AI Plans Hampered By Lack Of Skills, Governance Challenges

New research has highlighted the challenges CIOs have in trying to satisfy the lofty artificial intelligence (AI) ambitions of senior management at businesses around the world.

The IDC InfoBrief research was commissioned by managed network solutions provider Expereo, entitled ‘Enterprise Horizons 2024‘. It found that global businesses are being held back from implementing their AI plans in full due to skills shortages and governance challenges.

It comes after Expereo had commissioned IDC research in June that revealed that chief information officers (CIOs) admitting that AI is an investment priority, just ahead of security and the cloud.

AI obstacles

However this latest IDC/Expereo research surveyed 650 CIOs from the world’s largest businesses, with over $500 million revenue, across the USA, UK, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Germany, and France.

It found that over one third (35 percent) of global enterprises are struggling to retain or attract crucial skills in AI, data and automation, which is threatening their optimistic AI ambitions.

This is despite AI being considered the biggest priority across the world.

And it seems that CIOs cannot just opt to utilise external third-party suppliers or partner to help in this matter, as the research revealed that 29 percent of global CIOs have stated that their current external technology partners do not have the right capabilities in place to support AI initiatives.

And location is also playing a part, with 28 percent of global respondents feeling regional variations in ability to implement AI initiatives is a key challenge.

The other leading obstacle to fulfilling AI ambitions include navigating AI governance and ethics (36 percent), the IDC/Expereo research found. This refers to ongoing challenges such as regulation, trust and data protection when it comes to using AI tools in a business setting.

This concern about AI regulation is backed up other recent research that found that more than a third (35 percent) of CIOs feel that a lack of clarity around regulation is the biggest obstacle they face to adopting AI.

Key challenges

Meanwhile this week’s IDC/Expereo survey also found that 42 percent of CIOs also believe that training for new ways of working, a result of AI, is one of the biggest IT challenges in supporting remote and hybrid workers, and 39 percent said that understanding how employees use AI is now a concern.

Network performance and flexibility are additionally among the key factors preventing companies from implementing AI at scale.

When asked what prevents or limits their organisation’s networks from supporting large data or AI projects, 38 percent of global respondents said network performance, such as application responsiveness or latency, and 38 percent of global respondents also said their networks’ inability to scale flexibly on demand.

In addition, networking talent was cited as the second hardest area to recruit for, with 36 percent of global respondents citing it as a key challenge.

In fact, networking talent was even harder to recruit for than data, AI and automation, suggesting that it is more than just AI talent that organisations are struggling to onboard, it is the core infrastructure talent too.

Going forward

Despite of these AI obstacles the IDC/Expereo research found that 32 percent of CIOs are moving forward with caution with AI implementation, and indeed 44 percent are excited and ready to take on AI initiatives.

Just less than one in 10 global enterprises (8 percent) are not ready to take on AI at all.

When asked how long it will be until their organisation implement AI initiatives, more than a quarter of global respondents (36 percent) expect to implement cybersecurity AI initiatives within the next 12 months.

“CIOs need to keep pace with market innovations, customer expectations and fierce competition when it comes to AI, while ensuring they are adopting the technology responsibly and effectively, without cutting corners,” noted Ben Elms, CEO at Expereo.

“This is a difficult act to balance, and without the necessary skills in place, driven by competition for AI and core networking talent, CIOs should look to outsource crucial expertise, and partner with the right technology providers that can offer the local expertise and growth initiatives that work for them,” said Elms.

“Networking technology, data strategies and wider tech infrastructure are all key areas which run adjacent to AI initiatives, which must also not be ignored,” Elms concluded.