The world is increasingly digital. Driven by increasingly massive amounts of data, the partnership between humans and machines is becoming more important than ever.

For hundreds of years, the relationship has been clearly defined: machines do the mechanical things, and people do the thinking and decision making. But over the last several years, algorithms and data have given us the tools to start to delegate decision-making tasks to machines. IDC estimates that by 2025, 88% of the servers used for AI workloads deployed at the edge will be used for inferencing.

That is a profound change, and it will touch almost every aspect of industry and government around the world.

That is why Dell Technologies has been exploring how organisations are responding to the opportunity and specifically, Generative AI (Gen AI).

Gen AI is key to unlocking value within data and thus is becoming one of the most important tools for businesses of all sizes, but to what extent are organisations already implementing strategies and use cases for it?

To better understand the landscape of Gen AI adoption, Dell Technologies recently conducted the Gen AI Pulse Survey in August and September 2023, engaging with 500 IT decision-makers (ITDMs), responsible for Gen AI implementation across the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France.

This survey was designed to uncover critical insights into the readiness of organisations to embrace Gen AI, their current positions on this transformative journey, and the pivotal factors that play a role in realising the technology’s potential.

The opportunity
In the ever-evolving landscape of technology, innovative companies have a unique opportunity to capture the full potential of Gen AI. The challenge, however, lies in understanding where to commence and how to extract value from this ground-breaking technology.

Our survey unveiled a prevailing sense of excitement among decision makers, with 78% worldwide and 75% in the UK expressing their enthusiasm for the transformative potential of Gen AI on their organisations.

It highlighted that the same number in the UK believe that Gen AI would have a significant, if not transformative, impact on their organisations. And it is in this country that we are seeing the fastest progress, with 51% going from early to mid-stage on their journey already, compared to just 41% in the US and 36% in France.

It is clear that Gen AI has the potential to revolutionise core operational aspects of organisations. When asked to identify the areas that Gen AI is expected to impact most positively, respondents to the survey homed in on productivity gains, process streamlining, and cost savings.

The speed paradox
Despite this excitement about the opportunity and while a significant number of ITDMs anticipate meaningful results from Gen AI within the next 12 months, a certain degree of hesitancy prevails within organisations.

The challenge lies in moving swiftly to achieve immediate results without compromising long-term success.

The survey revealed that a considerable 61% of UK respondents who have progressed beyond the pilot stages expect near-immediate value from Gen AI, with results anticipated within a year. This sense of urgency and optimism is consistent across regions.

Yet there is a paradox, with 37% of ITDMs globally and almost half (49%) in the UK reporting some level of hesitancy within their organisations when it comes to Gen AI adoption.

This hesitation can be attributed to various factors, including concerns about security, technical complexity, data governance, implementation costs, and responsible implementation practices.

Bring AI to your data
To successfully harness Gen AI’s potential, organisations can learn valuable lessons from strategic decision makers who are on their journey and poised to deliver meaningful results. These leaders emphasise the importance of choosing the right Gen AI models and data management strategies.

The survey data indicates that an impressive 80% of ITDMs in the UK who have moved beyond the pilot stage favour a centralised decision-making approach and often establish a Centre of Excellence (CoE) to ensure Gen AI’s impact on their organisations.

A similar number also expressed their belief that Gen AI is well on track to make a significant impact on their organisations – making the long-term expectations of Gen AI implementation even higher than the short-term.

Notably, organisations are increasingly allocating budgets to pursue AI initiatives, with 71% of those surveyed in the UK confirming their commitment to harness GenAI’s potential.

When it comes to GenAI models, 76% of UK decision makers are choosing to build solutions that offer greater control and flexibility, either through an on-premises or a hybrid approach. Within this framework, 37% favour an on-premises model, while 39% opt for hybrid cloud models.

For enterprises, there are several factors that make the on-premises or single-tenant infrastructure approach attractive.

Firstly, data privacy and security of enterprise IP will require the need to build Gen AI models with one’s own proprietary data instead publicly shared data sets.

Other factors that influence this include how close the data is to the application and the infrastructure needed to process, training performance and time-to-results, availability of models fine-tuned to enterprise objectives and trusted decisions, and intelligent design and control of lifecycle management to streamline and increase productivity.

Dell Technologies and Gen AI
Dell Technologies is at the epicentre of data-intensive technology such as AI. We provide customers with solutions and expertise that unlock the power of AI, automate intelligent decisions and help define their paths to the future.

We help them to run AI workloads anywhere they need them and scale AI from proof of concept to production.

We have always believed in providing choice and have been doing it through the various evolutions of emerging technology, including AI, understanding the challenges that come with them.

Recommended reading

• Exploitation of GenAI a Stark Concern for IT Experts
• Survey: UK Workers Embrace Generative AI But Lack Safety Skills
• Are UK Consumers Ready for Businesses to Adopt AI?

As technologies like AI, edge and multicloud continue to grow, the need for our solutions grows alongside them.

Business leaders are increasingly becoming aware of the need to have full control over their data and application lifecycle end-to-end and require solutions that provide them with flexibility, control and choice around their innovation needs. That is where Dell Technologies comes in.

To find out more about the world’s broadest GenAI solutions portfolio from desktop to data centre to cloud, visit our website.