Study Shows Healthcare Industry is in Early Stages of Multicloud Adoption, but Deployments are Rising

Rhea-AI Summary

Nutanix (NASDAQ: NTNX) revealed insights from its Enterprise Cloud Index survey, indicating the healthcare sector is lagging in cloud adoption, with only 27% currently engaging. However, this figure is expected to surge to 51% over the next three years. Key challenges include data integration (49%) and cost management (48%). Respondents cited the need for a hybrid multicloud model for addressing operational complexities. The report emphasizes the importance of improving business continuity and disaster recovery, with IT spending increasing due to pandemic-related demands.

Positive

• Expected increase in cloud adoption from 27% to 51% in healthcare organizations over three years.
• High interest in hybrid multicloud models among respondents (90%).
• Focus on improving business continuity and disaster recovery (38% intent to increase multicloud use).
• Planned IT spending increases in security (62%) and AI-based technologies (60%) linked to pandemic demand.

Negative

• Current healthcare cloud adoption remains low compared to other sectors.
• 92% of healthcare organizations struggle with managing multicloud infrastructures.
• 84% lack necessary IT skills to meet business cloud demands.

Research Reveals Hybrid Multicloud is the Ideal IT model, but Healthcare is Slower to Adopt

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Nutanix (NASDAQ: NTNX), a leader in hybrid multicloud computing, announced the healthcare findings of its global Enterprise Cloud Index (ECI) survey and research report, which measures enterprise progress with cloud adoption in the industry. The research showed that healthcare organizations appear to be in the early phases of cloud adoption and behind the cross-industry global respondent average. However, adoption is expected to jump from 27% to 51% in the next three years, in line with the global trend of evolving to a multicloud IT infrastructure that spans a mix of private and public clouds.

Multicloud is the dominant IT architecture in use worldwide, however, among healthcare ECI respondents, 30% say private cloud is their most common IT deployment model. The healthcare industry is highly regulated and has likely been slower to embrace the public cloud as a bona fide component of their IT environments for security and privacy reasons. While multicloud adoption is trending upwards, the complexity of managing across cloud borders remains a major challenge for healthcare organizations, with 92% of respondents agreeing that success requires simpler management across multicloud infrastructures. To address top challenges related to interoperability, security, cost and data integration, 90% agree that a hybrid multicloud model, an IT operating model with multiple clouds both private and public with interoperability between, is ideal.

“Multicloud is here to stay, but complexity and challenges remain as regulations drive many of healthcare organizations’ IT deployment decisions,” said Joseph Wolfgram, Healthcare CTO at Nutanix. “Regardless of where they are in their multicloud journeys, evolution to a hybrid multicloud IT infrastructure that spans a mix of private and public clouds with interoperability is underway and necessary for healthcare organizations to succeed.”

Healthcare survey respondents were asked about their current cloud challenges, how they’re running business applications now, and where they plan to run them in the future. Respondents were also asked about the impact of the pandemic on recent, current, and future IT infrastructure decisions and how IT strategy and priorities may change because of it. Key findings from this year’s report include:

• Top multicloud challenges include integrating data across clouds (49%), managing costs (48%), and performance challenges with network overlays (45%). While multicloud adoption is trending upwards, most healthcare organizations are struggling with the reality of operating across multiple clouds, private and public. Given that more than 84% say they currently lack the IT skills required to meet business demands, simplifying operations is likely to be a key focus for many in the year ahead. However, IT leaders are realizing that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to the cloud, making hybrid multicloud ideal according to the majority of respondents.
• Application mobility is top of mind. All healthcare organizations (100%) have moved one or more applications to a new IT environment over the last 12 months, likely moving applications out of legacy three-tier environments and into private clouds given healthcare’s above-average private cloud and traditional datacenter penetration. Yet, 80% of respondents agree that moving a workload to a new cloud environment can be costly and time-consuming. They cite security (48%) most often as the reason for the move, outpacing the global average (41%), followed by gaining control of the application (38%), and improving performance (36%).
• Focus on business continuity and disaster recovery is helping to drive cloud adoption. Due to being a highly regulated industry, healthcare organizations have been slower to embrace the public cloud as a main component of their IT environments for security reasons. However, healthcare IT professionals indicated an intent to use public cloud services as supplemental IT infrastructure to which they can fail over for improved business continuity levels and disaster recovery setups (BC/DR). In fact, they cited improving BC/DR most often as motivating their three-year plans to increase multicloud use (38%). Healthcare’s interest in boosting BC/DR could prove to be the impetus for greater public cloud acceptance, as this use case has a strong public cloud component, which could accelerate the industry's general multicloud usage.
• Top healthcare IT priorities for the next 12 to 18 months include adopting 5G (47%) and AI/ML-based services (46%), and improving BC/DR (45%), and multicloud management (44%). Healthcare respondents also said that the COVID-19 pandemic has spurred them to increase their IT spending in certain areas such as bolstering security posture (62%), implementing AI-based self-service technology (60%), and upgrading existing IT infrastructure (48%).

For the fourth consecutive year, Vanson Bourne conducted research on behalf of Nutanix, surveying 1,700 IT decision-makers around the world in August and September 2021. This report is supplemental to the global Fourth Annual Enterprise Cloud Index master report and focuses on cloud deployment and planning trends in the healthcare industry, based on the responses of 250 IT professionals in that market. It highlights healthcare provider cloud plans, priorities, and experiences and includes comparisons of the healthcare industry’s multicloud activity with that of other markets and the global response base overall. The respondent base spanned various business sizes and the following geographies: the Americas; Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA); and the Asia Pacific Japan (APJ) region.

To learn more about the report and findings, please download the full fourth Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Index here.

About Nutanix

Nutanix is a global leader in cloud software and a pioneer in hyperconverged infrastructure solutions, making clouds invisible, freeing customers to focus on their business outcomes. Organizations around the world use Nutanix software to leverage a single platform to manage any app at any location for their hybrid multicloud environments. Learn more at www.nutanix.com or follow us on social media @nutanix.

© 2022 Nutanix, Inc. All rights reserved. Nutanix, the Nutanix logo, and all Nutanix product and service names mentioned herein are registered trademarks or trademarks of Nutanix, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Other brand names mentioned herein are for identification purposes only and may be the trademarks of their respective holder(s). This release may contain links to external websites that are not part of Nutanix.com. Nutanix does not control these sites and disclaims all responsibility for the content or accuracy of any external site. Our decision to link to an external site should not be considered an endorsement of any content on such a site. Certain information contained in this press release may relate to or be based on studies, publications, surveys and other data obtained from third-party sources and our own internal estimates and research. While we believe these third-party studies, publications, surveys and other data are reliable as of the date of this press release, they have not independently verified, and we make no representation as to the adequacy, fairness, accuracy, or completeness of any information obtained from third-party sources.

This release may contain express and implied forward-looking statements, which are not historical facts and are instead based on our current expectations, estimates and beliefs. The accuracy of such statements involves risks and uncertainties and depends upon future events, including those that may be beyond our control, and actual results may differ materially and adversely from those anticipated or implied by such statements. Any forward-looking statements included herein speak only as of the date hereof and, except as required by law, we assume no obligation to update or otherwise revise any of such forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances.

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Media Contact:

Abby Evans

pr@nutanix.com

Source: Nutanix, Inc.

FAQ

What are the key findings of the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Index 2022 for healthcare?

The Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Index 2022 shows healthcare organizations are behind in cloud adoption, with only 27% currently using cloud services, expected to rise to 51% in three years. Major challenges include data integration and cost management.

How does Nutanix plan to address healthcare IT challenges?

Nutanix emphasizes the need for a hybrid multicloud model, which can simplify management and improve interoperability to help healthcare organizations overcome their IT challenges.

What percentage of healthcare organizations are adopting multicloud solutions?

Currently, only 27% of healthcare organizations have adopted multicloud solutions, but this is projected to increase to 51% within three years.

How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected IT spending in healthcare?

The pandemic has spurred increased IT spending in healthcare, particularly in bolstering security (62%) and implementing AI-based self-service technologies (60%).