AI adoption in financial services accelerating, but growing governance gaps and infrastructure challenges are slowing scale: Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Index

• 10 Aug 2026
• TM Team
• 0 Comments

Nutanix, a leader in hybrid multicloud computing, announced the findings of its eighth annual Financial Sector Enterprise Cloud Index (ECI) report. The findings reveal that while financial services organisations are rapidly adopting AI, many are struggling to scale effectively as governance, infrastructure and operational readiness lag behind

Key findings:

·       Shadow AI is widespread and poses a significant risk: 66% of IT executives report employees using unsanctioned AI, while 86% say it creates business risk.

·       Governance and process are the biggest barriers: Process complexity (38%) and organisational factors, including leadership and skills (34%), outweigh technical limitations (28%) when scaling AI.

·       Data sovereignty is creating growing tension: While 79% prioritise data sovereignty, 62% still run containerised workloads in the public cloud, creating a growing "Sovereignty Debt"

·       Containerisation is accelerating as a foundation for AI: 90% say AI is accelerating container adoption, with 89% expecting containerisation to grow.

The findings point to an inflection for the financial services industry, as organisations race to scale AI amid increasing regulatory and operational pressures.

As organisations push forward with deployment, 68% acknowledge that their infrastructure is not fully equipped to support AI workloads on-premises, while nearly two-thirds (64%) rely on third-party providers to bridge that gap. To move from adoption to scale, organisations will need to better align infrastructure, governance, and operational processes to ensure AI can be deployed securely and compliantly.

Jay Tuseth, Vice President, APJ at Nutanix, said: "Across APJ, the race is no longer just about who has the most advanced AI models, but who can scale them securely and responsibly. As financial institutions navigate growing risks around sovereignty and unsanctioned AI use, success requires a shift toward flexible, containerized platforms that unify workloads across hybrid environments. The winners won't just have the biggest compute budgets - they will be the ones who successfully align their infrastructure with regional compliance and data sovereignty demands."

For the eighth consecutive year, Nutanix commissioned a global research study to assess the state of cloud adoption, containerization, and GenAI application deployment. Conducted in November 2025 by Wakefield Research, the survey gathered responses from 1,600 cloud, IT, and engineering executives with at least a manager-level title. Respondents represent organizations with 500 or more employees across Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States.