Almost all organisations recognise crucial role of AI

Appetite for the potential of AI projects is at an all-time high, according to research conducted by the Cloud Industry Forum, which revealed that 42% of businesses now consider it to be their most important IT project, ranking ahead of other considerations such as security, IT sustainability (both 40%) and controlling costs (38%).

AI’s prominence in modern business is also supported by the finding that 96% of organisations believe AI will be at least somewhat important to their organisation in the next five years. This figure is a significant increase from 2023, when 86% of organisations reported the same.

David Terrar, CEO of the Cloud Industry Forum, said: “As with any new technology, AI was met with some scepticism during its rise to prominence. The data from this year’s report indicates that much of the remaining scepticism has entirely been quashed. Businesses are now further informed and fully on board with AI’s ability to reduce costs, save time and enhance their offerings.

“Crucially, the past 12 months have served as a welcome opportunity for businesses to do some of the dirty work that often comes with AI implementation, before they can reap its rewards. It has long been clear that getting the best out of AI requires time, effort and resources. Collecting the right data and ensuring that enough of it is available to train models, for example, can be a long and laborious task. Most organisations seem to be wise to this now.

“Elsewhere, businesses have also had new legislation and regulations to contend with as lawmakers have made strides to keep the progress of AI in check. Now though, businesses have had time to get to grips with these new regulations and are firmly on their way to AI implementation, if they haven’t implemented already.”

Though AI projects are not limited to generative AI, it remains a popular form of adoption. 94% of organisations report that they are either planning to or are already using generative AI. Specifically, 62% of businesses report that it is already in use across at least some parts of their organisation.

For many businesses, the motivations for adoption are clear. 96% of respondents in this year’s report said that generative AI will or has already benefited their organisation, including improving data analytics (46%), customer service (45%) and/or products and services (43%).

Terrar continued: “Generative AI has perhaps become the most well-known use case for AI, largely spurred by the ways that large language models have powered the AI assistants and chatbots that are becoming ever more commonplace in our lives. For businesses, generative AI has much more potential in its ability to power intelligent analytics and supplement the role of humans in the workplace.

“For cloud service providers in particular, generative AI can and will be an important tool for improving their offerings in several ways. Not only will it assist in personalising offerings for users, but it will also help potential customers to better understand what cloud can do for them. For vendors, generative AI will be vital in offering innovative solutions to challenges that have historically been complex, which will help optimise workloads and unlock new opportunities for growth.”