India Leads World In Implementation Of AI Projects: Report
The report analysed the experiences of global technology decision-makers deploying AI at scale and showed contrast between AI leaders and AI laggards.
India leads the world when it comes to artificial intelligence projects, with 91% of organisations based in the country expected to use half or more of their data for training AI models in 2024, data infrastructure company NetApp said in its latest Cloud Complexity Report.
Singapore, the UK and the US were the other AI-leading countries. The report indicated that 60% of AI-leading countries (India, Singapore, UK, US) have AI projects up and running or in pilot, in contrast to 36% in AI-lagging countries (Spain, Australia/New Zealand, Germany and Japan).
Globally, 67% of companies in AI-leading countries report having hybrid IT environments, with India leading (70%) and Japan lagging (24%).
The report analysed the experiences of global technology decision-makers deploying AI at scale and showed contrast between AI leaders and AI laggards.
Divide Between AI Leaders And Laggards
In terms of industries, technology leads with 70% of AI projects up and running or in pilot, followed by banking and financial services and manufacturing, with 55% and 50%, respectively. Healthcare (38%) and media and entertainment (25%) were lagging in AI implementation.
Larger companies (with more than 250 employees) were more likely to have AI projects in motion, with 62% reporting projects up and running or in pilot, as compared with 36% of smaller companies (with fewer than 250 employees).
AI leaders were also more likely to report benefits from AI, including a 50% increase in production rates, 46% in the automation of routine activities and a 45% improvement in customer experience.
Despite the divide, there is progress among AI laggards in preparing their IT environments for AI. In AI-lagging countries, 42% of companies have optimised their IT environments for AI, and companies in some such countries report seeing benefits of a unified data infrastructure in place.
“AI is only as good as the data that fuels it,” said Pravjit Tiwana, general manager and senior vice president of cloud storage at NetApp. “Both the AI leaders and AI laggards show us that in the prevailing hybrid IT environment, the more unified and reliable your data, the more likely your AI initiatives are to be successful.”
India Leads In Managing AI Project Costs
Rising IT costs and ensuring data security are the two biggest challenges for organisations, but they are not expected to block AI progress. Instead, AI leaders will scale back, cut other IT operations or reallocate costs from other parts of the business to fund AI initiatives, the report indicated.
India (48%) leads the trend of managing AI project costs by reallocating funds from other business areas, followed by the UK (40%) and the US (35%).
AI leaders are also expected to increase their cloud operations, data security and AI investments in 2024, with 40% of large companies saying AI projects have already increased IT costs. Cybersecurity risk jumped 16% year-over-year as a top concern, from 45% to 61%.
Security, AI And CloudOps Drive Cloud Investments
As global companies increase investments, they are relying on the cloud to support their goals. Companies reported that they expect to increase AI-driven cloud deployments by 19% from 2024 to 2030.
Over the next year, 85% of AI leaders plan to enhance their CloudOps automation. Additionally, increasing data security investments was reported to be a global priority, jumping 25%, from 33% in 2023 to 58% in 2024.
