AI adoption prioritised in UK cloud strategy survey

Red Hat has announced survey findings which indicate key trends and priorities in cloud strategy for UK businesses over the next 18 months, particularly highlighting the focus on artificial intelligence (AI) adoption.

The survey, involving 609 IT managers from large businesses across six countries, found that 88% of UK respondents prioritise preparing for AI adoption alongside cloud-native application development, with 98% viewing cloud technology investment as a critical strategy by 2025. A notable 53% of respondents are planning to raise their cloud investment between 21-50%.

There is a reported urgent skills gap, particularly in areas involving AI, with 81% of UK IT managers identifying this as a significant challenge, an increase from 72% the previous year. This gap predominantly includes data science and generative AI skills.

According to the findings, the adoption of enterprise open source solutions for AI, both predictive and generative, is seen as beneficial by 98% of UK IT managers. The advantages noted include accelerated innovation (53%) and cost-efficiency (50%).

The survey also highlights barriers to advancing AI initiatives, with 43% of UK respondents citing data privacy and security concerns as the main obstacle. Additionally, high costs and sustainability issues were mentioned by 39% and 36% of respondents, respectively.

Hans Roth, Senior Vice President & General Manager EMEA at Red Hat, commented, "Cloud technology continues to unlock significant advantages in scalability, cost efficiency and faster time to market. Yet, this adoption can also drive increased complexity, with many organisations finding themselves slowed down by internal silos, as shown in this latest survey. With the increasing prominence of AI in cloud strategies, we see from this survey that both IT managers and CTOs care about transparency when it comes to AI models: we believe that an open source approach can bring the transparency, modifiability and explainability needed for enterprise-ready generative AI."

Joanna Hodgson, Country Manager UK at Red Hat, added, "We see a strong desire from UK businesses to innovate with cloud technologies to stay competitive, while needing to respond to cost pressures and find efficiencies. AI has the potential to help address a range of business demands, and we believe an AI-centric future requires greater choice, flexibility and independence across clouds. This in turn requires a higher level of collaboration by design so that organisations can work across diverse tools, vendors and clouds to prepare for whatever comes next. The beauty of taking an open source approach to AI is that organisations don't have to risk rapid innovation alone: they can navigate the unpredictability alongside 70 million contributors, and with Red Hat, the confidence that their innovation is backed by enterprise support."

The survey underscores the essential focus on centralising cloud management, preparing for AI integration, and evolving cloud strategies in alignment with business objectives. However, logistical challenges such as inconsistent security across providers and increased costs due to siloed teams persist.

Further analysis also pointed out that over half of the surveyed IT managers (53%) identified inconsistent security and compliance as frequent challenges imposed by siloed teams, suggesting the need for organisational coherence in cloud technology deployment.

Navigating the AI landscape is similarly complicated by the need to ensure platforms are scalable, flexible, and accessible. While 40% of respondents indicated they have the infrastructure but lack skilled personnel, only 25% claimed they feel equipped to leverage their existing platforms most effectively.