Data leaders who are based in the Asia-Pacific region are looking to increase investments in generative AI and data management this year, even if the majority of the respondents are facing near-term challenges to demonstrate business value and return on investment (ROI) from their AI projects.
This is based on a survey commissioned by Informatica and conducted by Wakefield Research among 600 data leaders (defined as CDOs, CDAOs, and CAOs) from companies with $500M+ in revenue, between October 23rd and November 6th, 2024.
There were 200 respondents based in the United States; 200 across the United Kingdom, France and Germany, and 200 across Japan, Korea, China, Singapore, Australia, Malaysia, India.
Results show that APAC data leaders (51%) are leading their global counterparts in implementing generative AI into their business practices, surpassing the US (48%) and Europe (47%).
Additionally, 86% of APAC data leaders plan to boost their generative AI investment in 2025, following closely behind U.S. data leaders at 93% and ahead of European data leaders at 82%.
Aligning with their generative AI investment planned for 2025, 32% of APAC data leaders have expressed their intent to increase investment in data management this year.
With top data-related challenges including quality of data (49%), data privacy and protection (46%) and AI ethics (42%), these enterprises are looking to address their concerns in data privacy and security, as well as data governance.
Nearly all APAC organisations using or planning to adopt generative AI (98%) find it difficult to demonstrate the business value of their generative AI efforts, citing security and privacy restraints, AI ethics and data reliability as concerns.
As AI ethics, data reliability and privacy pose the biggest data-related challenges, APAC data leaders are prioritising training the most (85%) than their global counterparts in 2025, to prepare their workforce to responsibly use generative AI or its outputs in their day-to-day operations.
“Our latest CDO study reveals that a strong majority of 92% APAC data leaders are facing pressure from C-suite to deliver quick return of investments from their current AI initiatives, but many are moving ahead to increase their Generative AI investments nonetheless,” said Richard Scott, SVP for Asia Pacific and Japan at Informatica.
“One particular concern is attaining the readiness of their data that is required to achieve the transformative impact of AI,” said Scott.
He added that a strong data foundation and strategy will be imperative to embedding trust in any company’s generative AI efforts.
“Our annual study findings also show that investments in areas like employee skill sets and a modern data management strategy will help achieve the business value the C-suite is seeking from AI,” said Scott.
While APAC data leaders plan to be all-cloud in a year or less and nearly a third in APAC (32%) expect to have 15 or more tools to support their data management priorities, data leaders are facing the daunting task of using many disparate tools and vendors, which could make their generative AI journey forward more complicated.
