5G to drive hybrid cloud adoption in ANZ

The roll-out of 5G networks will drive a fresh round of cloud transformation and use of hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) across Australia, according to Nutanix.

Jamie Humphrey, Nutanix’s managing director for Australia and New Zealand (ANZ), said the shift of computing to the edge spurred on by 5G networks and connected devices will create opportunities for businesses to use cloud software and HCI to deal with the issue of “data gravity” and allocate resources where they are needed.

This hybrid cloud approach also allows enterprises to have full control of whether computing loads are tackled by public cloud or on-premise systems, Humphrey added.

Humphrey noted that a uniquely Australian consideration was that “once you are outside of metropolitan cities, the bandwidth becomes quite limited”, which currently limits the ability to leverage public cloud. Potentially, 5G connectivity could help address the issue.

Nutanix recently released the findings of a survey of Australian manufacturers which suggests that they will be the front runners in adopting hybrid cloud from here on.

According to the study, one motivation for deploying hybrid clouds is enterprises’ need to gain control over their IT spending.

Organisations that use public cloud spend 26% of their annual IT budget on public cloud, with this percentage predicted to increase to 35% in two years’ time. Notably, over a third of organisations using public clouds said their spending has exceeded their budgets.

A separate survey of large business in ANZ commissioned by Infosys revealed that 96% of organisations have a company-wide cloud strategy – even as legacy systems are putting the brakes on how fast that strategy can be implemented.

The analysis also revealed some details about how companies divvy up workloads across public and private clouds.

Private clouds are selected for reasons led by cost reduction, security and regulatory requirement. The main reasons for using public cloud, meanwhile, are scalability, higher availability and the pace at which it allows IT to be upgraded.

Matt Young, Nutanix’s senior vice-president for Asia-Pacific and Japan, who was in Sydney recently, said whatever the drivers for public cloud adoption, there is mounting dissatisfaction regarding rising public cloud costs.

“That is what is driving our growth,” he said, claiming Nutanix was growing 50% year on year because enterprises want to know how to bring back on-premise workloads.

Nutanix has grown steadily since setting up operations in Australian in 2013. It has around 100 employees across ANZ and an array of users, including the Department of Social Services, Department of the Environment, Swinburne University, Canberra Airport, and the Treasury, which prepared this year’s budget using hybrid cloud infrastructure.

Riding on its success in ANZ, Nutanix is about to open a new Sydney office in the swish Barangaroo district of Sydney.