Rethinking Kubernetes for APAC’s AI ambitions

Why “let the cloud do it” falls short

Many APJ organisations opt for cloud-managed Kubernetes solutions like Amazon EKS or Microsoft AKS, attracted by one-click provisioning and automated scaling. These platforms certainly appear cost-effective and reduce operational overhead initially. Yet, going all-in with any one cloud has its pitfalls.

First and most obvious is vendor lock-in. While these solutions promise portability, cloud-native services often become deeply embedded in operations. When organisations build applications around proprietary cloud services, they sacrifice the very agility that containers promise. For APJ businesses operating across diverse regulatory environments and markets, this dependency limits strategic options and compromises competitive positioning.

Cost is another challenge. What starts as attractive pricing may escalate as organisations add clusters, storage services, and monitoring capabilities. Integrating these services often requires specialised expertise, driving up both operational expenditures and the human capital investment needed to maintain proprietary systems. If costs reach a tipping point, the costs to switch, including time, effort, and data migration, become prohibitively expensive.

Stumbling into DIY mayhem

To avoid such issues, many organisations choose the other extreme: going open-source and managing everything themselves. While this approach promises cost savings, technical control, and community support, it may create business disruptions that far outweigh benefits.

The most damaging consequence is organisational fragmentation. Individual teams hack together their own Kubernetes implementations with limited standardisation across business units. In large enterprises, this has resulted in thousands of different implementations that cannot communicate effectively - essentially turning containers into a barrier rather than an enabler of business agility.

This fragmentation destroys operational efficiency and prevents organisations from realising Kubernetes’ most compelling business advantage: resource optimisation at scale. Only companies with consolidated Kubernetes management can dynamically scale resources during peak business periods and optimise costs. Without centralised oversight, APJ organisations miss these efficiency gains and struggle to demonstrate return-on-investment from cloud-native investments.

Perhaps most critically, the DIY approach burns valuable developer and administrative resources that are better spent on innovation instead of maintenance. In a region where 75% of organisations already cite lack of Kubernetes expertise as a barrier, this misallocation of talent becomes a competitive disadvantage.

Toward a centralised solution

The way forward is to establish centralised cloud-native engineering teams or regional centres of excellence that consolidate scarce expertise and standardise Kubernetes deployments across the organisation. This approach addresses APJ’s unique multicloud reality by creating standardised stacks that work consistently across private and public cloud platforms, with push-button deployment and automated maintenance using cloud-native open-source projects at the core.

In a region where IT talent remains scarce, standardisation enables centralised teams to systematically refactor existing applications, transforming individual knowledge into organisational capability, fulfilling containers' agility promises.

The strategic imperative for Kubernetes excellence

Getting Kubernetes right isn’t just a technical imperative – it is business-critical for APJ organisations competing in an AI-driven economy. When properly centralised and managed, Kubernetes enables rapid innovation, efficient resource utilisation, and seamless scaling of next-generation workloads, including generative and agentic AI systems. Organisations that master Kubernetes management gain competitive advantages through faster time-to-market, reduced operational costs, and agility to respond quickly across multiple clouds and regions.

Conversely, fragmented implementations drain scarce technical talent, inflate cloud spending, and create complexity that stifles innovation. In a region where the pace of digital transformation determines market leadership, businesses cannot afford to let containerised chaos undermine their strategic objectives. The choice is clear: invest in centralised Kubernetes excellence now, or risk falling behind competitors harnessing its full transformative potential.

Daryush Ashjari is chief technology officer and vice-president for solution engineering in Asia Pacific and Japan at Nutanix