A new study from Red Hat Inc has revealed the key drivers for cloud strategies over the next 18 months.

Preparing for AI adoption was cited as a priority for 88% of UK respondents, almost level with cloud-native application development and DevOps (89%), and evolving cloud strategy in line with business objectives (89%).

“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,” Joanna Hodgson, country manager, UK, Red Hat.

98% of UK IT managers see advantages in adopting enterprise open source solutions for AI, including predictive and generative.

Accelerating innovation is seen as the top benefit for enterprise open source AI in the UK (53%), with cost efficiency coming in second place (50%).

The research surveyed 609 IT managers from large businesses (500+ employees) across six countries: the UK, the UAE, France Germany, Italy, and Spain.

It explores the priorities and challenges for IT managers as they navigate cloud complexity and the opportunities and barriers they face in executing AI strategies.

According to the survey, almost all UK IT managers surveyed (98%) consider cloud technology investment a priority for 2025.

Over a quarter (28%) are planning a strong focus on innovation and new technologies, while 61% expect balanced growth between new technologies and enhancements to existing systems.

Of this subset of respondents, over half (53%) plan to increase their investment by 21-50%.

About 8 in 10 (81%) of UK respondents agree that there is an urgent skills gap in the area of AI – including data science, large language model (LLM) and generative AI – making it the top ranked skills gap. This number is up from 72% in 2023.

Other urgent gaps include cybersecurity (75%), and strategic thinking and ability to tackle business-level issues (68%).

When asked about the advantages in adopting enterprise open source solutions for AI – including predictive and generative – more than half of UK IT managers surveyed (53%) cited accelerated innovation, alongside cost-efficiency (50%), and trust and transparency (43%).

Further, when determining their trust in an enterprise model for generative AI, UK IT managers deem having transparent, modifiable models with explainable sources the most important factor (95%).

“Cloud technology continues to unlock significant advantages in scalability, cost efficiency and faster time to market,” said Hans Roth, senior vice president and general manager EMEA, Red Hat.

“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.”

Cloud as an Investment Priority

IT managers surveyed across the six countries describe their organisation’s planned approach to investing in cloud technology by 2025, with some opting for a strong focus on innovation and new technologies (26%) and others (14%) focussed on essential services only.

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Still, half (50%) are taking a balanced approach, focussing equally on new technologies and enhancements to existing systems.

As far as priorities in cloud strategy for the next 18 months, centralising cloud management came out on top (80%), followed by security, compliance and sovereignty regulatory requirements (78%), preparing for AI adoption (77%), and lining up their cloud with business objectives (76%).

Silos are Slowing Adoption

The vast majority (96%) of IT managers surveyed said siloed teams pose challenges when adopting cloud technologies, with 53% encountering this issue frequently.

Among those affected, the most common impacts on cloud strategy include inconsistent security and compliance across different providers (54%), increased costs (47%), and limited control and visibility over cloud resources (42%).

AI Readiness

When asked about their ability to take advantage of the growing AI opportunity, 40% of IT managers surveyed state that their organisation has scalable, flexible and accessible IT platforms but lacks the right skill sets to fully harness AI’s potential.

This compares to 25% that have the right platforms and feel well-positioned to get the best value from them, and 35% who are in need of new platforms (22% of which are on a path to acquire these.)

With generative AI increasingly being explored by enterprises looking to solve existing problems or seize new opportunities, the survey looked into the importance of a range of factors in determining trust in an enterprise model for generative AI.

It found that the following all placed similarly among respondents:

• Transparent, modifiable models with explainable sources (cited by 89%)
• Proven performance and reliability in similar use cases (85%)
• Protection with model indemnification (84%)
• Compliance with data privacy and security standards (83%)
• Accessible for use across teams, not just data scientists (83%)
• Cost-effectiveness (82%)
• Domain-specific models (as opposed to generic LLMs) (79%)

However, CTOs also cited obstacles from advancing generative AI initiatives, including concerns about data privacy and security (43%), energy consumption and sustainability concerns (39%), insufficient infrastructure or resources (32%), and a lack of transparency in AI models (31%).