IT partners around the world are anticipating a transformative wave of AI technology demand that will drive the majority of revenue over the next four to five years.

This is among the findings from the new Cisco Global AI Partners Study, titled Bridging the Customer AI Readiness Gap – The opportunities ahead for partners.

According to the study, in South Africa almost half (49%) of the partners surveyed believe that as much as 76% to 100% of their revenue will come from AI-related technologies during this period.

The study highlights that almost 70% of partners believe the demand for AI-related technology investments will grow by more than 75% in the next four to five years.

The Partners surveyed for the report highlighted infrastructure (49%), cybersecurity (31%), and customer experience (3%) as the top three drivers of AI technology demand in the coming years.

As AI demand surges, partners also foresee a significant shift in their revenue mix. In the short-term43% anticipate AI will contribute to 26-50% of their revenue a year from now, while in the long run that contribution is expected to become even higher.

“The power of AI is undeniable, and its full potential lies in our partners leveraging their experience to deploy secure AI ready integrated Infrastructure USE Cases which resonate with our customers.” says Hayward Rose, Cisco partner lead for sub-Saharan Africa.

“The recently-launched Cisco 360 Partner Program: connects partners’ success to how they meet customers’ needs and ambitions as they modernize their infrastructure, power AI workloads anywhere, and keep their organisations secure, resilient, and high performing.”

The Cisco Global AI Partners Study, a double-blind survey of over 1 500 IT partners across 29 markets, assesses partners’ capabilities in the age of AI. These findings align with the Cisco AI Readiness Index, which found that companies globally lack readiness for AI adoption, revealing gaps in infrastructure, data management, governance, and talent.

Built on the insights from the Index, the Cisco Global AI Partners Study reinforces the crucial role partners play in helping customers achieve AI readiness.

The findings indicate a robust confidence among partners in their knowledge and understanding of various aspects related to AI technologies. The assessment focused on several specific solutions and capabilities for AI deployment across the four pillars of infrastructure, data, governance, and talent.

These capabilities include:

  • Building scalable and adaptable AI-ready infrastructure;
  • Ensuring sufficient GPU resources for ongoing projects;
  • Assessing and maintaining latency and throughput of data centers;
  • Understanding data sets, data sovereignty and privacy laws across different regions/countries.

While partners show strong confidence in their knowledge and understanding of deploying AI technologies, they also understand the challenges they need to address to maximise the opportunities ahead. The biggest ones are inexperience in deploying new technologies (77%), lack of knowledge of systems and processes (60%), and a lack of available technologies (60%). To address these challenges, partners are already heavily investing in upskilling existing employees in AI-related competencies, with almost 86% conducting either internal trainings or inviting external vendors to provide specialised training.