Singapore organizations lead in generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) optimism, but face infrastructure readiness challenge, Nutanix study revealed Thursday.
The hybrid multicloud computing firm said in its seventh annual Enterprise Cloud Index (ECI) survey and research report, Singapore organizations have eagerly embraced GenAI, viewing the technology as a key enabler of productivity, automation, and innovation.
This echoes sentiments across Asia-Pacific-Japan (APJ) and globally.
Nearly 90 percent of Singapore organizations expect to break even or make a gain on their GenAI projects over the next one to three years, compared to just 80 percent of global respondents.
While Singapore organizations are actively exploring GenAI’s potential, opportunities for further optimization remain.
More than 70 percent of Singapore organizations continue to work through implementation challenges, alongside their APJ (64 percent) and global (68 percent) counterparts.
In particular, infrastructure modernization has emerged as a key focus area—nearly 80 percent of Singapore organizations say their current information technology (IT) systems need substantial upgrades to support GenAI applications.
“GenAI’s true potential lies not just in its capabilities, but in an organization’s ability to operationalize it effectively,
“To unlock the full value of GenAI, organizations must modernize applications and infrastructure while embracing containerization for scalability, security, and agility,” said Ho Chye Soon, Singapore country manager at Nutanix.
According to him, many businesses in Singapore understand the urgency of this transformation but face challenges in integrating and scaling GenAI workloads due to infrastructure limitations.
The study also showed GenAI application adoption and implementation continue at a rapid pace in Singapore and worldwide.
In Singapore, 85 percent of Singapore organizations have already developed a strategy for GenAI, however 31 percent have yet to implement it. This echoes the trend in APJ and globally.
Cybersecurity, fraud detection and loss prevention, as well as code generation and code co-pilots emerged as top GenAI workloads used by Singapore respondents today.
The study also highlighted running cloud native applications at enterprise scale requires an infrastructure that can support the necessary requirements including security, data integrity and resilience, and emerging GenAI applications are no exception to this rule.
Nearly all Singapore organizations face challenges when it comes to scaling GenAI workloads from development to production, similar to their APJ and global counterparts.
To address this scaling challenge, Singapore organizations are prioritizing investments in IT infrastructure, recognizing it as crucial for supporting their GenAI initiatives.
According to the study, application containerization is the new infrastructure standard worldwide, but Singapore lags behind.
More than 60 percent of Singapore organizations report that at least some of their applications are now containerized, compared to more than 80 percent in APJ and globally.
Although Singapore trails in adoption, nearly all decision-makers agree that their organization benefits from adopting cloud-native or containerized applications.
Application containerization should be considered the gold standard for delivering seamless, secure access to data across hybrid and multi cloud environments, so this shift is expected to accelerate with the rapid adoption of new application workloads like GenAI.
The study also revealed that GenAI adoption will challenge traditional norms for data security and privacy.
Nearly all Singapore respondents agree that GenAI is changing their organization’s priorities, with security and privacy emerging as primary concerns.
While this sentiment is also shared by their APJ and global counterparts, Singapore organizations lag behind in security readiness.
Less than half of Singapore decision-makers feel they have the necessary skills for security and ransomware protection, compared with more than 60 percent from both APJ and global peers.
Security and privacy will remain a major challenge for organizations as they seek to justify the use of emerging, GenAI-based solutions and ensure that they adhere to traditional security norms, as well as new requirements for data governance, privacy, and visibility.
Meanwhile, only 42 percent of Singapore organizations state having the necessary skills needed to support GenAI adoption, compared to nearly 60 percent of their APJ and global peers.
There is no denying organizations face acute skills shortages and competition for GenAI-related talent, said the study..
However, it noted many teams will embrace the challenge to adopt AI-related competencies and skills organically, as part of normal work.
It added Singapore respondents recognize that advancements in GenAI will not only increase their productivity and efficiency, but also provide them with an opportunity to become an AI expert.
The global research study measures global enterprise progress with cloud adoption.
Its respondent base spanned multiple industries, business sizes, and geographies, including North and South America; Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA); and APJ region.