Ensuring data security and protecting against ransomware is the #1 IT leadership priority for 2024. This comes as no surprise. Ransomware attacks, and data loss/downtime events are two major reasons why large organizations find themselves on the wrong side of the news headlines. For C-level executives and IT leadership, these events can have career-altering impacts, and preventing/mitigating attack and or data loss should absolutely remain their top priority.
Q: What do you think are the top priorities for your organization’s CIO/CTO/Leadership?
Implementing the right hybrid IT operations was ranked #2, likely driven by ongoing requirements for IT leaders to find new ways to deploy and manage infrastructure across owned data centers and different cloud platforms. Today there are a range of hybrid infrastructure software and services available for implementation, and IT leaders should ensure these solutions can enable infrastructure agnostic operations, so applications and data can run seamlessly across different cloud-powered data centers and services.
Coming in as the #3 C-level priority is the implementation of AI strategies. Media hype and commercial availability of AI tools and services drove enterprise interest in AI technology to new heights during 2023. This hype will continue to influence C-level decision making in 2024. For detailed information on AI technology and solution evolution, and its impact on IT infrastructure trends, please see Nutanix's State of Enterprise AI Report.
Digging deeper into C-level response rates uncovered the following findings:
89% of C-level respondents agree that having a single platform to run and manage all applications and data across clouds is ideal for their organization (6 points higher than decision makers)
81% of C-level respondents say that investments in hiring and retaining development of engineering staff will increase over 2024 (14 points higher than decision makers)
In addition to ransomware protection, data privacy is high on the executive radar. C-level respondents ranked data privacy as the #1 data management challenge faced by their organization (ransomware protection was ranked #2).
91% of C-level respondents agree that sustainability is a priority to their organization (4 points higher than decision makers).
Data security and
ransomware protection
Implementing the right
hybrid IT operations
Implementing
AI strategies
Containerization involves packaging software that contains all the necessary elements to run an operating system virtually. This allows organizations to run operating systems from anywhere – in a private data center, public cloud, or even a personal laptop. Containerization can also be considered a core tenet of hybrid multicloud strategy.
Often, when enterprises use containers to architect cloud native applications, they also leverage container orchestration platforms or services to manage their containerized applications. Container orchestration involves a set of automated processes by which containers are deployed, networked, scaled, and managed. The main container orchestration platform used today is Kubernetes, an open-source platform that serves as the basis for many of today’s enterprise container orchestration platforms and managed services.
The 2024 ECI shows application containerization is pervasive, with 97% of respondents indicating that some proportion of their application estate is containerized.
All of our applications are containerized
More than 50% of applications are containerized
Less than 50% of applications are containerized
None of our applications are containerized
Only 48% of very large enterprises (5,000+ employees) say that more than half of their applications are containerized – 10 points below the total market average
62% of APJ respondents say that more than half of their applications are containerized – slightly above the global average and higher than EMEA or Americas
12% of Federal/Central Government respondents say that none of their applications are containerized – the highest proportion among all industries
We modernized our IT infrastructure to improve sustainability
Aimed to better our ability to identify areas for reducing waste products (e.g. harmful pollutants, chemicals, paper etc.)
Improving compliance with environmental regulations
Our capability to monitor greenhouse emissions and our carbon footprint has improved
Remote working facilitated by technologies has reduced pollution from employee travel to a central working location
We utilize more renewable energy sources
Become carbon neutral by 2050
Americas
EMEA
APJ
Figure 10: Sustainability Initiatives Focused on Over the Past Year by Geography
Ransomware Recovery: When looking at ransomware recovery by region, regional distribution of recovery times are relatively similar with slight differences in proportions of organizations able to recover within hours vs days. APJ indicates the highest proportion of respondents who said they were able to recover within hours (see Figure 11). Interestingly, 14% of EMEA respondents say their organization has not experienced a ransomware attack in the last 3 years, much higher than Americas and APJ, where the percentage was just 9% of respondents in both regions.
Our operations were fully restored in a few hours
Our operations were fully restored in a few days
Our operations were fully restored in a few weeks
Our operations were mostly restored within a few hours, but additional impacts of the attack continued for longer than a few weeks
Our operations were mostly restored in a few days, but additional impacts of the attack continued for longer than a few weeks
Americas
EMEA
APJ
Figure 11: Time Required to Recover from Ransomware Attack by Geography
Data Management: Similar to the global average, ransomware protection and data security top the list of biggest data management challenges in Americas and APJ. However EMEA broke from this trend, ranking data privacy and data storage usage guidance (e.g., GDPR) as their #1 and #2 challenges, respectively – with ransomware protection ranked #3. Cost remained the lowest-ranked data management challenge across all global regions (see Figure 12).