BENGALURU : Artificial intelligence (AI) and data are now playing a crucial role across verticals of organisations. Companies are now involved in their digital transformational journey and are also enhancing their AI capabilities.
Data storage and infrastructure company NetApp in its Cloud Complexity Report reveals India heads the pack as an AI leader, with 70% of companies having AI projects up and running, or in motion. This is in stark contrast with the global average of 49%. Additionally, the report found 91% of India-based companies will use half or more of their data to train AI models in 2024.
“The rise of AI is ushering in a new disrupt-or-die era. Data-ready enterprises that connect and unify broad structured and unstructured data sets into an intelligent data infrastructure are best positioned to win in the age of AI,” says Gabie Boko, chief marketing officer at NetApp.
The report also talks about a clear divide between AI-leading countries and AI-lagging countries as 60% of companies in AI-leading countries that include India, Singapore, UK and US have either committed to AI projects that are already up and running or are in pilot. In AI-lagging countries such as Spain, Australia/New Zealand, Germany and Japan, that number is only 36%. And Japan trails at 17%.
The technology sector is leading in innovation and AI with 70% AI projects either in pilot or up and running. Banking & financial services and manufacturing are also AI leaders with 55% and 50% of AI projects either in pilot or up and running, respectively.
Healthcare is at 38% while media & entertainment is only at 25%. The report also reveals that data scientists and data engineers are embracing AI faster than the C-Suite.
IT costs and security are the two biggest challenges in the AI era, but they will not impede AI progress. Instead, AI leaders will scale back, cut other IT operations or reallocate costs from other parts of the business to fund AI, the report states.
As much as 53% of India-based companies reported being more likely to scale back or cut other parts of IT operations to make room for AI projects and 71% of Indian enterprises feel cybersecurity is the biggest challenge for managing the increasing complexity of data across cloud or multi cloud environments.
The world today is driven by AI and data plays a critical role in enhancing AI capabilities, says Puneet Gupta, vice-president & managing director, NetApp India/SAARC. “India is a country of humongous data sets. No surprise then, that India leads the world, and corporations are embracing AI to further their IT agenda,” he adds.
AI leaders are 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. Also, 82% of Indian companies reported plans to improve security within their company’s public cloud usage in 2024.