Just 26 per cent of Indian firms fully prepared to deploy, leverage AI

Only 26 per cent of organisations in India are fully prepared to deploy and leverage artificial intelligence (AI)-powered technology, a new report showed on Thursday.

Indian companies are racing against time as 75 per cent of those surveyed said they have a maximum of one year to deploy their AI strategy or else it will have a negative impact on business, according to Cisco’s ‘AI Readiness Index’.

The research found that while AI adoption has been slowly progressing for decades, the advancements in generative AI, coupled with public availability in the past year, are driving greater attention to the challenges, changes and new possibilities posed by the technology.

"As companies rush to deploy AI solutions, they must assess where investments are needed to ensure their infrastructure can best support the demands of AI workloads,” said Liz Centoni, executive vice-president and general manager, applications and chief strategy officer, Cisco. "Organisations also need to be able to observe with context how AI is being used to ensure ROI, security, and especially responsibility.”

However, there is some positive news too. When it comes to building AI strategies, 95 per cent of organisations in India already have a robust AI strategy in place or are in the process of developing one.

More than eight in 10 (86 per cent) of organisations are classified as either pace-setters or chasers (fully/partially prepared), with only 1 per cent falling into the category of laggards (not prepared), said the report.

Globally, while 93 per cent of respondents believe AI will have a significant impact on their business operations, it also raises new issues around data privacy and security.

The findings showed that companies experience the most challenges when it comes to leveraging AI alongside their data. In fact, 73 per cent of respondents admitted that this is due to data existing in silos across their organisations.