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Enterprises Embrace AI but Struggle with Outdated Infrastucture, Survey Finds

• By John K. Waters
• 08/06/2024

Almost overnight, AI has become integral to business operations, enabling informed decision-making, accelerating innovation, and enhancing customer and employee experiences. And yet, many organizations face significant barriers when it comes to realizing the full potential of this technology.

In a recently published survey of IT leaders, 90% of respondents confirmed that they are adopting AI in some capacity, but many said they're also struggling to get the full benefits of the technology because of outdated infrastructure and a lack of skilled employees.

The report ("The State of Enterprise AI and Modern Data Architecture"), conducted by hybrid data platform provider Cloudera, is based on a survey of 600 IT leaders from the U.S., EMEA, and APAC regions.

According to the survey, 74% of respondents are concerned about AI-related security and compliance risks, 38% lack the proper training or talent to manage AI tools, and 26% find AI tools too expensive.

"For the majority of companies, the quality of their data is not great, it's distributed across various infrastructures and not documented in an efficient manner, and we're seeing the fallout from that presented in the challenges identified by the survey," said Cloudera Chief Strategy Officer Abhas Ricky, in a statement.

Trust in data is crucial for successful AI implementation, Ricky said, and yet 55% of respondents to the Cloudera survey expressed frustration with accessing their company's data, citing issues such as contradictory datasets, inability to govern data across platforms, and data overload.

Despite these challenges, the survey revealed key use cases where AI is making a significant impact. Improving customer experiences, increasing operational efficiency, and expediting analytics are among the top benefits reported by respondents. AI is being used to enhance security and fraud detection, automate customer support, provide predictive customer service, and power chatbots, they said.

"Managing data where it resides is the most important thing when it comes to adopting AI," Ricky added, "being able to run models in a cost-efficient manner where that data already lives. Instead of bringing the data to the models, enterprises are starting to realize the advantages of bringing AI models to their data."

Cloudera is in a unique position as a hybrid open data lakehouse, because it can bring analytics and AI to business data, helping enterprises manage their data efficiently and securely, the company said. This enables companies to harness the power of their data, trust its accuracy, and rely on it for analysis and business decision-making.

The survey, commissioned by Cloudera and conducted by Researchscape, represents the views of IT leaders from companies with more than 1,000 employees. It was fielded in April and May 2024 and weighted to reflect the overall GDP of the surveyed countries.