Public sector embraces GenAI

Nutanix has announced the findings of its seventh annual global Public Sector Enterprise Cloud Index (ECI) survey and research report, which measures enterprise progress with cloud adoption in the industry. The research showed that 83% of public sector organisations have a GenAI strategy in place, with 54% actively implementing, and 29% preparing for implementation. 

As public sector organisations ramp up GenAI adoption, 76% of IT decision-makers say their  current infrastructure needs moderate to significant improvement to support modern, cloud  native applications at scale. This year’s public sector ECI found that infrastructure  modernisation emerged as a top priority, underscoring the growing demand for systems capable of meeting GenAI’s requirements for enterprise-ready data security, data integrity, and  resilience. 

This year’s report also revealed that public sector leaders are increasingly leveraging GenAI  applications/workloads into their organisations. Real-world GenAI use cases across the public  sector gravitate towards constituent/employee support and experience solutions (e.g., chatbots) and content generation. However, concerns remain with 92% of public sector leaders highlighting the need for their organisations to do more to secure GenAI models and  applications. The results of that need, according to 96% of respondents, is security and privacy becoming higher priorities for their organisations. 

“Generative AI is no longer a future concept, it’s already transforming how we work,” said Greg O’Connell, VP, Federal Sales, Public Sector at Nutanix. “94% of public sector organisations are already putting AI to work and expect returns in as little as one year. As public sector leaders look to see outcomes, now is the time to invest in AI-ready infrastructure, data security, privacy, and training to ensure long-term success.” 

Public sector survey respondents were asked about GenAI adoptions and trends, Kubernetes  and containers, how they’re running business and mission critical applications today, and where they plan to run them in the future. Key findings from this year’s report include: 

• GenAI solution adoption and deployment in the public sector will necessitate a  more comprehensive approach to data security. Public sector respondents indicate a significant amount of work needs to be done to improve the foundational levels of data security/governance required to support GenAI solution implementation and success. 92% of public sector respondents agree that their organisation could be doing more to  secure its GenAI models and applications. Luckily, many IT decision-makers in the  public sector are aware of this impending sea change, with 96% of respondents agreeing that GenAI is changing their organisation’s priorities, with security and privacy becoming higher priorities. 

• Prioritise infrastructure modernisation to support GenAI at scale across public  sector organisations. Running modern applications at enterprise scale requires  infrastructure solutions that can support the necessary requirements for complex data  security, data integrity, and resilience. Unfortunately, 76% of respondents in the public  sector believe their current IT infrastructure requires at least moderate improvement to  fully support cloud native apps/containers. Furthermore, IT infrastructure investment was  ranked as a top area of improvement among public sector respondents, a sign that IT decision-makers are aware of the need to improve. 

• GenAI solution adoption in the public sector continues at a rapid pace, but there  are still challenges to overcome. When it comes to GenAI adoption, public sector metrics show progress, with 94% of respondents saying their organisation is leveraging GenAI applications/workloads today. Most public sector organisations believe GenAI  solutions will help improve levels of productivity, automation, and efficiency. However, organisations in the public sector also note a range of challenges and potential hindrances regarding GenAI solution development and deployment, including data security and privacy, and the need for continued upskilling and hiring to support new GenAI projects/solutions. 

• Application containerisation and Kubernetes deployment are expanding across  the public sector. Application containerisation is increasingly pervasive across industry sectors and is set to expand in adoption across the public sector as well, with 96% of segment respondents saying their organisation is at least in the process of  containerising applications. This trend may be driven by the fact that 91% of  respondents in the public sector agree their organisation benefits from adopting cloud  native applications/containers. 

For the seventh consecutive year, Nutanix commissioned a global research study to learn about  the state of global enterprise cloud deployments, application containerisation trends, and GenAI  application adoption. In the Fall of 2024, U.K. 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 Asia-Pacific-Japan (APJ) region.