UK Innovation Halted by Infrastructure Limitations, Talent Shortages, and Rising Energy Costs
Pure Storage report reveals AI adoption demand and challenges, as IT leaders say cyber spending is a significant obstacle to innovation
London, August 7, 2024 - Pure Storage® (NYSE: PSTG), the IT pioneer that delivers the world's most advanced data storage technology and services, in partnership with independent research firm Vanson Bourne, today released a new report on the current trends and challenges shaping UK business innovation.
Key findings of the research include confirmation of the emergence of AI as a key avenue for UK innovation, while the need for critical infrastructure upgrades, along with other challenges, is hampering progress in that regard. Interestingly, the research also revealed that cyber defence spending is a significant impediment to innovation, with leaders opining that budgets spent protecting their business could be better spent elsewhere.
The report, “The Innovation Race: Reducing Risk and Navigating the AI Frontier for Future Success,” features the unique insights and perspectives of UK Chief Information Officers (CIOs) and senior IT leaders, and is distilled from a larger global report.
Industry Significance:
As the UK continues to grapple with the cost of living crisis, CIOs and other senior IT leaders face significant economic pressures. Despite these challenges, driving innovation remains imperative for enterprises, with AI rapidly emerging as a key technology for business improvement. However, navigating the complexities of AI integrations is putting a damper on the AI ‘gold rush’.
Survey Highlights:
The future is firmly rooted in AI for UK businesses:
- UK IT leaders (91%) recognise AI as a substantial opportunity for transforming their organisation
- Almost all UK businesses are already planning or adopting AI, with 42% even developing an AI-first strategy (where AI is considered for every new use case)
- Improving efficiencies and automating repetitive tasks is seen as AI’s biggest potential (53%), followed by personalising customer experience (49%) and driving decision-making with the use of customer data (45%)
Acute infrastructure challenges in the UK are limiting AI’s potential:
- Almost half of IT budgets and 53% of the IT department’s time is predicted to be spent on AI efforts in the next year
- Almost nine in 10 (88%) business leaders predict that their AI-generated data will soon outgrow their organisation’s current data centres
- Consequently, 78% are worried their infrastructure can’t keep up with AI
UK businesses feel the pressure of the cost-of-living-crisis at a time when innovation is key to driving economic growth:
- A third of UK businesses see rising energy costs as a threat to their ability to innovate, a challenge felt more acutely in the UK than globally
- Some 34% say technology debt is a real challenge
- UK IT teams are struggling to keep up the pace of innovation, with 56% focused on keeping on the lights and firefighting - the highest among countries in the global report
- The UK’s growing tech talent shortage is compounding the struggle, with 37% saying it’s one of the greatest risks impacting their ability to innovate
Cyber threats remain a worry and an obstacle to innovation:
- UK IT leaders (49%) see cyber attacks as the biggest threat to innovation
- Frustration is mounting at the high cost of cyber attacks, with 87% expressing that the budget and time dedicated to preventing and dealing with cyber threats would be better spent on innovation
To mitigate these challenges, IT leaders must understand all the risks to their business beyond the obvious cyber threats. Developing comprehensive pre-, during-, and post-attack plans and simplifying the IT estate can reduce technical debt and enhance security, thereby freeing up resources for innovation.
Executive Insight:
“Plagued with concerns about their infrastructure’s ability to support AI, UK IT leaders fear losing the Innovation Race. This research aims to help them understand all the risks to their organisation beyond the obvious cyberthreats, enabling them to prioritise and strike a balance between security and innovation. Addressing rising energy costs and assessing AI readiness with a hybrid infrastructure approach can significantly benefit their efforts to harness AI for future success.”
Wes van den Berg
Regional Vice President, UK & Ireland, Pure Storage
"IDC research also shows that AI has tremendous potential but only a fraction of PoCs are translated to production use cases today in the UK. Concerns around the infrastructure-readiness, the tech skills shortage, high cost and sophisticated cyberthreats are all impacting businesses’ ability to innovate. UK CIOs that are able to focus on long-term strategies and align technology investment to overcome the limiting factors are the ones that can build sustainable competitive advantage for their organisations.” - Archana Venkatraman, Senior Director, Research, IDC
"With our old infrastructure, we were looking at a risk of failure and had to dramatically reconsider our storage strategy. For us, Pure Storage's solutions enable the business to drive continuous improvements. Since implementing Pure Storage, we have been able to shift focus from addressing performance issues to driving innovation and ensuring longevity of our solutions." Ajit Sharma, Business Optimisation Manager for Virgin Media O2
Learn More:
Read the full report
Notes: The survey of 200 CIO and IT decision makers from the UK was drawn from a larger survey of 1,500 global respondents, conducted by independent market research agency Vanson Bourne and commissioned by Pure Storage.
About Pure Storage
Pure Storage (NYSE: PSTG) delivers the industry’s most advanced data storage platform to store, manage, and protect the world’s data at any scale. With Pure Storage, organisations have ultimate simplicity and flexibility, saving time, money, and energy. From AI to archive, Pure Storage delivers a cloud experience with one unified Storage as-a-Service platform across on premises, cloud, and hosted environments. Our platform is built on our Evergreen architecture that evolves with your business – always getting newer and better with zero planned downtime, guaranteed. Our customers are actively increasing their capacity and processing power while significantly reducing their carbon and energy footprint. It’s easy to fall in love with Pure Storage, as evidenced by the highest Net Promoter Score in the industry. For more information, visit www.purestorage.com.
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