Despite significant investment increases predicted over the next few years, a new report from Red Hat indicates that a vast majority of businesses are struggling to realize tangible customer value from their AI initiatives. While organizations anticipate boosting AI investments by 32% by 2026, 89% haven’t yet seen returns that directly benefit customers.
AI and cybersecurity are identified as leading IT priorities for UK organizations, followed by hybrid cloud/multi-cloud architectures and virtualization. The report sheds light on major hurdles to widespread AI adoption, including high costs related to implementation and ongoing maintenance, data privacy and security concerns, and the difficulty of integrating AI technologies with pre-existing systems. The proliferation of ‘shadow AI,’ where employees utilize unauthorized AI tools, is also a growing problem, affecting 83% of organizations.
Open-source software is increasingly seen as a solution to these challenges, with 84% of organizations regarding it as crucial for their AI strategies. Furthermore, agentic AI – AI systems capable of autonomous operation – is a priority for 68% of businesses surveyed. The persistent skills gap is a critical obstacle, particularly in the areas of agentic AI expertise, optimizing AI resource utilization, and educating employees across the organization about AI capabilities and benefits.
While optimism exists regarding the UK’s potential in the global AI arena, talent shortages, limited public funding, and insufficient private sector involvement are viewed as key impediments. The complexity of integrating AI workloads is also affecting cloud adoption strategies, with internal silos, data sovereignty considerations, and unclear return on investment creating roadblocks. Organizations are placing emphasis on maintaining operational control, fortifying the software supply chain, and retaining flexibility in their IT vendor relationships.