Cisco’s AI Readiness Index has found that only 14 percent of global businesses are fully prepared to deploy and leverage AI.
Not only are most organisations struggling to keep up with the pace of AI innovations but there are also gaps across critical business areas that represent “serious risks”, according to Cisco.
The race to incorporate enterprise AI is on, with 61 percent of respondents believing they have a maximum of one year to implement an AI strategy before their organisations are severely negatively impacted.
Liz Centoni, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Applications and Chief Strategy Office at Cisco, shared her advice:
“The race to AI Readiness is on, with organisations under intense pressure to shift from strategic planning to execution mode in order to capitalise on the transformative potential that AI represents.
“To realise the benefit of AI-powered products and services, companies need solutions that secure and observe their AI models and toolchains to ensure performance, secure sensitive data and systems, and deliver trustworthy and responsible AI outcomes.”
AI Readiness Index Findings
The AI Readiness Index, which surveyed more than 800 global companies, was reportedly commissioned in response to the accelerating adoption of AI solutions driven by recent advancements in generative AI technology.
While the surge of AI adoption has led to new challenges, including issues surrounding data privacy and security, with 81 percent of respondents admitting to having siloed or fragmented data in their organisations.
Despite data being central to AI operations, it seems to be the weakest area of readiness for organisations, with the highest number of companies lagging behind (17 percent).
On the plus side, the index shows that companies are taking actions to prepare for the future of AI. Almost one-third of respondents had already built strategies, perhaps motivated by the fact that 97 percent saw the urgency of AI technology deployments increasing in the past six months.
It was also revealed that 95 percent of organisations already have a highly defined AI strategy in place or are in the process of doing so.
When it comes to infrastructure, it seems networks are not sufficiently equipped to meet AI workloads.
Although 95 percent of businesses understand that AI will add to infrastructure workloads, only 17 percent of organisations have networks capable of handling this complexity. Moreover, 23 percent of companies were found to have limited or no scalability to meet the challenges of AI within their existing IT infrastructure.
