DataRobot Research Finds 86% of Organizations Prioritize AI and Machine Learning

The enterprise AI/ML market is maturing and investment is accelerating, yet many organizations continue to struggle with increasingly complex operational issues 

OCTOBER 21, 2021 — BOSTON — Today DataRobot, the AI Cloud leader, released a new research report on the state of artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) in the enterprise. The report findings are based on a deep exploration of over 400 organizations across industries, revealing critical insights into the common hurdles facing these organizations and the ways AI is unlocking economic growth. Key findings include:

• Maturing Market: Investment in AI/ML is continuing to rise, with 86% of survey respondents saying their organizations have increased their yearly AI/ML budget from 2020 to 2021. The same percentage (86) said their organizations prioritize AI/ML above other IT initiatives, with 42% placing AI/ML as their leading IT priority.
• Operational Issues Delay ROI: The research found that organizations are running into increasingly complex post-deployment operational issues, with 87% of survey respondents struggling with long model deployment timelines. The majority, 59% of surveyed organizations, require at least one month to deploy a trained model to production.
• Infrastructure Complexity: Every enterprise has a growing, diverse and often disconnected combination of infrastructure, tooling and specific use cases and requirements for AI/ML. The majority of surveyed organizations (64%) deploy models and data to support more than 10 regions across the globe, while 22% need to support more than 20 regions worldwide. Additionally, 37% of respondents have AI deployed across a hybrid environment for model deployment, combining on-premises infrastructure with cloud environments, while 28% have a multi-cloud environment.
• Performance, Compliance and Security Implications: 85% of respondents are struggling with IT governance, compliance and auditability requirements related to their AI/ML deployments, and 25%—the largest percentage for any single challenge—named IT security their top AI/ML challenge. Most companies (83%) said they have SLA requirements for model latency and significant geographic distribution can present performance challenges.

“AI is enabling the most competitive companies to revolutionize their business operations and disrupt decades-old industries,” said Executive Vice President of MLOps at DataRobot, Diego Oppenheimer. “However, organizations are running into more complex operational concerns: corporate governance, IT security, risk management and multinational regulation. An end-to-end AI/ML platform with enterprise-grade machine learning operations is the only way to manage this growing complexity and maximize business impact.”

The data for this report was collected in May 2021 by an independent research firm. The complete report is available here.

About DataRobot 

DataRobot AI Cloud is the next generation of AI. The unified platform is built for all data types, all users, and all environments to deliver critical business insights for every organization. DataRobot is trusted by global customers across industries and verticals, including a third of the Fortune 50. For more information, visit https://www.datarobot.com/.