The inaugural and first-of-its-kind study titled 'AI in The Enterprise Decision Maker Survey' has been released by Futurum Intelligence. After independently ranking 159 vendors for AI deployments in tech firms, the study forecasts expected surprising power shifts in near-term buying plans within the AI market. These changes detrimentally threaten to disrupt the power centres of traditional IT vendors for the enterprise catering to AI deployment offerings, the researchers state.
The study revealed major power shifts among enterprises insourcing their AI deployments for AI Cloud Compute last year. AWS dominated the market as the selected vendor (22%), followed by Microsoft, Google, and IBM.
However, according to the 2024 forecasts, AI Cloud Compute companies aiming at new vendor entries will most likely rank Google as their top vendor (11.1%), followed by AWS and IBM.
The AI Development Tools and Platforms category suggests further significant shifts. Companies insourcing their development ranked Google as their top choice (7.2%), leap-frogging AMD to become the second-highest-ranked new paid vendor entrant, up from fifth place, and followed by AWS and IBM.
Further key takeaways from Futurum Intelligence's study include: 45% of outsourcing firms and 47% of insourcing firms plan to change their vendors by early 2024.
As to top decision criteria and criteria for excellence in meeting requirements, expertise and experience with AI took the lead (40% and 35% respectively). Accenture emerged as the primary consultant / integrator among those who outsource (25%), followed by Deloitte (14%), CGI and KPMG.
Marc Beccue, AI Research Director at The Futurum Group, expressed surprise about the number of companies using outsourced AI services. He stated, "Our data clearly indicates that organisations are going to spread their AI investments in 2024, there are strong metrics for keeping vendors but also adding new ones."
The market for SaaS/Embedded AI applications is highly competitive and fragmented, according to Keith Kirkpatrick, Research Director, Enterprise Applications.
"While Google (10%) and Microsoft (9%) were the top two choices for organisations seeking to add new vendors in late 2023 or 2024, 13 other large SaaS vendors are each expected to garner interest from buyers, reflective of the variety of quality, enterprise-grade solutions that are successfully integrating AI within their platform," he added.
Marc Beattie, Head of Futurum Intelligence, believes the currently dynamic market benefits customers and integrators. "AI vendors have been seeking credible intelligence on the plans and preferences of enterprise buyers that is both relevant and accessible. The AI Decision Maker IQ service enables competitive and market intelligence professionals to dig in at the vendor level or zoom out."