Bengaluru, Dec 15 (IANS): More than half (63 per cent) of Indian enterprises surveyed have ramped up their investment in Hybrid Cloud as a direct result of the pandemic, compared to 46 per cent globally, a new report said on Tuesday.

Also, more than half (56 per cent) of Indian firms said they plan to run an integrated hybrid environment within five years, stating that traditional data centre penetration will drop from 13 per cent to 3 per cent.

"Cloud infrastructure is now a critical component of IT infrastructure, as Indian enterprises branch further into investing in digitization and look for secure alternatives for their workloads," said Balakrishnan Anantharaman, managing director, sales, India and SAARC, Nutanix.

"In the business environment brought about by the pandemic, flexibility and security have emerged to be of utmost importance, and Indian enterprises need the ability to match workloads to the best environment".

Additionally, the report found that 97 per cent of respondents in India declared hybrid cloud was the correct architecture for their organizations, higher than the global average of 87 per cent.

"The untapped potential of hybrid cloud solutions is finally being recognised by Indian companies as they move away from legacy IT systems and adopt cloud solutions," Balakrishnan said.

While cost savings are a driver in the decision to modernise IT infrastructures, it is not the primary factor.

Better control of IT resource usage (79 per cent), increased speed to meet business needs (69 per cent), and better support to customers (60 per cent) are the key factors to modernisation.

India's appetite for hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) is also apparent, with nearly three-fourths (72 per cent) stating that they have already deployed or are in the process of deploying HCI, compared to 50 per cent of global respondents.

"The report suggests that India is a front runner when it comes to modernizing IT infrastructures as we begin our journey into a new normal", Balakrishnan noted.