Singapore organisations have eagerly embraced generative AI, viewing the technology as a key enabler of productivity, automation, and innovation, according to Nutanix.
This echoes sentiments across Asia-Pacific-Japan (APJ) region and globally, and nearly 90% of Singapore companies expect to break even or make a gain on their generative AI projects over the next one to three years, compared to just 80% of global respondents.
In the Fall of 2024, United Kingdom-based researcher Vanson Bourne surveyed 1,500 IT and DevOps/Platform Engineering decision-makers around the world,
The respondent base spanned multiple industries, business sizes, and geographies, including North and South America; Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA); and APJ.
More than 70% of Singapore firms continue to work through implementation challenges, alongside their APJ (64%) and global (68%) counterparts.
In particular, infrastructure modernisation has emerged as a key focus area — nearly 80% of Singapore organisations say their current IT systems need substantial upgrades to support generative AI applications.
“To unlock the full value of generative AI, organisations must modernise applications and infrastructure while embracing containerisation for scalability, security, and agility,” said Ho Chye Soon, Singapore country manager at Nutanix.
“Many businesses in Singapore understand the urgency of this transformation but face challenges in integrating and scaling GenAI workloads due to infrastructure limitations,” said Ho.
Findings show that generative AI application adoption and implementation continue at a rapid pace in Singapore and worldwide. In Singapore, 85% of Singapore organisations have already developed a strategy for generative AI, however 31% 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.
Also, nearly all Singapore organisations face challenges when it comes to scaling generative AI workloads from development to production, similar to their APJ and global counterparts.
To address this scaling challenge, Singapore organisations are prioritising investments in IT infrastructure, recognising it as crucial for supporting their generative AI initiatives.
Further, application containerisation is the new infrastructure standard worldwide, but Singapore lags behind. More than 60% of Singapore organisations report that at least some of their applications are now containerised, compared to more than 80% in APJ and globally.
Although Singapore trails in adoption, nearly all decision-makers agree that their organisation benefits from adopting cloud-native or containerised applications. Application containerisation should be considered the gold standard for delivering seamless, secure access to data across hybrid and multicloud environments, so this shift is expected to accelerate with the rapid adoption of new application workloads like generative AI.
In addition, generative AI adoption will challenge traditional norms for data security and privacy. Nearly all Singapore respondents agree that generative AI is changing their organisation’s priorities, with security and privacy emerging as primary concerns.
While this sentiment is also shared by their APJ and global counterparts, Singapore organisations 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% from both APJ and global peers.
Security and privacy will remain a major challenge for organisations as they seek to justify the use of emerging, generative AI-based solutions and ensure that they adhere to traditional security norms, as well as new requirements for data governance, privacy, and visibility.
Moreover, only 42% of Singapore organisations state having the necessary skills needed to support generative AI adoption, compared to nearly 60% of their APJ and global peers.
Nutanix said that many teams will embrace the challenge to adopt AI-related competencies and skills organically, as part of normal work.
Singapore respondents recognise that advancements in generative AI will not only increase their productivity and efficiency, but also provide them with an opportunity to become an AI expert.
