Only 14 percent of enterprises are ready for AI
New research from Cisco reveals that just 14 percent of organizations globally are fully prepared to deploy and leverage AI-powered technologies.
The company’s first AI Readiness Index surveyed over 8,000 global companies, and was developed in response to the accelerating adoption of AI, a generational shift that is impacting almost every area of business and daily life.
While 84 percent of respondents believe AI will have a significant impact on their business operations, this also raises new issues around data privacy and security. The Index findings show that companies experience the most challenges when it comes to using AI alongside their data. In fact, 81 percent of respondents admit that this is due to data existing in silos across their organizations.
There is some positive news when it comes to to building AI strategies, almost a third of respondents are categorized as 'Pacesetters' (fully prepared), which indicates a significant level of focus by C-Suite executives and IT leadership. This could be driven by the fact that most (97 percent) respondents say the urgency to deploy AI technologies in their organization has increased in the past six months, with IT infrastructure and cybersecurity reported as the top priority areas for AI deployments.
"As companies rush to deploy AI solutions, they must assess where investments are needed to ensure their infrastructure can best support the demands of AI workloads," says Liz Centoni, executive vice president and general manager, applications and chief strategy officer at Cisco. "Organizations also need to be able to observe with context how AI is being used to ensure ROI, security, and especially responsibility."
Among other findings, 61 percent of respondents believe they have a maximum of one year to implement an AI strategy before their organization begins to incur significant negative business impact.
In addition 95 percent of businesses are aware that AI will increase infrastructure workloads, but only 17 percent of organizations have networks that are fully flexible to handle this complexity. 23 percent of companies have limited or no scalability at all when it comes to meeting new AI challenges within their current IT infrastructures.
The full AI Readiness Index is available from the Cisco site.
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