Almost half of respondents to Ocient’s “From Roadmap to Reality” report say that their companies have not experienced meaningful revenue growth from artificial intelligence (AI) investments due to “poor data quality and overtaxed infrastructures.”
The data analytics firm further found that “security and compliance pressures” are “shaping enterprise deployment strategies that prioritize flexibility and cost savings, driving movement away from the cloud.”
The report drilled down to various industries, including telcos and communications service providers. Fifty-three percent of these report data skill shortages, with more than half saying there is a lack of talent available to analyze data. Companies are not harnessing the full capacity of their data because it is growing too fast (49%), cost (46%), lack of flexibility of their current data warehouse (43%), and lack of effective governance (43%).
Other key findings from the AI report:
- Respondents say data quality (55%) and scalability of their existing solutions (48%) are the top barriers to unlocking AI’s full potential
- 84% say AI initiatives have significantly increased the complexity of their data processing requirements
- Talent remains a bottleneck, with 46% citing difficulty finding skilled staff for AI and machine learning (ML) workloads
- Security has been leaders’ top pain point every year since launching the Beyond Big Data report in 2022
- In 2023, 55% of leaders cited security as a top investment area. In 2025, that number has jumped to 75%
- More than 60% of leaders say data security and privacy is their biggest concern when implementing AI and ML, the report found
- As a result, security and compliance are shaping shifts in data deployment strategies
- 53% of leaders would shift their deployment strategy for enhanced security
- 51% of leaders would shift their deployment strategy for better data sovereignty/compliance
“Today’s enterprise IT and data leaders face a critical challenge: ensuring data remains a source of opportunity rather than a vulnerability,” Ocient CEO John Morris said in a press release about the AI report. “The latest Beyond Big Data report makes it clear that without efficient, secure, and flexible data foundations, enterprises limit their ability to turn data into AI-driven business results.”
Efforts are being made to address the challenges. Last week infrastructure providersZayo and Equinix released the AI Infrastructure Blueprint, an architectural framework that Zayo says “defines how next-generation infrastructure powers AI [artificial intelligence] workloads.”
