“This is one of those inflection points where I don’t think anybody really has a full view of the significance of the change this is going to have on not just companies but society as a whole,” says Patrick Milligan, chief information security officer at Ford, which is making AI an important part of its transformation efforts and expanding its use across company operations.
Given its game-changing potential—and the breakneck speed with which it is evolving—it is perhaps not surprising that companies are feeling the pressure to deploy AI as soon as possible: 98% say they feel an increased sense of urgency in the last year. And 85% believe they have less than 18 months to deploy an AI strategy or they will see negative business effects.
Companies that take a “wait and see” approach will fall behind, says Jeetu Patel, president and chief product officer at Cisco. “If you wait for too long, you risk becoming irrelevant,” he says. “I don’t worry about AI taking my job, but I definitely worry about another person that uses AI better than me or another company that uses AI better taking my job or making my company irrelevant.”
But despite the urgency, just 13% of companies globally say they are ready to leverage AI to its full potential. IT infrastructure is an increasing challenge as workloads grow ever larger. Two-thirds (68%) of organizations say their infrastructure is moderately ready at best to adopt and scale AI technologies.
Essential capabilities include adequate compute power to process complex AI models, optimized network performance across the organization and in data centers, and enhanced cybersecurity capabilities to detect and prevent sophisticated attacks. This must be combined with observability, which ensures the reliable and optimized performance of infrastructure, models, and the overall AI system by providing continuous monitoring and analysis of their behavior. Good quality, well-managed enterprise-wide data is also essential—after all, AI is only as good as the data it draws on. All of this must be supported by AI-focused company culture and talent development.
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