AI is Both a Winner and a Loser in 2024 While the Data Center Makes a Comeback
AI’s journey in 2024 expected to be a mixed bag of successes and challenges; whereas the Data Center landscape continues to evolve.
When I first sat down to put together some technology predictions for the coming year, the contrarian side of me was very tempted to not talk about Artificial Intelligence at all. But ignoring AI now is like living on a small island and pretending you’re not surrounded by water.
But the impact of AI goes well beyond ChatGPT, fake law citations, and poorly written sports articles. In the world of business technology, AI is already having a huge effect, and it will continue to be built into the products and services that organizations use every day.
With that in mind, let’s start our 2024 outlook with AI.
Navigating AI’s Crossroads
In 2024, AI will lose ground and be declared a failure – As high profile hallucinations and mistakes begin to pile up, along with continuing calls for regulation and oversight, many will refer to AI as another overhyped trend that, like crypto, was mostly hot air. And in many ways, they will be right.
Many businesses looking to build products or reduce their workforce with AI will run into some serious roadblocks. For those building products, the high resource costs of AI will make it nearly impossible to be profitable (unless you’re one of the largest companies). The inability of AI to be a final source of truth or accuracy, along with its occasional habit of being catastrophically wrong, will have any company replacing workers with AI quickly regretting that move.
On top of this, expect to see pushback as the high power demands of AI run into the requirements of many businesses to be more sustainable and use less power.
See More: The State of AI in Cybersecurity 2023: Insights About Use Cases
Practical AI Use Cases: A Potential for Business Success
In 2024, businesses will have great success utilizing AI – While skeptics will point to the failings of high profile generative AI, in the technology trenches, many businesses will be quietly reaping the benefits of a more focused use of artificial intelligence. Aberdeen research has found that the top planned uses for AI are automating and improving many AI processes, from cybersecurity to monitoring to end-user IT self-service.
With these practical AI use cases, businesses will train AI on specific and limited data to reduce mistakes and hallucinations. By doing mundane tasks in seconds that can take a person hours or days to complete, AI will free IT workers to focus on more strategic and productive tasks and goals.
Also, businesses will have to work less in order to use AI. Vendors such as Microsoft and Google are adding AI capabilities into many of their core products and services. When it comes to using AI, the choice won’t be yes or no; it will be how to make the most of the AI already in our technology.
The Resurgence of Data Centers
In 2024, the move from the cloud back to the data center will continue – For the last few years, Aberdeen research has found that 25% of workloads had moved from the cloud to on-premises servers. To a large part, this move was driven by a rightsizing effort as many organizations moved to adopt a hybrid cloud.
But in a 180-degree turnaround from past predictions that everything will move from the cloud, we will see increased investment in data center servers and compute capabilities. As businesses look to reduce cloud costs and increase control, they rediscover the benefits of running applications and services internally.
A large, traditionally cloud-based vendor that makes a very popular cloud-based application recently announced that they were moving most of their capabilities to new internal servers, which they expect will save them billions of dollars in the next few years.
This last trend is the best lesson to take away from any new year prognostications. Not long ago, the idea of businesses reinvesting in the data center would have been laughed at. So take all predictions with a grain of salt, and have a great 2024.
What are your thoughts on the contrasting fortunes of AI and the unexpected return to data centers in 2024? Let us know on Facebook, X, and LinkedIn. We’d love to hear from you!
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