and retain talent.

Reaping the benefits of a wait-and-see approach

Gone are initial notions the industry had of public cloud, as being another version of outsourcing. Now, the early cloud adopters have halted their headlong rush into public cloud. This is perhaps due to them starting to observe things like the unsuitability of their apps for public cloud, and needing to be cautious of costs.

Early adopters have rationalised their expectations and now see the cloud as a fantastic tool to enable certain types of systems workloads.

Justin observed that in Japan where he is located, digital transformation has become a government mandate. Companies are approaching cloud in a much more methodical fashion now.

What customers say they want

Different cloud providers have their own hybrid story. Justin noted, adding that they all tend to be cloud-first type of offerings, instead of cloud-smart.

He is hearing the following requirements from customers in APJ. They want:

• not to be locked into a single stack
• to choose a cloud provider but not be stuck with what the provider provides
• to keep their options of cloud providers open
• a platform that allows them to move their data and applications between various cloud, on their own terms

Conclusion

Nutanix prides itself on understanding on-premise, data and data services.

“We also understand cloud native applications, the public cloud and the hybrid cloud. Since the beginning of the company we have always had a message of freedom of choice, of being able to choose the right tool for the right job, and that includes public clouds.

“So we’re seeing customers now come to us and ask how and where do we place these workloads,” Justin concluded.