IT leaders in the UAE must keep up with AI or risk falling behind, according to industry analysts.
As artificial intelligence sees a surge in relevance, more than three out of four IT leaders surveyed in the UAE (77 per cent) say their existing IT infrastructure is prepared for the demands of the latest technology.
It comes as the UAE experiences widespread adoption across industries, according to the Equinix 2023 Global Tech Trends Survey.
Artificial intelligence in the UAE
The UAE scored higher than other countries in preparedness to accommodate AI, with only 58 per cent of global and 51 per cent of EMEA IT leaders believing their infrastructure is prepared for AI.
The survey, which examined IT leaders’ responses to AI advances in their organisations, comes after a year of significant AI breakthroughs that saw the technology rapidly deployed in applications across both the business-to-business and business-to-consumer sectors.
Kaladhar Voruganti, Senior Technologist at Equinix, said: “Tech leaders globally are expediting AI’s integration into their organisations, and it is increasingly becoming a critical capability to enable intelligent and autonomous systems that power a modern business.
“Those who fail to maximise its use could fall behind”.
Equinix’s global survey of 2,900 IT decision-makers confirmed AI uptake is on the rise across all industry sectors, with 85 per cent of respondents worldwide seeking to benefit from the advantages of AI and already using or planning to use it across multiple key functions.
In the UAE, organisations are most likely to be using AI, or planning to do so, in IT operations (97 per cent), followed by cybersecurity (95 per cent), and sales (95 per cent).
Voruganti said: “Successful development of accurate AI models depends upon secure and high-speed access to both internal and external data sources that can be spread across multiple clouds and data brokers.
“For example, as enterprises embark on creating their own private generative AI solutions, they may want to process their confidential data at a private and secure location with high-speed access to external data sources and AI models.
“Furthermore, we are entering an era where more data is being generated at the edge. Hence, AI processing has to move to the edge for performance, privacy and cost reasons.
“In order to satisfy the above requirements, tech leaders can implement hybrid solutions where AI model training and model inference can occur at different locations.
“Ultimately, to create scalable AI solutions, businesses must consider whether their IT frameworks can accommodate the required data ingestion, sharing, storage and processing of massive and diverse data sets, while keeping sustainability in mind.”
Kamel Al-Tawil, Managing Director at Equinix MENA, said: “It is interesting to note that UAE businesses are more comfortable with accommodating AI’s growing use compared to global averages.
“AI is being used across diverse business functions in the country from IT operations to customer experience, and marketing.
“This result is testament to the country’s visionary leadership which first launched its Artificial Intelligence Strategy in 2017, aiming to be the world leader in AI by 2031”.
IT leaders in EMEA had the most uncertainty about the ability of their infrastructure to accommodate the needs of AI (49 per cent), compared to leaders in Asia-Pacific (44 per cent) and the Americas (32 per cent).
In addition to digital infrastructure updates, the survey also highlighted the need for education and collaboration to enable IT teams to optimise the deployment of this infrastructure, with AI and machine learning expertise being sought by 52 per cent of those growing their IT teams.
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