AI implementation thwarted by lack of strategy, IT infra, and talent

SINGAPORE: Asia Pacific(APAC) economies stand to realize the productivity gains offered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies. However, Clear strategy and direction, IT infrastructure, Talent, Budget, and Leadership team’s commitment were identified as the key challenges to AI implementation.

According to a new research by Seagate Technology, 96 percent of senior IT professionals believe AI applications will drive productivity and business performance. However, an almost equal number of respondents (95%) believe further investments in their IT infrastructure are required to enable them to support their use of AI.

In India, nearly all respondents (90%) have implemented AI in one or more areas of their business – one of the highest in the region (vs. 74% in APAC). These areas include IT (83%); Customer Support (46%); Product Innovation/R&D (42%); and Supply Chain/Logistics (38%). Almost everyone is planning to use or adopt more AI solutions in the next 12 months (99%).

But most respondents struggle to know where and how to start their organization’s development and implementation of AI (75%), and almost everyone agree that they could do more if they had the right AI talent (97%).

Despite robust adoption of AI technologies in the region, the report found that a significant number of organizations have not invested in the data and technical solutions required to support the technology fully.

89% of the respondents are planning to implement AI solutions, but 31% do not think enough is being invested. One in five organizations indicated they were not ready or able to handle the increasing data streams from the use of AI applications. Further, while 95 percent of respondents believe there is an increasing need for robust data storage solutions with growing AI applications, 15 percent say they have not invested sufficiently in data storage to be ready for AI now or in the future.

“In order to take full advantage of the considerable benefits brought by AI, Asia Pacific organizations should proactively look to develop robust infrastructure and ecosystems to support the needs of data analytics and real-time data processing,” said BS Teh, senior vice president, global sales and sales operations of Seagate Technology.