Most companies in Luxembourg are convinced that the future of the cloud is hybrid. Only Taiwan has more businesses that adopt a hybrid cloud strategy. Nutanix is a driving force behind this shift, supporting customers to develop a strategy that is not ‘cloud-first’, but ‘cloud-smart’.

The Luxembourg branch of Nutanix started four years ago, but it has not lost its startup mindset. The local representatives of the company still invest a lot of time in talking to customers to understand the market and its specific needs. Because doing business in Luxembourg is not the same as doing business in the US. It is perhaps no surprise then that companies in this small country are leaders in the adoption of a hybrid cloud strategy. No less than 74% of Luxembourg businesses believe hybrid is the best model for their IT infrastructure, according to Nutanix’ global Enterprise Cloud Index.

In recent years, many companies have developed a cloud-first strategy. Convinced by the fact that their legacy infrastructure is a major obstacle to innovate, they decided to get rid of it and move all workloads to a public cloud solution. Most of those organizations have now returned from that strategy, even though it costs them a lot of financial resources. In 2021, the answer is somewhere in between private and public. Therefore, Nutanix always starts by modernizing the IT infrastructure of customers with an application-centric approach. Or, as we call it, with a cloud-smart strategy.

Why hybrid?

Cloud-first has been a powerful marketing strategy, but in 99% of the cases it is impossible to run everything in a public cloud. Since not all workloads and applications are suitable for the cloud, there are three important laws to consider when you migrate to a cloud environment.

First, there is the ‘Law of the Land’. Most countries have regulations about data governance. This is certainly true for Luxembourg where financial regulators require data to be stored within the country. So, for some data it is simply not an option to move to a public cloud provider that is located outside of Luxembourg.

Second, the ‘Law of Physics’ means that the application needs to move to the data, not the other way around. This why we are talking about edge. For an application-centric approach, we need to take into consideration the location of the application.

Finally, there is the ‘Law of Economics’ that suggests it is much more economical to own things that are steady and predictable. We know it is cheaper to book a hotel room for 2 nights, while you might consider buying a flat or choosing for long-term rent if you are staying for more than a year.

The future

Being a really condensed country, most of Luxembourg’s companies are located next to each other. There is an innovative spirit that drives organizations to learn and improve. Nutanix has seen a real snowball effect in the adoption of its technologies, allowing the startup of four years ago to develop into a mature young adult. However, as the team continues to expand, Nutanix maintains its startup mentality and continues to approach the market from a local perspective. Because whatever works elsewhere in the world will not necessarily do the same in Luxembourg. Customer experience will always be our main focus in digital transformation.

In five years, we expect to see more and more hybrid cloud adoption. Nutanix is constantly forging new partnerships with public cloud vendors that support customers to expand their strategy. It is Nutanix’ mission to delight our customers with a simple, open, hybrid, and multi-cloud software platform with rich data services to build, run and manage any application.

Communicated by Nutanix