Monday Morning Impact – August 21

Gartner: More than Half of Organizations That Have Deployed AI Take an AI-First Strategy

A new Gartner, Inc. survey revealed that 55% of organizations that have previously deployed AI always consider AI for every new use case that they are evaluating. In addition, the research shows that 52% take risk factors into consideration when evaluating new AI use cases.

“An AI-first strategy is a hallmark of AI maturity and a driver of increased return on investment,” said Erick Brethenoux, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner. “However, AI-first does not mean AI-only. While AI-mature organizations are more likely to consider AI for every possible use case, they are also more likely to weigh risk as a critical factor when determining whether to move forward.”

Across all organizations, respondents had deployed an average of 41 AI use cases, with use cases remaining in production for 3.5 years. Both the number of use cases and the time in production rose with the size of the enterprise, with global enterprises reporting an average of 51 use cases in production for 4.3 years.

The most significant differentiator identified among AI-mature organizations was the involvement of legal counsel at the ideation stage of AI use cases. AI-mature organizations were 3.8 times more likely to involve legal experts at the ideation phase of an AI project’s life cycle.

“There is uncertainty around the ethics and legality of various AI tactics, as well as a fear of violating privacy regulations,” said Brethenoux. “Organizations that are more experienced with AI do not want to be told they’ve crossed a line once they are further along in the process of developing an AI use case.”

When evaluating the return on AI investment, 52% of AI-mature organizations focus on a combination of technical and business metrics to assess ROI. In less mature organizations, technical metrics are most often used to measure the value of AI use cases.

More AI-mature organizations – 41% compared with 24% of all others – use customer success-related business metrics to estimate ROI. Furthermore, 47% of AI-mature organizations cite customer service as one of the top three business functions benefiting from AI, compared with 34% of others.

“Many business and IT leaders focus on AI’s impact on optimization and productivity, but organizations do not prosper through cost cutting,” said Brethenoux. “Organizations that are using AI technology to attract and retain customers are able to more clearly articulate the impact on the business, driving a virtuous cycle of executive buy-in for new AI projects.”

AI-mature organizations are also more likely to define metrics earlier in the AI lifecycle. Sixty-seven percent of AI-mature organizations define metrics at the ideation phase of every use case, compared with 44% of less mature organizations.

The survey was conducted in October through December 2022 among 622 respondents from organizations in the U.S., France, the U.K., and Germany that have deployed AI. Gartner defines an “AI-mature” organization as those who have deployed more than five AI use cases across several business units and processes, in production for more than three years.

Channel Impact^®
The data provide an interesting guide for channel partners and other organizations mapping out AI strategies.

CompTIA: Tech Employment Increases Amid Tight Labor Market

Tech industry employment, tech occupation employment and the tech unemployment rate recorded positive gains for the month, according to analysis by CompTIA, a suburban Chicago-based industry association. Tech sector companies increased their staffing by 5,432 employees in July, based on CompTIA’s analysis of recent findings by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. New hiring in IT and custom software services and systems design; and PC, semiconductor and components manufacturing led the way.

Tech occupations among employers across all industry sectors of the economy increased by 65,000, reversing the negative growth of the previous month. The tech occupation unemployment rate fell to 1.8%, the lowest rate since January 2023.

“Given the pace of tech hiring, it remains a fairly tight market for tech talent,” said Tim Herbert, chief research officer, CompTIA. “It continues to be an environment where employers must supplement recruiting efforts with proactive talent development strategies.”

Employers eased back on job postings for tech occupations, which totaled approximately 204,400 for the month. Positions for software developers and engineers, IT project managers, data analysts, IT support specialists and emerging technologies saw the strongest demand. Positions in emerging technologies or requiring emerging tech skills accounted for about 23% of all tech job postings in July. Within the emerging tech category, 35% of job postings referenced artificial intelligence work and skills.

While most metro markets saw a decline in tech job postings, several ‘under the radar’ regions experienced month-over-month growth, including St. Louis, Jacksonville, Sacramento, and Las Vegas.

Channel Impact^®
The data serve to show channel partners the specific areas of the tech workforce that are rising or declining.

Adlumin Launches Cybersecurity Incident Response Service

Adlumin, a Washington-based security operations platform and managed detection and response (MDR) service provider, has rolled out a subscription-based incident response (IR) offering available to organizations that use Adlumin’s Security Operations Platform.

The service is designed to help organizations of all sizes to understand the full scope of a breach, remove the threat, and provide actions to strengthen security. It extends the security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) capabilities of Adlumin’s platform with the assistance of certified professionals.

“Small and midsized organizations are at a huge disadvantage because they have to defend themselves against the same threats as the world’s largest enterprises, but have far from the same resources,” said company founder and CEO Robert Johnston. “Adlumin was founded to level the playing field – first through our platform that makes security cost efficient, easy to integrate and simple to use, then by adding MDR services for organizations that need it, and now through extending our services with Incident Response.”

In addition to 24×7 incident response within one hour, and up to 80 hours of support with an annual subscription, the service provides comprehensive forensics and investigation, advanced threat intelligence and proactive threat hunting.

Pricing starts at $300 per month.

Channel Impact^®
The service enables incident response teams to more quickly piece together the complete picture of an attack.