Kathy Gibson reports – Artificial intelligence (AI) is the term on everyone’s lips – but what does it really mean for businesses?
“We believe it is to enhance business,” says Mohammed Amin, senior vice-president: sales for CEEMETA at Dell Technologies, addressing Dell Technologies Forum in Johannesburg today.
Intelligent machines are not new, Amin adds – mankind has always striven to develop machine that make life easier.
“But with generative AI (GenAI), for the first time, creates a new Internet not created by humans. This means we have to manage this thing together. And it gives us a business opportunity.”
Dell Technologies research has uncovered three main points about AI.
First of all, it an opportunity, says Amin. “CEOs are all asking how they can enhance business to gain competitive advantage. And GenAI could enable this.”
Indeed, 91% of South African executives believe AI and GenAI will significantly transform business – but 31% admit they are already struggling to keep up with the pace of disruption.
At the same time, 55% of organisation are at the early to mid-stage of their GenAI journeys. “by 2070, 50% of the global GDP will be a digital economy,” Amin adds.
“So the countries and companies that are not digitally transformed will be left behind.”
The second learning is that talent is the biggest stumbling block on the digital transformation journey.
“Talent and getting people to understand the tech journey is a big problem,” Amin says.
Dell’s study shows that 78% of South African organisations say AI tools will augment human capabilities and productivity.
The top skills for the future will be learning agility, AI fluency and creative thinking – rather than hard skills as in the past.
The third lesson is about date, which will differentiate businesses in the future.
“You must remember that 80% of our data is unstructured,” says Amin. This means just 45% of organisations can currently turn their data in realtime insights.
“Taking AI to the data is what will create new content, for actionable insights and business outcomes,” says Amin.
As a result 91% of organisation agree that data is the differentiator and their GenAI strategy must involved using and protecting that data.
At the same time, 85% of ITDMs prefer an on-premise or hybrid model. “So multi-cloud will be there – but on-premise and hybrid cloud are going to be important.”
With people, data and AI, organisations can accelerate from idea to innovation, Amin says.