Hybrid cloud adoption higher than average in manufacturing sector: Nutanix study

Enterprise cloud computing firm Nutanix has said that hybrid cloud adoption among manufacturing companies stands at 19%, marginally higher than the average overall adoption.

By 2021, the sector is also expected to increase hybrid cloud adoption to 45%, around 4% higher than average, the company said based on the findings of a survey.

According to the Nutanix study, 43% of manufacturers surveyed are currently using a traditional data centre as their primary IT infrastructure, slightly outpacing the global average of 41%.

However, around 20% of manufacturers currently use a single public cloud service  -- more than any other industry -- indicating an imminent opportunity for other cloud players as companies diversify their cloud providers to minimise risk, Nutanix indicated. 

This also means that manufacturers are starting to turn to the cloud as a solution, as legacy IT systems and cannot handle workloads on-premises, the company added.

These findings were announced in Nutanix's survey called 'Enterprise Cloud Index Report', which measured firms’ plans for adopting private, public and hybrid clouds. Part of the report’s findings were released earlier, stating that 43% of Indian enterprises will adopt hybrid cloud by 2020.

Nutanix said that the manufacturing sector was looking to accelerate digitisation efforts including “Industry 4.0” initiatives to increase productivity as well as reap the dividends of smart manufacturing enabled by automation, analytics and internet of things (IoT).

While 91% of survey respondents mentioned hybrid cloud as the ideal IT model, today’s global average hybrid cloud penetration level is at 18.5%, Nutanix found, adding that the disparity was in part due to the challenges of transitioning to the hybrid cloud model. 

Manufacturers are also advancing the movement to the private cloud at a faster clip with 56% of them were running their enterprise applications in a private cloud, outpacing the global average by 7%.

“Manufacturers are investing in modernising their IT stack, and adopting industry 4.0 solutions to keep up with ever-changing business demands in areas like production and supply chain management,” said Chris Kozup, senior vice president of marketing at Nutanix.

Manufacturers are struggling to control expenditure, however, with 26% of their annual IT budget being spent on public cloud, which is expected to increase to 35% in two years’ time, Nutanix said.

Last month, Nutanix had appointed Anantharaman Balakrishnan as its new vice president and managing director of sales in India. Balakrishnan joined the firm from cloud computing giant Amazon Web Services (AWS), where he was the head of the financial services and manufacturing verticals for the large enterprise business in India.

Earlier, in an interview with TechCircle, Neville Vincent, Nutanix’s global vice-president for ASEAN, India and ANZ had spoken about the significance of hyper-converged infrastructure.