Chief information officers (CIOs) are prioritising cybersecurity and cloud in their IT spending, according to a recent survey from Bloomberg Intelligence.
Budget priorities are shifting from servers, storage and networking solutions to large language model (LLM) deployment, the survey found, with Microsoft the preferred provider for cloud deployment.
However, cloud fell into second place for IT spending priorities since the study’s last iteration in December 2023, replaced by cybersecurity. This hike is likely the result of the CrowdStrike outage, which took place as the study was running and highlighted the risk of business disruption. Servers, storage and networking also fell back somewhat.
The broad prioritisation of cloud is the result of pressures to remain competitive by using emerging AI technology, the report suggested, with many setting the groundwork for future AI infrastructure with foundational models, GPUs and cloud technology.
As these groundworks become more well established, the study noted that many firms are moving from proof-of-concept to deployment for their AI copilots. Considering which public cloud provider offers the best value for cost, scalability and performance for data analysis, Microsoft’s Azure came out on top in the July 2024 survey, selected by 38% of participants. It swapped positions with Amazon AWS, which fell by 17 percentage points since December’s study.
Commenting on the findings, the report’s author, senior technology analyst Mandeep Singh, said: “We’re witnessing a significant shift in CIO preferences as enterprise AIs move towards the deployment of their copilots, with 66% of respondents saying they are in the process of deployment compared to December’s 32%. This, coupled with newfound visibility in the need for robust cybersecurity spending in the wake of the CrowdStrike disruption, have significantly shifted the spending needs of CIOs even in the last six months.”
Bloomberg Intelligence expects to see spending on AI models and workloads increase over the next year, it stated, as a greater number of firms move into larger-scale deployments.
©Markets Media Europe 2024
