AI readiness helps companies gain an edge over their competition
The latest AI Readiness Index from Cisco is based on a study of over 8,000 AI leaders across 30 markets and 26 industries. It finds that what it calls ‘Pacesetters,’ about 13 percent of organizations for the last three years, outperform their peers across every measure of AI value.
Of these Pacesetters 98 percent are designing their networks for the growth, scale and complexity of AI compared to 46 percent overall.
Nearly all Pacesetters (99 percent) have a defined AI roadmap (compared tos 58 percent overall) and 91 percent (vs 35 percent) have a change-management plan. Budgets match intent, with 79 percent making AI the top investment priority (vs 24 percent) and 96 percent with short- and long-term funding strategies (vs 43 percent).
For non-Pacesetters the index shows 83 percent of organizations plan to deploy AI agents, and nearly 40 percent expect them to work alongside employees within a year. But for majority of these companies, AI agents are exposing weak foundations -- systems that can barely handle reactive, task-based AI, let alone AI systems that act autonomously and learn continuously. More than half (54 percent) of respondents say their networks can’t scale for complexity or data volume and just 15 percent describe their networks as flexible or adaptable.
“We're moving past the era of question-answering chatbots and stepping into the next major phase of AI: agents that independently execute tasks," says Jeetu Patel, Cisco's president and chief product officer. "Today's study shows that over 80 percent of companies are prioritizing agentic solutions, with two out of three reporting that these systems are already meeting or exceeding their performance goals. The evidence points to a massive competitive advantage: companies that are further along are seeing dramatically stronger returns than their peers.”
In addition 71 percent of Pacesetters say their networks are fully flexible and can scale instantly for any AI project ( 15 percent overall), and 77 percent are investing in new data-center capacity within the next 12 months (43 percent overall).
Measuring the effectiveness of their projects is key too, 95 percent track the impact of their AI investments -- three times higher than others -- and 71 percent are confident their use cases will generate new revenue streams, more than double the overall average.
Trust is also part of the Pacesetters’ value equation as 62 percent integrate AI into their security and identity systems (vs 29 percent), and 75 percent are fully equipped to control and secure AI agents (vs 31 percent).
The full report is available from the Cisco site.
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