Cisco: AI Interest Surging, but are Companies Ready?
The fervour surrounding AI has reached an all-time high, with businesses eager to capitalise on its potential.
With every sector seeing enterprises trying to implement it into their operations, hundreds of hours and millions of dollars have been spent.
Yet despite this, the reality is stark: most organisations are no closer to being AI-ready now than they were a year ago, according to Cisco’s latest AI Readiness Index.
The readiness gap
Cisco’s research, which surveyed nearly 8,000 companies, revealed only a small fraction of companies feel prepared to harness AI effectively, exposing critical gaps in skills, infrastructure, and strategic planning.
Just 13% of organisations believe they are fully equipped to extract value from AI tools—a decline from the previous year.
This drop comes even as 98% of businesses reported a heightened urgency to implement AI over the last 12 months.
This paradox underscores a persistent challenge: while leaders recognise AI's transformative potential, the foundations required to deploy it successfully remain lacking.
“Eventually, there will be only two kinds of companies: those that are AI companies, and those that are irrelevant,” says Jeetu Patel, Chief Product Officer at Cisco.
Key roadblocks include inadequate backend technology. For instance, just 21% of companies reported having sufficient GPUs to manage current and future AI demands.
Security is another major concern, with only 30% feeling confident about their ability to protect data within AI models through robust encryption, continuous monitoring, and instant threat response mechanisms.
“AI is making us rethink power requirements, compute needs, high-performance connectivity inside and between data centres, data requirements, security and more,” says Jeetu.
A glimpse of optimism
While readiness remains low, the future is not entirely bleak. Companies are recognising the need to shift priorities and budgets.
“AI isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution,” says Bill Conner, CEO of Jitterbit said following news of the report. “While it’s a powerful tool, its success hinges on the humans who operate and manage it.”
Cisco’s study found that AI-related expenses are projected to nearly double, with 30% of IT budgets expected to be allocated to AI initiatives in the near term.
Moreover, although implementation outcomes have often fallen short, 59% of organisations believe their AI investments will exceed expectations within five years.
This optimism is shared at the leadership level. Two-thirds (66%) of corporate boards are moderately or highly receptive to increasing AI adoption, though this is down from 82% a year ago.
Building a resilient AI future
As businesses grapple with these challenges, Jeetu advises a proactive approach to ensure long-term success: “Regardless of where they are on their AI journey, organisations need to be preparing existing data centres and cloud strategies for changing requirements, and have a plan for how to adopt AI with agility and resilience as strategies evolve.”
Bill argues that in the rush to integrate AI, businesses must no throw caution out the window: “A ‘rip-and-replace’ approach to AI implementation could hinder internal adoption and introduce unnecessary risks that could potentially be cost-prohibitive to the business. Infused AI capabilities, on the other hand, will deliver more choice and flexibility to match the technical and business objectives of their organisation.”
The road to AI readiness may be fraught with obstacles, but according to Jeetu, those that don’t adapt won’t survive.
Investment in infrastructure and strategic planning may remain key in helping companies unlock the transformative potential of AI while minimising risks and fostering sustainable growth.
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