- Cloudera’s study highlights the rapid increase in AI adoption while identifying common use cases and challenges for the technology.
Cloudera, the only true hybrid platform for data, analytics and AI, recently announced the results of its survey, The State of Enterprise AI and Modern Data Architecture. The report, which surveyed 600 IT leaders across the US, EMEA and APAC, explored the challenges and barriers to AI adoption in global enterprises and current applications. It also explored AI adoption plans, the state of data infrastructure and the benefits of hybrid data management versus enterprise AI adoption. The survey found that while a large majority of enterprises are adopting AI to some extent (88%), many still lack the data infrastructure and employee skills to truly take advantage of it.
Additionally, specific sectors like fintech, transportation and emotional AI in retail are seeing notable progress. AI Progress. 61% of Middle East executives expect productivity gains of over 10% from AI and GenAI by 2024, reflecting the region’s shift from experimental AI initiatives to large-scale initiatives. This momentum is also fueled by the region’s tech-driven economy, which aims to boost employment and living standards.
“The Middle East region is rapidly moving from experimental AI initiatives to large-scale applications, with significant potential to improve productivity and drive economic growth. As AI adoption accelerates, with projections suggesting it could contribute up to $150 billion to the GCC’s GDP, organizations are increasingly recognizing the importance of a robust data infrastructure. At Cloudera, we are committed to empowering businesses in the region with our hybrid platform, ensuring they can effectively leverage their data and AI capabilities to achieve their strategic goals and manage the complexities of digital transformation,” said Karim Azar, Regional Vice President, Middle East and Turkey, Cloudera.
AI has become a global phenomenon in recent years due to its ability to power business operations, enable informed decision-making, accelerate innovation, and improve employee and customer experiences. However, not all organizations have been able to take advantage of it.
Cloudera’s AI survey found that the top barriers to AI adoption are concerns about AI security and compliance risks (74%), lack of training or talent to manage AI tools (38%), and the cost of AI tools being too high (26%). These findings indicate that despite rapid AI adoption, many pillars of a resilient AI strategy are being overlooked or forgotten.
One of the key findings of the survey is that all AI efforts ultimately rely on trusted data. While 94% of respondents said they trust their data, 55% also said they would rather undergo a root canal than try to access all of their company’s data. This frustration is due to challenges such as conflicting data sets (49%), an inability to manage data across multiple platforms (36%), and too much data (35%). These areas of frustration indicate that many companies may be lacking a modern data architecture that enables organization-wide access to data, regardless of where it resides, in a secure, accessible, and reliable manner.
The survey found that top AI use cases include automating and streamlining IT processes, creating chatbots that can quickly and efficiently address frontline customer needs, and leveraging analytics to drive better decision-making. Top AI use cases include improving customer experience (60%), increasing operational efficiency (57%), and accelerating analytics (51%).
- Improve customer experience: Businesses are applying AI technology to improve security and fraud detection (59%), automate aspects of customer support (58%), leverage predictive customer service (57%), and power chatbots (55%), all with the goal of providing customers with a safer, simpler, and more intuitive experience.
- Increase operational efficiency: AI is being integrated into nearly every aspect of business. The survey found that IT isn’t the only one using AI: 52% of respondents said they’re using it for customer service, such as more informed chatbots, and 45% said it’s being used for marketing, such as analyzing call center data to offer more targeted incentives to customers.
- Acceleration of analyses: Faster, easier, and more reliable access to analytics enables more informed decision-making, giving companies that leverage AI a competitive advantage. Nearly 80% of respondents said it was “definitely” or “very” true that their company uses all the data at its disposal to make smarter business decisions. This data provides mission-critical insights, so access to all of an organization’s data is essential.
“For the majority of companies, their data quality is not great, it’s spread across different infrastructures and not documented effectively, and we see the consequences of that in the challenges identified by the survey,” said Abhas Ricky, chief strategy officer at Cloudera. “Managing data where it lives is the most important thing when it comes to adopting AI – being able to cost-effectively run models where that data already lives. Instead of bringing data to models, companies are starting to understand the benefits of bringing AI models to their data.”
Cloudera is the only true open hybrid data lake that brings analytics and AI to enterprise data. With over 25 exabytes of data under management, on par with industry hyperscalers, Cloudera is uniquely positioned to help enterprises efficiently and securely organize and manage their data so they can harness the power of that data, trust its accuracy, and rely on it for analysis and business decision-making.
