French companies plan to spend an average of $36 million to modernize their IT environment in 2024. Almost a third of this amount will be dedicated to the deployment of artificial intelligence technologies, especially generative AI (GenAI).
According to a study by Couchbase, the deployment of artificial intelligence technologies generates an increase of almost 40% in IT modernization expenditures in France.
Based on responses from 500 IT executives, the seventh annual survey by Couchbase (provider of a cloud database platform) indicates that French companies plan to spend an average of $36 million to modernize their IT environment.
The motivations are clear: to improve employee efficiency, increase developer productivity or even identify and combat rapidly evolving cyber threats. However, challenges persist – efficiency and security when using AI, computing power and availability of adequate infrastructure, especially data centers.
meimperatives of generative AI
These investments in IT modernization are expected to increase by 27% in 2024, as businesses look to leverage new technologies, such as AI and edge computing, while meeting ever-higher productivity demands.
But the weight of existing technologies leads to wasted investments of $4 million on average per year, and an average delay of 18 weeks in the most strategic projects.
Companies are not prepared for data requirements: more than one in two French people surveyed (51%) believe that their company has not put all the elements of a data strategy adapted to AI generative.
Only 20% of companies have a vector database capable of effectively storing, managing and indexing vector data. Capabilities such as controlling data storage, access and usage, or the ability to access, share and act on data in real time using vector search to improve performance are essential to meeting the data imperatives of generative AI.
4 million dollars wasted
In fact, dependence on existing technologies delays modernization: despite increasing investments in modernization, dependence on existing technologies that cannot satisfy current digital needs causes failed projects, delays them, reduces them or prevents them from seeing the light.
The consequence is that 4 million dollars of investments are wasted on average per year with an average delay of 18 weeks in the most strategic projects.
However, the surveyed professionals are well aware of how investments support generative AI capabilities. Overall, 73% of IT executives surveyed say they are increasing their investments in AI tools to help developers work more efficiently and create new generative AI applications faster.
65% say that edge computing will be essential to these new applications – through its ability to reduce latency and increase computing power by consolidating data at the edge.
But 66% of French professionals surveyed believe that many organizations have rushed to adopt generative AI without understanding the fundamentals of effective and safe use.
Even more worrying, the rapid adoption of AI has come at the expense of other areas. In France, 20% (compared to 26% worldwide) of the companies surveyed redirected their spending to adopt AI – most often to the detriment of support and maintenance functions, and especially security.
In conclusion, investing in proper data management and infrastructure architecture could help unlock the potential of generative AI.
In addition, having a modern and versatile database, equipped with all the necessary functions, will make it possible to rationalize architectures and costs as much as possible.