Commissioned by Lenovo, the IDC report highlights a notable shift in CIO priorities, with AI emerging as the top concern
In India, the landscape of AI investment is witnessing a remarkable surge. Businesses are swiftly embracing AI technologies to drive innovation and competitiveness. This heightened investment underscores the growing recognition of AI’s transformative potential across various sectors, from enhancing operational efficiency to revolutionizing customer experiences.
Lenovo has released the ‘CIO Playbook 2024 – It’s all about Smarter AI’ report, offering a comprehensive insight into AI adoption across the Asia-Pacific (AP) region. Commissioned by Lenovo, the IDC report surveyed over 900 CIOs, including 150+ from India, revealing a significant uptick in AI investment for 2024, with a projected increase of 45% compared to the previous year.
The report highlights a notable shift in CIO priorities, with AI emerging as the top concern this year. Interestingly, revenue and profit growth, which held the top spot in 2023, have slipped to third place in 2024, while customer experience and satisfaction have surged to the forefront, indicating a strategic pivot towards innovative, customer-centric approaches in the evolving business landscape.
However, there appears to be a disparity between the preferences of business leaders and CIOs regarding AI technologies. While business leaders prioritize GenAI for enhancing customer experience and driving outcomes, CIOs exhibit cautious optimism, ranking GenAI as the fourth tech priority. Instead, they prioritize AI technologies addressing security, infrastructure, and talent considerations.
Amit Luthra, Managing Director – India, Lenovo ISG, shared insights from the report, stating that CIOs in India express high confidence in AI, with 95% certain of its potential to create a competitive advantage, and 57% considering it a game changer for their organizations. Increased investments in GenAI and machine learning, followed by deep learning systems, reflect their focus on enhancing operational efficiency, security, decision-making processes, and customer experiences.
CIOs across India (28%) and Korea (33%) lead in GenAI investments in Asia Pacific, followed by ASEAN+ (11%), ANZ (2%), and Japan (2%). In India, AI has significantly influenced top technologies including Cybersecurity and Threat Detection, Intelligent Automation and Robotics, and Automation for enhanced efficiency. Among the Indian CIOs surveyed the following was observed:
Investment in GenAI, encompassing both invested and planned allocations, remains robust at 93% with 28% invested and 65% planned. This heightened investment is predominantly channeled into two primary areas of interest: Business Intelligence and Conversational AI. However, organizations encounter significant recruitment challenges for AI positions, with 45% rating the difficulty as extreme or moderate. To address this, businesses are focusing on employee skill development and end-to-end network security as their top two preparation tools for GenAI implementation, reflecting a strategic emphasis on both human resource capabilities and infrastructure fortification.
For Indian CIOs, adoption hurdles revolve around their heavy reliance on third-party support (55%) and security issues (51%), constituting the top two concerns. Meanwhile, challenges in AI deployment stem from apprehensions regarding job security (62%) and insufficient IT support during automation implementation (64%), highlighting critical pain points in the deployment process.
The survey reveals a clear preference among AP CIOs, with 69% favoring AI workload deployment in non-public cloud environments. In India, this trend is even more pronounced, with 84% of CIOs already leveraging AI to bolster their security frameworks.
Moreover, the data indicates a balanced approach to AI workload deployment across AP companies. On average, 31% of AI workloads will be allocated to the public cloud, 28% to the private cloud, and an additional 28% to hybrid cloud solutions. Additionally, there’s a growing recognition of the importance of edge computing, as evidenced by the allocation of 13% of AI workloads to traditional data centers, bringing AI capabilities closer to the data source.
Sumir Bhatia, President of AP at Lenovo ISG, highlighted their commitment to democratizing AI through pocket-to-cloud solutions and an ecosystem comprising over 50 ISVs and 165+ AI solutions. This initiative aims to empower businesses with domain expertise and cutting-edge technologies, thereby driving AI adoption across all sectors and transforming the customer experience.
Challenges faced by CIOs across BFSI, Manufacturing,Retail,Telco, Healthcare, Govt sectors are-Cybersecurity & privacy, Data Management & Analytics, Digital transformation, Talent Acquisition & retention and Customer Experience. With challenges like Cybersecurity & privacy and Digital transformation are the most common.
In India, emerging technologies like GenAI find primary application in critical areas such as risk and fraud detection within the BFSI sector. Additionally, the manufacturing industry relies on AI-enabled predictive maintenance systems, facilitating autonomous real-time monitoring of equipment and anomaly detection. Looking ahead to 2024, substantial investments are anticipated in high-performance compute platforms (55%) and the automation of digital infrastructure (39%), reflecting a strategic focus on bolstering technological capabilities across diverse sectors.
