The Digital Business Impact of AI Everywhere

Artificial intelligence has a tremendous potential to accelerate organizations’ sustainable transformation journeys and create business value by helping them automate their ESG data collection and increase the accuracy of their reporting, improve operational efficiencies as well as anticipate and respond to supply chain risks. However, the use of AI also poses risks that can harm their ESG performance, compliance, and trustworthiness, e.g., if algorithm bias leads to unfair or unethical decision making.  

As organizations are implementing artificial intelligence into their operations, they need to be strategic about the sustainability-related use-cases that generate the greatest financial and non-financial ROI, and aware of the industry-specific risks that this technology can pose. This Lunch & Learn Session highlights current market trends and research findings in the context of IDC’s sustainable transformation and maturity research

More than half of enterprises are either already implementing GenAI for enterprise work or plan to do so this year. But training IT workers on how and when to use ChatGPT and similar Large Language Models (LLMs) is only half the equation. Organizations that use GenAI to create training and personalized courses get employees up-to-speed on important technologies faster. In this presentation Gina takes a long look at how organizations can train workers on Gen AI and also use GenAI to create training writ large, especially in the context of a widening IT skills shortage.

Your organization may already be experimenting with generative AI, or perhaps you are just jumping in. Clearly there are many opportunities to deploy GenAI for improved business outcomes, but where should you begin? Which use cases will move the needle? This Lunch & Learn session will provide an overview of key functional and industry use cases, as identified by recent C-suite research and a multi-disciplinary/multi-regional team of IDC analysts. This could be the inspiration that you need!

The current uncertainty has sharpened the focus on financial operations. The processes of financial close, budgeting, forecasting, cash management are being forced to become faster and more efficient. This is ushering in a new way of thinking about the future of financial operations and the tools/technologies needed to be effective. Join us as we explore the evolution of the finance function.

Generative AI is having a profound impact across all industries. Nearly 2 out of 5 technology buyers report that generative AI has already disrupted their business (19.1%) or will have a significant impact in the next 18 months (18.3%). With the emergence of AI use cases industry knowledge and expertise is more important than ever for technology suppliers according to IDC’s GenAI ARC Survey (August 2023).  In this session we will provide an overview of our generative AI research, IDC Industry Intelligence, and a sneak peek at IDC TechPath Survey that will cover AI, cloud, and cybersecurity by industry.

The anticipated pace of GenAI workload deployments planned for 2024 is driving enterprise infrastructure teams to rethink data center, cloud and edge strategies.  Hybrid and multicloud architectures demand robust data integration and workload interoperability.  Rising operational complexity is forcing organizations to rethink IT and Cloud Ops skills and processes, even as they race to embrace a new generation of AI-enabled automation.  Business imperatives around intellectual property protection and cyber security further complicate GenAI infrastructure deployment choices, governance models and ROI assessments.  Attend this session to hear how leading enterprise IT buyers are adapting digital infrastructure operating models to enable more effective delivery of GenAI at scale while paving the way for broader AI implementations in the coming years.

In this presentation, we highlight the near, mid, and longer-term opportunities in Generative AI from a Multicloud and Datacenter Networking lens. Our market and technology insights are based on our primary research with Enterprise Buyers, across major industry verticals and use cases.

In 2024 we’ll see a fast ramp of PCs equipped with neural processing units (NPUs) designed to efficiently run AI tasks locally versus in the cloud. These new AI PCs could fundamentally change how we interact with our devices and data and may radically rewrite what it means to be productive. In this session, Tom Mainelli articulates IDC’s AI PC taxonomy, discusses early IT buyer interest in the category, and presents the company’s first worldwide AI PC shipment forecast.

The GenAI market has been kickstarted by the availability of consumer services powered by publicly-available, shared foundation models – colossal GenAI models that are pre-trained on colossal amounts of data. However when it comes to implementing GenAI use cases within businesses, public foundation models by themselves only have a limited role to play: organizations will custom-build and fine-tune models, as well as integrating pre-trained models with their own data. Attend this session to learn how organizations will leverage a variety of implementation approaches for GenAI, and to understand the implications for AI model platforms and data management and governance tools, processes and practices.

The maturation and proliferation of generative AI technologies has disrupted the software development lifecycle by foregrounding the importance of foundation and large language models for the development of digital solutions to business problems. This talk examines opportunities for technology suppliers to create solutions that enhance, enrich and streamline application development processes, with a specific focus on the development of the models and platforms that undergird generative AI-based application development. The talk will examine opportunities for technology suppliers to monetize technologies that optimize models for application development use cases and workstreams.

AI/ML Orchestration is the coordination and automation of various tasks involved in the end-to-end machine learning lifecycle, including building, deploying, managing, and monitoring models. Building an AI/ML model is easy, but operationalizing it can be very complex. AI/ML models must be seamlessly integrated into complicated enterprise applications, workflows, and infrastructure. Join this session to explore how disparate ML components can be united into a harmonious, repeatable, and adaptable AI/ML orchestra!

ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer) launched to the world on November 30, 2022. Based on a large language model, it enabled users have interactive “conversations” with the artificial intelligence (AI) enabled software and unlock the riches buried in data stores. Microsoft Security Copilot, Google Cloud Security AI Workbench, AWS Titan/Bedrock, and IBM watsonx only served to intensify the buzz. GenAI has inspired a new way of thinking around interactions between human and machine.

GenAI is also fueling the largest technology paradigm shift since birth of the Internet. Just as the Internet changed the manner in which we approached security so too will GenAI. The way we protect our GenAI applications and platforms will need to be adapted for evolutionary and revolutionary AI technologies.  This session will provide a framework-based approach to the security and governance of AI, providing recommendations for organizations going down the AI path.

This session discusses the privacy and regulatory implications associated with generative artificial intelligence technologies. Explore issues related to the generation of realistic and potentially sensitive content, addressing concerns such as data privacy, misuse of generated content, and the need for appropriate regulations to govern the ethical deployment of generative AI. The presentation will delve into potential solutions and best practices for mitigating privacy risks while fostering responsible development and use of generative AI technologies.

Using AI is not new to cybersecurity vendors since many incorporate AI today to find anomalies in behavior and configurations that would be missed if done manually. Now, however, cybersecurity companies see a lot of opportunity to help their customers be more efficient and productive by offloading some tasks to GenAI. We will look at the potential for GenAI to help security analysts and engineers with their day to day work.

AI and GenAI capabilities will change everything from job roles to day-to-day employee experiences in the coming years. How we work, how long we work at something, what we work on – all will take on new forms. Companies want better guidance on the technical and organizational impact of AI-infused applications. They need to know how the employee lifecycle will be changed, how to balance technical and human skills development, and how to navigate the complexities of IT deployment against change management.

In this session Amy Loomis will explore the employee experience in context to IDC’s experience orchestrated (X-O) business framework – specifically how to support strategic decision making around AI adoption, app development, and employee lifecycle management to derive business value.

Over the last year, GenAI has been successfully applied to improve employee productivity; however, improving customer experiences, not so much. As organizations become more comfortable with a future of AI Everywhere, digital businesses must take a step forward to extend that value to the customer.  Not only is the customer in the driver's seat, but they are accelerating demand for faster response times and personalized engagement that AI/GenAI is primed to address. It means connecting the person in finance with the person who is paying the bill using AI-infused capabilities to improve the interaction.

In this session Marci Maddox will look at how the future of experience-orchestrated intelligent applications will transform the software market and deliver shared value between the business and its customers.  Organizations will move beyond process-oriented SLAs to value-oriented XLAs that emphasize the importance of data to connect the dots across customer journeys and employee workstreams fueling AI-driven decisioning and empowerment.

As technology innovations continue to accelerate, organizations are struggling to define, calculate and track the value of technology investments across the solution lifecycle. While technology initiatives typically start with robust plans and a solid road map, the reality of managing implementation, deployment and ongoing operations sets in fast. CFOs and CIOs need solutions designed to improve value realization across their technology landscape.

The promise of experience-orchestrated (X-O) applications includes advanced services capabilities that can help. In this session, Elaina Stergiades will highlight how X-O applications can accelerate value realization throughout the solution lifecycle as well as the steps you can take to quantify the ROI for complex technology initiatives.

AI, particularly GenAI, is both a disruptor and a value driver for the services industry. The pervasiveness of embedded AI in service delivery will reshape all services markets – from business services, to IT services, to digital and operational technology (OT) services – though the impacts will vary. While transforming internally, services providers need to continue delivering value and meeting evolving customer needs, including supporting customers through their own AI transformations. In this session, discover IDC’s latest research on buyer expectations for how AI will impact their relationships with services providers in the next few years, and hear recommendations on how to turn your AI transformation into competitive advantage.

AI Use Cases are enticing to organizations as they offer the promise of accelerated business transformation. At the same time, AI will have significant and complex impacts on people, processes, platforms, applications, and infrastructure interdependencies that must be thoughtfully considered. In this session, attendees will understand how Professional Services offers are being developed to enable organizations to securely, sustainably, cost effectively, ethically, and innovatively implement and adopt AI and GenAI use cases into their business, technology, and operational roadmaps.

IDC’s new ServicesPath research program has uncovered an uncomfortable truth for many traditional service providers—they have slipped backwards in their customers' strategic priority ranking compared with technology firms and/or public cloud providers. Come learn about what the ServicesPath survey data says and hear recommendations about how traditional service providers can manage the coopetition. Leveraging AI, addressing the talent squeeze, increasing the use of both managed services and asset-based consulting, and pricing for value will all factor prominently in addressing this reality.