85 percent of enterprises believe investing in GenAI technology in the next 24 months is critical, a new ISG report finds

The advent of generative AI (GenAI) has dramatically increased awareness and investment in artificial intelligence technologies, with enterprises saying that half of their AI budgets are now devoted to GenAI, according to a new research report from leading global technology research and advisory firm Information Services Group (ISG) (Nasdaq: III).

The ISG AI Platforms Buyers Guides, produced by ISG Software Research (formerly Ventana Research), say that in addition to bringing new attention to the AI domain, GenAI offers the promise of making AI much more accessible and more easily utilized in a broader portion of the workforce and the general public. According to buyer behavior research from ISG, 85 percent of enterprises say they believe that investment in GenAI technology in the next 24 months is important or critical.

The ISG report notes that hiring and retaining experienced AI professionals is the biggest IT resource challenge and the biggest impediment to enterprises adopting AI on a broader scale.

“Enterprises need objective, independent assessments of AI software providers,” said David Menninger, Executive Director, ISG Software Research. “Capabilities vary widely among these providers. The lack of AI-talented resources makes it even more difficult for enterprises to evaluate which vendors can best meet their needs.”

The most common tasks where GenAI is being applied include natural language processing (NLP) such as chatbots, copilots and assistants, extracting information from and summarizing documents, and assisting with software development tasks such as code generation and application migration. GenAI is expected to have a bigger impact in these areas than predictive AI.

While the rise of GenAI has been meteoric, enterprises still plan to invest one-half of their AI spend on predictive or traditional AI. Predictive AI is expected to have a bigger impact in areas such as credit risk, fraud detection, algorithmic trading and customer acquisition.

Developing and deploying AI models is a multistep process, beginning with collecting and curating the data that will be used to create the model. Once a model is developed and tuned using the training data, it needs to be tested to determine its accuracy and performance. Then the model needs to be applied in an operational application or process.

The study notes enterprises need to monitor and maintain the models, ensuring they continue to be accurate and relevant as market conditions change. In the case of third-party Large Language Models (LLMs), providers are constantly updating and improving their models, so enterprises need to be prepared to deploy newer models as well.

Software providers have slowly recognized that a lack of Machine Learning Operations (MLOps) and LLMOps tooling was inhibiting the successful use of AI. AI software providers have expanded their platforms to address many of these capabilities, and specialist providers have emerged with a focus on MLOps/LLMOps. ISG Software Research asserts that by 2026, four in five enterprises will use MLOps and LLMOps tools to improve the quality and governance of their AI/ML efforts.

The ISG AI Platforms Buyers Guides are designed to provide a holistic view of a software provider’s ability to serve a combination of traditional AI, GenAI and MLOps/LLMOps workloads with either a single AI platform product or a set of AI platform products. The AI Platforms Buyers Guides include the full breadth of overall AI capabilities and considered whether the capabilities were available from a software provider in a single offering, or a suite of products or cloud services.

For its 2024 AI Platforms Buyers Guides, ISG evaluated software providers across three AI platform categories – AI Platforms, GenAI Platforms and MLOps/LLMOps – and produced a separate Buyers Guide for each. A total of 30 providers were assessed: Alibaba Cloud, Altair, Alteryx, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Anaconda, Anthropic, C3 AI, Cloudera, Cohere, Databricks, Dataiku, DataRobot, Domino Data Lab, Google, H20.ai, Hugging Face, IBM, MathWorks, Microsoft, NVIDIA, OpenAI, Oracle, Palantir, Red Hat, Salesforce, SAP, SAS, Snowflake and Teradata.

ISG Software Research designates the top three software providers as Leaders in each category. For the 2024 study, the leading providers in ranked order are:

AI Platforms: Oracle, AWS and IBM

GenAI Platforms: Oracle, Databricks and Microsoft

MLOps: Oracle, AWS and Databricks

”We are seeing dramatic changes in technological innovation related to the use of enterprise software for AI, with platforms designed to support a range of requirements for GenAI and Machine Learning,” said Mark Smith, partner, ISG Software Research. “Considering the rapid pace of change in this domain, organizations need research insights on which software providers can interoperate with cloud and data platforms to best support business and IT requirements.”

The ISG Buyers Guides for AI are the distillation of more than a year of market and product research efforts. The research is not sponsored nor influenced by software providers and is conducted solely to help enterprises optimize their business and IT software investments.

Visit this webpage to learn more about the Buyers Guides for AI and read executive summaries of each of the three reports. The complete reports, including provider rankings across seven product and customer experience dimensions and detailed research findings on each provider, are available by contacting ISG Software Research.

About ISG Software Research

ISG Software Research, previously Ventana Research, provides authoritative market research and coverage of the business and IT software industry. It distributes research and insights daily through its user community, and provides a portfolio of consulting, advisory, research and education services for enterprises, software and service providers, and investment firms. Its on-demand service provides structured education and advisory support through subject-matter experts. ISG Buyers Guides support the RFI/RFP process and help enterprises evaluate and select software providers through tailored assessment services and the ISG Software Research Value Index methodology. Visit www.ventanaresearch.com for more information and to sign up for free community membership.

About ISG

ISG (Information Services Group) (Nasdaq: III) is a leading global technology research and advisory firm. A trusted business partner to more than 900 clients, including more than 75 of the world’s top 100 enterprises, ISG is committed to helping corporations, public sector organizations, and service and technology providers achieve operational excellence and faster growth. The firm specializes in digital transformation services, including AI and automation, cloud and data analytics; sourcing advisory; managed governance and risk services; network carrier services; strategy and operations design; change management; market intelligence and technology research and analysis. Founded in 2006, and based in Stamford, Conn., ISG employs 1,600 digital-ready professionals operating in more than 20 countries—a global team known for its innovative thinking, market influence, deep industry and technology expertise, and world-class research and analytical capabilities based on the industry’s most comprehensive marketplace data. For more information, visit www.isg-one.com.

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