BY Michael Magura, Vice President, Partner Sales, Asia Pacific & Japan (APJ), Nutanix
The IT landscape has undergone a seismic shift in recent years. In 2024, big bang moments – from the Broadcom-VMware acquisition to the explosive growth of AI and NVIDIA’s expanding dominance – forced enterprises to rethink their cloud and virtualisation strategies. Now, in 2025, the focus has shifted from rapid expansion to deliberate optimisation, as organisations are moving beyond legacy limitations and embracing platforms designed for flexibility and long-term innovation.
As artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud-native applications continue to reshape IT strategies, coupled with data becoming increasingly distributed, enterprises are looking to transition to environments that enable modern applications to run anywhere — across clouds, on-premises, and at the edge. It’s no longer just about having the structure in place to address these changes; it’s about making that structure operationally effective and aligned with wider business objectives.
As Nutanix’s Channel Chief Dave Gwyn remarked, “You will remember, and we will remember, where we were in 2024.” This sentiment was echoed by Nutanix channel partners across the region during a recent panel discussion, as they shift their focus in 2025 to helping customers move beyond experimentation and into execution.
Architecting the Future: GenAI Shaping the New Backbone of IT Infrastructure
Change is the only constant in IT infrastructure, and the rise of generative AI (GenAI) has been a pivotal force in driving this transformation. With its ability to automate complex tasks, enhance productivity, and facilitate decision-making across industries, enterprises are rapidly adopting GenAI to stay competitive.
But real impact doesn’t only come from adoption alone – it comes from building the right foundation. As we step into 2025, enterprises are prioritising scaling the foundations that were laid: building platforms that can support AI-powered workloads securely, reliably, and cost-effectively.
This shift is particularly evident in markets like Japan, where enterprises are beginning to turn GenAI capabilities into tangible services. Toshihiro Kan, General Manager of the Telecommunication Engineering Development Department at CTC Itochu, emphasised that the real business value lies in understanding whether organisations can run B2B or B2C services on GenAI.
As organisations move from experimentation to tangible deployment, they face critical decisions around how to structure AI platforms, allocate resources, and ensure long-term scalability. Forward-looking enterprises are now implementing GenAI into their infrastructure strategies, and as Ashutosh Deuskar, Owner and Director of VDA Infosolutions, noted, “the major focus is investing in scalability, security, and performance to accelerate AI-driven innovations for customers. Like laying the groundwork for building the new architecture, this foundational phase sets up the success in a multicloud and hybrid cloud environment.”
Still, for many enterprises, the cost of adoption remains a barrier. But as technology evolves, so does accessibility. Roshan Shetty, Co-founder of Citius Cloud, shared that the cost of tokens, which are the units of text that models consume and generate, has dropped by 70%, lowering the total cost of ownership (TCO), making AI-powered applications more accessible.
Simplifying Deployment: Driving IT Infrastructure Modernisation through Containerisation
After building a solid GenAI infrastructure, which helps enterprises develop and run applications, the next phase is about optimising and organising workloads efficiently for seamless deployment. This is where containerisation has become a key enabler of application portability, operational efficiency, and scalability.
Just as you pack everything into neatly labeled boxes when moving to a new house, containerisation packages applications along with their dependencies into lightweight units, making them easy to move and deploy across any environment, whether on-premises or in the cloud.
“Customers are investing in containerising their apps to ensure flexibility in shifting between cloud providers or on-prem solutions as the market evolves,” said Pedro Duarte, sales director at Think Solutions. A sentiment echoed by Shetty, noting that organisations will need to adopt containerisation in alignment with cloud-native principles. The key is enabling seamless, consistent movement across platforms.”
This urgency is especially visible in markets like Australia, where cloud adoption is accelerating, and organisations are prioritising operational agility. Duarte highlighted that “the consistency and operational simplicity of containers” are driving this change.
Empowering Organisations with Flexibility and Agility
As organisations modernise their infrastructure, they’re contending with rising licensing costs, growing platform dependencies, and a rapidly consolidating vendor landscape. In response, many are embracing multivendor strategies and re-evaluating long-standing technology practices in favor of infrastructure that offers greater control, adaptability, and speed.
With recent market shake-ups and acquisitions of prominent industry players, Deuskar reflected on rising product costs and customers’ response in seeking more alternatives to mitigate risks associated with a dual-vendor strategy.
The emphasis now is not just on what a platform does, but how easily it integrates, migrates, and scales. Business leaders are under pressure to move fast, without the operational drag of disruptive change. The most robust and resilient infrastructure choices are those that simplify the path forward.
Shetty shared that what CEOs are looking for is a smooth transition with minimal retraining and operational impact.”
Across Asia Pacific and Japan, partners are seeing this play out in real time. Enterprises exploring alternatives to legacy virtualisation platforms are prioritising ease of migration, minimal downtime, and a consistent user experience, especially in high-uptime markets like Japan.
“Migration is becoming a strategic priority,” explained Kan. “Customers appreciate when solutions not only address technical requirements but also reduce the risk and complexity of change.”
And those decisions are already translating into business outcomes. Leaders across sectors like BFSI, IT services, and manufacturing are seeing the benefits of infrastructure designed for simplicity and resilience – less time managing complexity, more time focused on innovation.
As enterprises continue to forge ahead in 2025, IT infrastructure will be a strategic lever. Whether it’s through GenAI, containerisation, or new hybrid models, companies are making platform choices that will define their innovation trajectories for years to come. With the right infrastructure in place, enterprises can accelerate innovation without compromising on resilience, flexibility, or control.
