The top 1000 firms in Asia (A1000) are expected to allocate over 50% of their core IT spend on artificial intelligence (AI) by 2025, according to an International Data Corp FutureScape report focusing on AI.
Seven in ten are already investing in or exploring the use of Generative AI. By 2026, two-thirds of A1000 businesses will leverage a combination of generative AI and retrieval augmented generation to power domain-specific self-service knowledge discovery, improving decision-making by 40%.
Global AI rules, however, may slow AI adoption. IDC predicts that by 2027, AI regulatory divergence across geographies will create major challenges for A2000 companies, which will increase the time and effort to implement AI for sensitive use cases by up to 20%.
To address AI security concerns, 70% of cloud and software platform providers in Asia Pacific will bundle generative AI safety and governance packages with their primary services by 2026. This could reduce GenAI risk scenarios by three times.
"IDC's FutureScape predicts that AI and automation technologies will remain central to tech investment initiatives. They are needed to lower operational costs, reduce staffing pressure, revamp end-user experience, and democratise decision-making power. The adaptability and efficiency offered by AI and automation solutions can provide the technologies that can mitigate staff shortage and economic challenges," says Dr. Lily Phan, research director of Intelligent Automation at IDC Asia/Pacific.
In another FutureScape report, IDC says that 50% of enterprises in Asia Pacific will form strategic ties with cloud providers for generative AI platforms, developer tools, and infrastructure by 2025. This is because the cloud can provide scalability, agility, flexibility, and lower cost and access to the resources of generative AI technologies.
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Besides that, IDC foresees enterprises in the region utilising generative AI tools and cloud service provider platforms to initiate and execute 60% of code conversion and development tasks by 2027. Twenty-three per cent are also expected to implement cloud-native application protection platforms with AI in the next 12 months to enforce continuous compliance with cloud security posture management features.
"With the rise of AI, cloud foundation is core to the ability to create even more possibilities for organisations to increase productivity and explore new business models. Organisations in the Asia Pacific (excluding Japan) and their leaders will need to grasp both the broad long-term impact of AI as well as the immediate impact of generative AI investments across their entire technology landscape to ensure they capitalise on opportunities and manage costs and risks," says Daphne Chung, research director of Cloud Services and Software at IDC Asia/Pacific.
