Hybrid Multicloud Deployments: Financial Industry Takes Second Place in Adoption Rate

Nutanix has unveiled the financial services sector’s findings from its fifth annual Enterprise Cloud Index (ECI) survey, which assesses the progress of cloud adoption among enterprises.

Key Highlights:

1. Financial Industry Ahead in Hybrid Multicloud Deployments: The research shows that the financial industry has made remarkable strides in cloud adoption, with 64% of surveyed companies utilizing mixed deployments, slightly surpassing the global average. This reflects the sector’s dedication to enhancing the customer experience, leveraging hybrid multi-cloud setups to drive digitalization, advanced data capabilities, and application modernization.
2. Data Security as a Driving Force: Cybersecurity takes precedence as the biggest driver for IT infrastructure in both the financial sector and among global respondents. Given the growing sophistication of cyber threats and the crucial role of IT in financial services organizations, this prioritization is not surprising.
3. Demand for Unified Management: The report reveals that having a single platform to manage diverse private and public infrastructures is an ideal goal, with 96% of financial firms agreeing. However, only 42% reported having such visibility. This highlights the need for integrated tools to improve hybrid IT operations and underscores the challenges posed by mixed environments.
4. Application Movement Priorities: Improving data access speeds ranks as the primary driver for application movement among financial services firms. All respondents in the financial sector (100%) indicated they had moved applications between IT infrastructures in the past year, with nearly half (49%) citing a desire to accelerate data access as a reason for the move. Other drivers include enhancing security posture, meeting regulatory requirements, and integrating with cloud-native services like AI and machine learning.
5. Cost Management Challenges: Cost factors present a mixed picture, with attitudes toward IT cost fluctuating on priority lists. While controlling costs remains high on the list of challenges for most respondents, IT cost ranks last on global respondents’ infrastructure criteria and ties fourth among financial companies.

“Increased infrastructure diversity and a heightened emphasis on data storage, management, security, and cloud-native services are driving all IT professionals to seek hybrid operations that transcend private and public infrastructure. As evidenced by recent regulatory measures such as the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), operational resilience and concentration risk are additional driving factors to hybrid model adoption,” said Ian Haynes, EMEA Field CTO, Nutanix. “For cloud deployment models, the financial services industry has emerged as a frontrunner, surpassing many other sectors in embracing the hybrid multi-cloud approach.”

The survey, conducted by Vanson Bourne on behalf of Nutanix, involved 1,450 IT decision-makers globally between December 2022 and January 2023. This report focuses on cloud deployments specifically within the financial services industry, offering valuable insights into the cloud plans, challenges, and experiences of professionals in this sector. It provides a deeper understanding of the cloud deployment journey for financial organizations and unveils key trends in this ever-evolving landscape.