AI Adoption: Governance and Infrastructure Gaps Hinder Scale
Financial services firms are accelerating their adoption of artificial intelligence, but governance shortcomings and infrastructure constraints are preventing many from scaling deployments effectively, according to a new study by Nutanix.
The eighth annual Financial Sector Enterprise Cloud Index (ECI) found that while AI adoption is widespread, organisational and operational challenges have emerged as the biggest obstacles to broader implementation.
The survey revealed that 66% of IT executives are aware of employees using unsanctioned AI tools, while 86% believe such «shadow AI» activity poses a risk to their organisations.
Process complexity was cited by 38% of respondents as the main barrier to scaling AI initiatives, followed by organisational issues such as leadership and skills gaps (34%). Technical limitations accounted for 28% of concerns.
The report also highlighted growing tensions around data sovereignty. While 79% of financial services organisations prioritise keeping data within specific jurisdictions, 62% continue to run containerised workloads in public cloud environments, creating what Nutanix described as a growing «sovereignty debt.»
Containerisation is increasingly being viewed as a key enabler of AI adoption, with 90% of respondents saying AI is accelerating container adoption and 89% expecting container use to increase further.
Infrastructure readiness remains a challenge. Nearly seven in 10 respondents (68%) said their on-premises infrastructure is not yet fully equipped to support AI workloads, while 64% rely on third-party providers to fill capability gaps.
«Across APJ, the race is no longer just about who has the most advanced AI models, but who can scale them securely and responsibly,» said Jay Tuseth, Vice President and General Manager, APJ at Nutanix. «The winners will be the organisations that successfully align their infrastructure with regional compliance and data sovereignty demands.»
The findings are based on a global survey of 1,600 cloud, IT and engineering executives from organisations with at least 500 employees, conducted by Wakefield Research in November 2025 on behalf of Nutanix.
