Riyadh – Sharikat Mubasher: Saudi organizations are rapidly advancing from AI experimentation to enterprise deployment, but many are grappling with governance, infrastructure readiness and data sovereignty as they scale their initiatives, according to Nutanix's latest Enterprise Cloud Index (ECI) report.

The study found that AI is driving a shift in enterprise IT strategies, with 85% of Saudi IT executives expecting application containerization to increase over the next three years. Meanwhile, 72% said AI is accelerating their organization's adoption of containers, while 82% of companies using containers for AI applications are building new applications in containerized environments.

The report also highlighted governance concerns, with 77% of respondents warning that the use of unsanctioned AI tools poses business risks. Nearly two-thirds (65%) said employees outside IT had implemented AI applications without official oversight.

Data sovereignty remains a top priority, with 78% of executives considering it a critical factor in infrastructure decisions. More than half (53%) said security and data protection concerns require infrastructure to remain within Saudi Arabia, either on-premises or in local cloud regions.

Talal Alsaif, Regional Director for Central Gulf at Nutanix, said Saudi enterprises have an opportunity to maximize AI's potential by modernizing their infrastructure through hybrid multicloud strategies that strengthen governance, support containerized applications and ensure data sovereignty.