AI redefines priorities for IT leaders

A new survey from Flexera shows that 42 percent of IT leaders say they believe if they could integrate AI, it would make the most difference to their organizations.

The study surveyed 800 IT leaders from the US, UK, Germany and Australia to determine how IT decision makers' priorities have evolved over the past 12 months and outline their focus for next year.

It finds there are fears of overspending, with the estimated average amount of overspending across cloud, software, SaaS and hardware being around 20-25 percent. While 15 percent of IT leaders say they believe their spending is fine, this is a five point decrease from last year, indicating some cost concerns are increasing. For those IT leaders who did report issues, 31 percent say they believe they were overspending on security tools, which is the top answer when compared to other technologies like cloud infrastructure (28 percent) or hardware (27 percent).

Although Microsoft continues to dominate the list of top technology vendors, OpenAI is now tied for the number four spot against industry stalwart Oracle. While many of the top vendors like Microsoft (63 percent of respondents), Google (49 percent), Amazon Web Services (38 percent) and Oracle (37 percent) have a large range of services which could account for their foothold with IT leaders, the inclusion of OpenAI (37 percent) in the top five further indicates AI's importance on the modern technology landscape.

"While IT leaders are facing a myriad of challenges and opportunities, artificial intelligence seems to pose the biggest potential gains in the short- and long-term," says Conal Gallagher, CIO at Flexera. "There's an extraordinary expense required of AI projects, creating an even greater sense of urgency to not only understand the impact of the investment but to quickly demonstrate returns that advance core business objectives. AI is not only disrupting and transforming IT -- for example, creating more focus on compute resources and data quality -- but planting the seeds to change the way we all work. It's no surprise that IT is at the forefront of recognizing and ushering in this disruption, helping to be a guiding force for their organizations." 

There's still optimism about innovation, 91 percent of IT leaders believe innovation is a top strategic priority for their organization, and 93 percent say their organization is more innovative with their IT and technology resources. While 54 percent say that innovation is not occurring in the right areas, 65 percent also believe that emerging technologies, such as AI, no longer neatly fit into traditional buckets and new teams or processes are needed to manage them.

You can get the full report from the Flexera site.

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