Fall traditionally means Predictions time for the entire IDC community. That point of the year where we gather across different research domains to reflect on those trends steering organizations’ digital agendas and predict what will characterize the digital landscape in the months and years to come.
This year, this is happening at the dawn of a new chapter in the Digital Business Era: the chapter of AI Everywhere.
Generative AI triggered the opening of this chapter because it holds the potential to drastically reduce the time and long-term costs associated with developing solutions across a wide range of use cases associated with automation and intelligence. It is completely changing our relationship with data and how we extract value from both structured and unstructured data.
This era is about how we use data as input and as a business outcome:
- 18% of EMEA organizations believe that GenAI is already disrupting their business, and 70% of all organizations believe it will do so in the next 18 months.
- 44% of EMEA organizations are already investing in GenAI or doing initial model testing and proofs of concepts.
- Customer-facing applications, financial and operational decision support applications, and employee experience applications are sweet spots for GenAI integration.
- GenAI is expected to capture 15% of EMEA organizations’ new IT projects budgets in 2024, representing a must-have chevron in technology vendors capabilities and portfolios (IDC GenAI ARC Survey, August 2023 — GenAI Awareness, Readiness, and Commitment: A First Look at IT Leaders’ Expectations and Concerns for Generative AI).
For organizations to gain a competitive edge in this new era, a full reimagination is needed.
Creating an intelligent architecture that is supported by a cost-effective digital infrastructure and relevant capabilities is a priority. At the same time, this journey raises ethical and trust-related questions that purpose-driven organizations must prepare for.
AI Everywhere is certainly the key factor altering the global business and digital ecosystem for the next 12-24 months and beyond, but other critical external drivers will also shake 2024:
- The Drive to Automate
- Economic Uncertainty
- Geopolitical Turbulence
- Global Supply Chain Resiliency
- Cybersecurity and Risk
- The Digital Business Imperative
- Everything as a Service Intensification
- Dynamic Work and Skills
- Shifting Tech Regulatory Landscape
- Operationalization of ESG