Only 13% of firms in Singapore are fully prepared to deploy and leverage AI-powered technologies, stagnant from the same ratio% a year ago, according to the latest report from Cisco.
The company said the lack of progress highlights the challenges companies face in adopting, deploying, and fully leveraging AI. Given the rapid market evolution and the significant impact AI is anticipated to have on business operations, this readiness gap is especially critical.
The report is based on a double-blind survey of 3,660 senior business leaders from organisations with 500 or more employees across 14 markets in the Asia-Pacific region, including Japan, China, Hong Kong and Singapore.
According to Cisco, AI has become a cornerstone for business strategy, and there is increasing urgency among companies to adopt and deploy AI technologies.
In Singapore, 98% of companies report an increased urgency to deploy AI in the past year, driven primarily by the CEO and leadership team. Additionally, companies are committing a significant amount of resources towards AI, with 37% reporting that as much as 10% to 30% of their IT budget is being allocated to AI deployments.
Despite significant AI investments in strategic areas like cybersecurity, IT infrastructure, and data analytics and data management, many companies report that returns on these investments are not meeting their expectations.
“This year’s AI Readiness Index reveals that to fully leverage the potential of AI, companies need a modern digital infrastructure capable of meeting evolving power needs and network latency requirements from growing AI workloads,” said Tay Bee Kheng, Cisco’s president in ASEAN. “This must be supported with the right visibility to achieve their business objectives.”
Findings also show that AI Readiness declined across several pillars, with infrastructure identified as a pain point. Only 22% of organisations have the necessary GPUs they need to meet current and future AI demands and just 25% have the capabilities to protect data in AI models with end–to–end encryption, security audits, continuous monitoring, and instant threat response.
Also, companies are investing, but gains fall short of expectations. Over the past year, AI has been a priority spend for organisations in Singapore, with 37% allocating 10-30% of their IT budgets to AI projects. AI investments have focused on three strategic areas — cybersecurity (48% of companies are at full/advanced deployment), IT infrastructure (38%), and data management (33%).
Despite increased investments, on average almost half said they have either seen no gains or the gains have fallen short of their expectations, in augmenting, assisting, or automating current processes or operations.
In addition, there is mounting pressure and urgency from top leadership to implement AI technologies. Nearly half (47%) of companies report that the CEO and the leadership team are driving AI deployment, closely followed by middle management (39%) and the board of directors (35%).
Companies recognise they need to do more to be better prepared to leverage AI effectively. Across Singapore, over half (51%) rate improving scalability, flexibility, and manageability of their IT infrastructure as their top priorities, highlighting an awareness of the gaps that must be addressed to improve overall AI readiness.
Further, companies highlight the lack of skilled talent as the top challenge across infrastructure, data, and governance, underscoring the critical need for skilled professionals to drive AI initiatives.
Across the region, only 15% of organisations are fully prepared to deploy and leverage AI-powered technologies, down from 17% a year ago.
Nearly all (98%) report an increased urgency to deploy AI in the past year, primarily driven by the CEO and leadership team.
Additionally, companies are committing significant resources to AI, with half (50%) indicating that between 10% to 30% of their IT budget is allocated to AI deployments.
