AI adoption now a business necessity for 96% of enterprises

A new global survey has found that 96% of enterprises have integrated artificial intelligence into their core business processes, indicating a significant shift from using AI as a competitive advantage to treating it as a necessary business practice.

The report, titled 'The Evolution of AI: The State of Enterprise AI and Data Architecture,' was conducted by Cloudera and surveyed over 1,500 information technology leaders worldwide.

The findings show rapid acceleration in AI adoption, with major changes in enterprise data strategies and the continued emergence of challenges related to securely scaling AI across large organisations.

This year's survey showed a substantial increase in AI integration compared to the previous year, when 88% of respondents reported using AI within their company operations. The new data suggests that organisations are moving beyond pilot projects and embedding AI technologies directly into daily business workflows and decision-making.

Business gains

According to the survey, the majority of enterprises are seeing tangible results from these efforts. Of the IT leaders surveyed, 70% said they have achieved significant success with AI initiatives, while only 1% reported not seeing results from their investments in AI. Enterprises are drawing upon various forms of artificial intelligence to achieve these positive outcomes, with 60% deploying generative AI, 53% using deep learning, and half employing predictive models.

Confidence in managing AI is also on the rise. Sixty-seven percent of respondents said their organisations were now better equipped to handle new forms of AI, such as AI agents, than they were one year ago.

Hybrid data architecture

The research highlights a growing shift in data management strategies, with hybrid data architectures becoming more prevalent.

Organisations are seeking greater flexibility to manage AI applications across both cloud and on-premises environments. Respondents identified several key advantages to this hybrid approach, with 62% citing improved security, 55% noting enhanced data management, and 54% mentioning better data analytics capabilities.

Sergio Gago, Chief Technology Officer at Cloudera, commented on the findings:

"In just a year, AI has shifted from a strategic priority to an urgent mandate, actively reshaping operations and redefining the rules of competition. But our survey shows that enterprises still face deep challenges around security, compliance, and data utilization, with many getting stuck at the proof-of-concept stage. Cloudera's mission is to bring AI to data wherever it resides-public cloud, private cloud, and on-premises-while ensuring full governance, lineage, and trust. With innovations like Private AI and secure, GPU-accelerated generative AI behind the firewall, we give enterprises the full control and confidence to unlock insights from 100% of their data and accelerate adoption in this new Era of Convergence."

The survey found that cloud technology remains fundamental to data storage strategies. Sixty-three percent of respondents said their companies store data in private clouds, while 52% use public clouds, and 42% store data in data warehouses.

Security and confidence

Despite broad adoption, security concerns persist. Half of the IT leaders surveyed said data leakage during model training was a significant concern related to AI security. Other major issues included unauthorised data access (48%) and the use of unsecured third-party AI tools (43%).

Nevertheless, a majority of organisations are confident in their ability to secure enterprise data within AI systems, with 24% of respondents extremely confident, 53% very confident, and 19% somewhat confident in their security measures.

Technical limitations and data access

Respondents also identified limitations in current data architectures supporting AI workloads.

Data integration remains the most significant technical hurdle, highlighted by 37% of participants, while storage performance and compute power were each cited by 17%. Data accessibility continues to be an issue, with only 9% of organisations stating that all of their data is available and usable for AI initiatives. Thirty-eight percent said most of their data is accessible.

The integration of AI has also influenced organisational culture. Twenty-four percent of those surveyed said their company culture is now extremely data-driven, up from 17% last year, although most respondents recognised that further efforts are required to embed data-first thinking into business processes.

The report provides a detailed snapshot of how quickly the enterprise AI landscape is evolving and highlights the ongoing challenges organisations must address as they seek to maximise the value and impact of artificial intelligence technologies.