UK enterprise AI teams are under-resourced

SambaNova Systems has published the results of new research into AI adoption within enterprise organisations. The study of UK enterprise leaders sought to understand the challenges when delivering AI-based solutions during a period of accelerated change and transformation.

AI is becoming a huge driver of value to businesses and is set to contribute trillions to the global economy over the next decade. Business leaders are aware of the potential value of AI. However, benefiting from it requires technology teams to deliver; this is where difficulty surfaces for most organisations.

The data from the study shows that enterprise technology leaders in the UK are eagerly adopting AI models and algorithms. Keeping pace with the speed of model and data growth, however, is an increasing challenge. 80% of IT leaders surveyed report that it’s a challenge to keep up. They also report that it’s difficult to deploy the algorithms once identified. 

Top UK enterprise challenges highlighted in the research include:

• Finding or customising models and algorithms - 67%

• Setting up infrastructure – 43%

• Preparing data – 38%

Marshall Choy, SVP Product at SambaNova commented on the findings: “Our research shows that enterprise business leaders understand the value they can derive from AI today. But the technology teams tasked with delivering on their goals are struggling to keep up – both from a technology and a resourcing point of view.”

Skills have become the limiting factor for AI implementation

For business leaders, AI is a driver of business value, and more than half (54%) said that AI’s business impact will be “transformational” or “significantly improve the business” over the next 12-24 months. Only 19% said it will have “no impact at all.”

For enterprise technology leaders, finding skilled staff across all technology disciplines is difficult. However, the challenge is particularly acute in the specialist field of AI.

Almost three-fifths (59%) of IT managers reported that they have the budget to hire additional resources for their AI teams while 82% said that hiring the skilled staff is challenging. Over half (53%) said that retention is a challenge too.

“You’d be hard-pressed to find an area of technology that is being developed more intensely than AI, especially around large language models such as GPT,” said Chris Kenny, General Manager, EMEA at SambaNova. “The opportunity these models deliver is there for the taking, although technology teams often don’t have the resources or expertise to take advantage of the opportunity.”

“For enterprises struggling to deliver on business leaders’ demands, deploying AI as a service is a fast track, a scalable way to avoid falling behind their competitors,” continued Kenny. “AI is already here at most organisations.”