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AI essentials: Preparing your business infrastructure for an AI evolution
AI is only beginning its business revolution, promising significant long-term benefits to enhance both customer experiences and operational efficiency. Depending on your industry, the purpose and speed of development will vary, but an organization's execution of AI will likely determine which companies thrive and which lose market share.
How are companies using AI today?
According to Gartner research, 59% of CEOs believe that AI is the technology that will have the most impact in their industries over the next three years.1 Companies are investing in AI to help achieve real business goals like:
Enhanced customer experiences
73% of enterprises are using or plan to use AI in customer engagement solutions in the next 12 months2
Increased revenue
78% of business leaders expect ROI on generative AI investments in 1 to 3 years3
78% of business leaders expect ROI on generative AI investments in 1 to 3 years3
Higher productivity
66% higher productivity was seen in employees handling common AI‑related tasks4
Checklist: Is your business AI-ready?
AI ambitions need ample network capacity
The rapid growth of powerful and complex AI applications is driving up the volume of data consumption. If companies neglect to increase their bandwidth, these applications will run slowly and unreliably, which could lead to lost revenue and customer dissatisfaction.
Upgrade your roadways
If a major mall is built on a quiet two-lane road without making any road upgrades, traffic and potholes will develop from the increased volume of cars. Similarly, your business success can be hindered by partnering with a network provider that doesn’t have a long-term plan to invest in increased capacity and cutting-edge offerings.
Optimize the bandwidth you already have
Advanced, AI-enabled networks help deliver your highest priority data with maximum speed and reliability, avoiding data bottlenecks and enabling the most efficient use of your bandwidth.
AI-driven real-world examples that need expanded bandwidth capacity:
AI needs comprehensive cybersecurity to protect critical data
Companies must fortify their cybersecurity posture to safeguard the growing amount of sensitive data used by AI, as underinvestment can lead to cyberattacks, lost revenue, reputation erosion and regulatory fines.
Extend security as broadly as possible
Choosing a large-scale network provider with automated detection offers a strong first line of defense against threats, providing broad threat visibility and empowering your IT team to take meaningful action.
Fortify your most central functionalities
When utilizing data for sensitive AI applications, you can reserve an entirely private piece of bandwidth for your business, with access granted only to trusted sources and elements that can be fully customized by your IT team.
How sensitive is your data?
Somewhat sensitive:
- Analytics data
- Forecasting data
- Company documents
Extremely sensitive:
- Personally identifiable information
- Financial data
- Health records
- IoT functionality
- Patented technology
Somewhat sensitive:
- Analytics data
- Forecasting data
- Company documents
Extremely sensitive:
- Personally identifiable information
- Financial data
- Health records
- IoT functionality
- Patented technology
Somewhat sensitive:
- Analytics data
- Forecasting data
- Company documents
Extremely sensitive:
- Personally identifiable information
- Financial data
- Health records
- IoT functionality
- Patented technology
Somewhat sensitive:
- Analytics data
- Forecasting data
- Company documents
Extremely sensitive:
- Personally identifiable information
- Financial data
- Health records
- IoT functionality
- Patented technology
The opportunities of AI are massive, but many companies will have a long runway before they see significant incremental revenue, requiring a balance between driving innovation and pacing expenses.
Don’t let costs outpace growth
Creating a flexible digital foundation with on-demand products that charge based on usage instead of a flat monthly rate helps to keep costs from outpacing opportunities.
Increase expertise, not expenses.
Transitioning to AI will demand more IT resources, making the challenge of recruiting IT talent even harder. Managed services offer actionable plans for your AI evolution along with team trainings that help ensure adoption.
AI Use Intensity and Testing Rates by Sector5
Advanced: AI requires real-time data processing to provide fast, reliable applications.
Most companies will be ready for the AI revolution by following the first three considerations, but those that use massive datasets to run highly personalized or mission-critical applications need the fastest cloud solutions.
Instantaneous digital experiences
With AI’s increasing data demands, you need a high-performance cloud network to deliver your data and applications with under 5 milliseconds of latency, enabling your company’s digital experiences to feel modern and smooth.
Need more speed? Go to the edge.
Edge fabric solutions can achieve under 1 millisecond of latency to provide a constant flow of data and reliably execute mission-critical tasks like robotics, neural networks and advanced AI applications.
AI-driven real-world examples that need edge fabric solutions:
Evaluate your digital posture in the AI revolution
Does your company have the right technological foundation for an AI future?
The ability to manage and leverage vast amounts of data will be critical for the success of AI. Companies need to invest and adapt to these technological advancements to stay competitive in their industry, but investing too heavily too quickly carries its own risks.
Why Lumen?
Lumen provides a secure, high-performance and flexible network, which many top companies are using as an essential building block to prepare for future opportunities. With AI-ready infrastructure and comprehensive solutions, Lumen is ready to meet the needs of growing data demand.