Over 40% of IT leaders in Nigeria doubt their digital infrastructure is ready to accommodate artificial intelligence (AI) technology, despite the widespread adoption of AI across industries, a new study reveals.
The Equinix 2023 Global Tech Trends Survey, which focused on IT leaders’ responses to AI advancements in their organisations, sampled views across the world, including Nigeria, followed a year of significant AI breakthroughs that led to its rapid deployment in applications in both the business-to-business and business-to-consumer sectors.
The survey reveals that 85% of the 2,900 IT decision-makers polled worldwide are seeking to leverage the advantages of AI and are either already using or planning to use it in multiple key functions. Among the industries, IT operations (85%) are the most likely to utilise or have plans to use AI, followed by cybersecurity (81%) and customer experience (79%).
Kaladhar Voruganti, Senior Technologist at Equinix, underscores the critical role of AI integration for modern businesses. “Tech leaders globally are expediting AI’s integration into their organisations, and it is increasingly becoming a critical capability to enable intelligent and autonomous systems that power a modern business. Those who fail to maximise its use could fall behind.”
To develop accurate AI models, Voruganti says, secure and high-speed access to internal and external data sources is crucial. Voruganti highlights the importance of hybrid solutions that allow AI model training and inference to occur at different locations. He further emphasises the need for scalable AI solutions that can handle the ingestion, sharing, storage, and processing of massive and diverse datasets while considering sustainability.
The survey found that IT leaders in the EMEA region expressed the most uncertainty about their infrastructure’s ability to accommodate AI needs (49%), compared to leaders in Asia-Pacific (44%) and the Americas (32%).
In addition to infrastructure updates, the survey underscored the need for education and collaboration to optimise the deployment of AI infrastructure. 37% of IT teams seeking to expand their capabilities are looking for AI and machine learning expertise.
Aengus Tran, CEO & Co-Founder at harrison.ai, explains the importance of secure hosting and fast, direct connections for hybrid cloud models to handle large datasets for developing AI solutions in the healthcare sector. Tran says that robust digital infrastructure enables tackling significant healthcare challenges and improving global healthcare standards.
The independent study commissioned by Equinix surveyed IT decision-makers from diverse enterprises across the Americas, Asia-Pacific, and EMEA. The respondents were selected from Dynata’s online panel, and the survey was conducted online between March 20, 2023, and April 7, 2023, according to authors of the survey.
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