Business Technology Roundtable

The emergence of Generative AI (GenAI) represents a pivotal moment in business technology evolution, with early enterprise adoption showing promising results according to PwC's latest Global CEO Survey . While much attention has focused on potential future impacts, concrete productivity, and revenue gains are already materializing across industries, suggesting we're at the beginning of a transformative wave in how organizations operate. Current State of Enterprise Adoption The PwC research findings, drawing from 4,701 CEOs worldwide, reveal encouraging early returns from GenAI tools and associated use case investments. Notably, 56 percent of CEOs report that GenAI has improved employee time efficiency, while about one-third have seen increased revenue (32 percent) and profitability (34 percent). These performance metrics, while slightly below initial expectations, demonstrate that organizations are finding practical ways to extract value from the latest technology. Perhaps most...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools evolved and the inevitable outcome has arrived. The emerging Generative AI market demand has rapidly grown from initial hype and pilots to full-blown strategic implementation. The Wharton AI Report for 2024 reveals a nuanced picture of how the leading firms integrate this groundbreaking business technology into their operational frameworks. Key Insights and Market Dynamics The most striking statistic is the surge in generative AI adoption: 72 percent of decision-makers now report using generative AI at least once a week, compared to just 37 percent in 2023. This represents a dramatic shift from curiosity to active experimentation across multiple business functions. Spending has matched this enthusiasm, with generative AI budgets increasing by 130 percent since 2023. However, the growth trajectory is showing signs of stabilization. While 72 percent of respondents plan to increase AI budgets in the next year, a majority (57 percent) anticipate more mod...

The digital business sector is at a pivotal moment, particularly with Generative AI (GenAI) emerging as the most defining value-creation trend of 2024 and beyond. Are you prepared? Bain & Company's latest Technology Report provides a comprehensive look at how AI reshapes the industry landscape, creates new opportunities, and delivers tangible results for enterprises across sectors. As an independent industry analyst and consultant, I find the report's insights on enterprise opportunities with GenAI applications particularly enlightening and compelling. This transformational technology is driving meaningful and substantive business outcomes. It now has the potential to revolutionize how companies operate and compete globally. The Strategic GenAI Imperative Generative AI has moved firmly into the mainstream, with cloud service providers, enterprises, and technology vendors increasing their GenAI investments to unprecedented levels.  However, as with any transformative busine...

Is your leadership team ready to move beyond the consideration phase and harness the transformative power of Generative AI (GenAI), or are you trapped in analysis paralysis? Deloitte's latest quarterly report on "The State of Generative AI in the Enterprise" provides a comprehensive look at how organizations are navigating the GenAI adoption call to action.  The Q3 2024 survey of 2,770 leaders across 14 countries offers valuable insights into the current state of GenAI implementation, challenges, and future outlook. It's insightful reading. Building on Initial GenAI Success Organizations are seeing early value from their strategic GenAI initiatives, with 67 percent increasing investments due to strong business outcome results. While improved efficiency, productivity, and cost reduction remain top priorities (cited by 42 percent as the most important benefit), a majority (58 percent) report diverse benefits such as increased innovation, improved products, and enhanced...

Are your board of directors and executive team ready to transform your business with the latest technology, or will you be left behind as your competitors accelerate their adoption? The transformative power of Generative AI (GenAI) applications is impacting industries across the globe, promising not only enhanced efficiency but also new avenues for value creation. According to the latest research by PwC , a significant 70 percent of CEOs anticipate that GenAI will fundamentally change how their companies operate in the next three years. Let's explore the key insights from PwC's report, focusing on the GenAI "Value Realization Flywheel" and its implications for businesses seeking to harness this methodology. The Promise of GenAI Across Industries Generative AI is poised to revolutionize various business sectors, with software companies potentially seeing a 20 percentage-point increase in their profit margins. Even industries with modest projected gains, such as transp...

How can applied technologies advance digital business growth and unlock strategic competitive advantages? Here's a proven approach. In the rapidly evolving commercial landscape of artificial intelligence apps, Generative AI (GenAI) tools have delivered unprecedented results. As a C-suite executive, understanding these innovative GenAI technologies can empower you to act decisively. Why now? It's a leadership imperative. A recent comprehensive study of GenAI Prompting techniques offers valuable insights that can be directly applied to enhance your organization's AI strategy. Strategic Importance of Structured Prompting At the core of interacting with Generative AI tools lies the concept of Prompting - the art and science of crafting inputs that guide GenAI tools to produce desired outputs. The study reveals that well-structured prompts consistently lead to improved results across a wide range of tasks. This finding underscores the critical need for organizations to develop ...

We have reached the tipping point for business technology investment. The integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into the economy is a transformative force that executives can no longer ignore. The Stanford HAI's " Artificial Intelligence Index Report 2024 " provides invaluable insights into the economic impact of AI, highlighting both opportunities and challenges that demand strategic action from today's business leaders. The AI Investment Race: America Sprints Ahead The United States has emerged as the undisputed leader in AI investment, outpacing China and the European Union by a substantial margin. In 2023, American companies invested a staggering $67.2 billion in AI, nearly 8.7 times more than China, the next highest investor. This investment surge underscores the immense strategic importance placed on AI by U.S. enterprises, positioning them as frontrunners in the race to harness this game-changing technology. Job Market Dynamics: AI's Transformative Im...

Some executives have taken the lead, while others sit on the sidelines. The global business landscape is undergoing a seismic shift driven by Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI). New GenAI tools, with their ability to produce human-quality text, code, and multimedia content, present a once-in-a-generation opportunity for you to propel your organization toward unprecedented innovation and value creation. The Gap Between Leaders and Laggards is Widening A recent McKinsey report paints a concerning picture: companies with robust digital and AI capabilities are already accelerating ahead of many traditional competitors. These leaders boast total shareholder returns two to six times higher across sectors. This isn't simply a coincidence. It's a testament to the compounding advantage gained by those who've invested in building a comprehensive AI arsenal. These organizations have transformed themselves into AI powerhouses. From crafting strategic roadmaps to cultivating spe...

Earlier in the year, Gartner forecast that by year-end 2016, more than 50 percent of global companies will have stored customer-sensitive data in a public cloud platform. These services can scale very quickly, which has made them very popular for applications that have a requirement for flexibility. Cloud storage offers organizations significant cost and agility benefits, but can pose some security, privacy, accessibility and performance challenges. Therefore, a big part of selecting a best-fit cloud storage provider is investing the time to perform the research to fully understand its capabilities. Furthermore, most industry analyst prior market studies have uncovered that Line of Business leaders are most likely to procure public cloud service offerings for their organizations. However, survey participants at two recent business technology events on the East Coast were divided about who in their organization is primarily driving their cloud computing strategy. So, given these...

Internet usage is evolving, and so are the application scenarios for business technology. In the foreseeable future, desktop personal computers will produce a much smaller share of commercial internet protocol (IP) traffic. Mobile and portable devices -- other than PCs -- will drive the majority of traffic by 2018. According to the latest findings from  Cisco Visual Networking Index , in 2013, just 33 percent of IP traffic originated with non-PC devices. However, by 2018, the non-PC share of IP traffic will grow to 57 percent. Moreover, commercial mobile location-based services will be the fastest growing application -- with a 24.9 percent CAGR -- during the forecast period. PC-originated traffic will grow at a 10 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR), while other devices or connections will have higher traffic growth rates over the forecast period -- including TVs (18 percent), tablets (74 percent), smartphones (64 percent) and M2M connections (84 percent). According to...

In the second annual Cisco Global Cloud Index (2011-2016) , Cisco forecasts global data center traffic to grow fourfold and reach a total of 6.6 zettabytes annually by 2016. The company also predicts global cloud traffic, the fastest-growing component of data center traffic, to grow sixfold – a 44 percent combined annual growth rate (CAGR) – from 683 exabytes of annual traffic in 2011 to 4.3 zettabytes by 2016. For context, 6.6 zettabytes is equivalent to: 92 trillion hours of streaming music – Equivalent to about 1.5 years of continuous music streaming for the world's population in 2016. 16 trillion hours of business Web conferencing – Equivalent to about 12 hours of daily Web conferencing for the world's workforce in 2016. 7 trillion hours of online high-definition (HD) video streaming – Equivalent to about 2.5 hours of daily streamed HD video for the world's population in 2016. The vast majority of the data center traffic is not caused by end use...

Cisco issued results of their annual Visual Networking Index (VNI) Forecast (2011-2016). It's the company's ongoing initiative to forecast and analyze Internet Protocol (IP) networking growth and trends worldwide. The VNI Forecast update projects the significant amount of IP traffic expected to travel public and private networks -- including Internet, managed IP, and mobile data traffic generated by all users. This year, Cisco has also developed a new complementary study -- the Cisco VNI Service Adoption Forecast, which includes global and regional residential, consumer mobile, and business services growth rates. By 2016, annual global IP traffic is forecast to be 1.3 zettabytes -- (a zettabyte is equal to a sextillion bytes, or a trillion gigabytes). The projected increase of global IP traffic between 2015 and 2016 alone is more than 330 exabytes, which is almost equal to the total amount of global IP traffic generated in 2011 (369 exabytes). This significant level of ...

Today, most important executive relationships are globally distributed, but many business leaders still say that they want more collaboration in person. Particularly during activities such as brainstorming for new ideas, managing a specific crisis or making presentations. This is among the key findings from a new Economist Intelligence Unit ( EIU ) survey. While the primary function of meetings is to build relationships with customers, some 89 percent of EIU survey respondents say communications where the parties can see and respond to each other benefit internal business functions such as employee coaching and training as well as communications with partners and customers. An additional 43 percent of respondents use meetings to discuss and resolve major issues with customers such as a service or product failure or dissatisfaction with the partnership. Motivations for expanding these meetings also include contract renewals, brainstorming sessions and being introduced to other clien...

The proof-positive business impact from managed cloud services deployment, including the numerous associated productivity benefits and anticipated cost-savings, have pushed cloud computing well into the mainstream during 2011. As we move into 2012, International Data Corporation ( IDC ) predicts that this evolution will continue as more users test the growing capabilities of the public cloud services that are already available. However, by 2015, IDC envisions a very different scenario -- one where cloud services will become commonplace, thereby forcing significant changes in the ongoing adoption of progressive business technology practices throughout legacy IT organizations. "In the next 24 months, the 'cloud' as a marketing label will cease to exist, as the success of cloud services will mean that it will permeate the sourcing strategies of the CIO and business unit manager alike," says Chris Morris, Lead Analyst for Cloud Services at IDC Asia/Pacific. He ad...

Broadband service providers gained a 5 percent share of nearly $20 billion annual cloud services market, with 25 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) forecast to 2013 -- according to the latest aggregated market research assessment by STL Partners . Based upon their observations, most market forecasts estimate that the total cloud services market will reach $45-50 billion revenue by 2013 or 2014 -- including the Bain forecast that was previewed at the "Americas Telco 2.0 Brainstorm" event, which was hosted by STL Partners in April 2011. At their EMEA brainstorm event, the attendees were given an overview of the component cloud markets and examples of different cloud service approaches . They were then asked for their views on the potential share that service providers might garner from the addressable cloud revenue opportunities within each category. In total, the attendee consensus view amounted to service providers gaining 18 percent of the revenue for cloud ser...