INTELLIGENT TECHNOLOGY
AI
90 % of Saudi organisations meet AI goals
Riverbed, a provider of AIOps for observability, announced the findings of its Global Survey on‘ The State of Autonomous IT Operations’, revealing that 90 % of Saudi organisations said their AI initiatives had met or exceeded their original return on investment( ROI) goals.
The research found that AI was moving beyond experimentation to become an integral part of IT operating models, with organisations accelerating efforts to operationalise AI and progress towards autonomous IT. As AI assumes a greater role in enterprise operations, the ability to understand, trust and govern it is becoming increasingly important.
The Saudi findings indicated that organisations in the Kingdom were particularly aware of this requirement. More than half( 54 %) of Saudi respondents were extremely confident in their organisation’ s AI governance and human oversight capabilities, compared with 42 % globally.
Meanwhile, 93 % agreed that effective AI assurance, observability and governance would become a critical new IT domain to manage, while 77 % reported internal hesitation about allowing AI to make operational decisions without human approval.
The findings suggested that Saudi enterprises viewed governance as an enabler of AI adoption rather than a constraint. Establishing visibility into AI performance and retaining appropriate human oversight could give organisations the confidence to expand
automation while maintaining control over operational decisions.
Jim Gargan, Chief Marketing Officer at Riverbed, said:“ Riverbed’ s new research shows that AI is becoming fundamental to how IT operates, as organisations look to use it to create more resilient, efficient and proactive environments.”
“ The next phase of AI is not simply more automation, but AI that enterprises can understand, trust and govern. Riverbed is helping customers close these gaps with unified observability, trusted data, AI governance and intelligent automation, accelerating toward zero-disruption autonomous IT operations.”
Saudi enterprises continued to increase investment in AI while reporting measurable returns from their initiatives.
According to the survey, 66 % of Saudi organisations increased their AI investment during the previous year, while 90 % said their AI initiatives had met or exceeded their original ROI goals.
Looking ahead, 85 % wanted to progress towards human-supervised or highly autonomous IT operations within the next two years.
The findings indicated that the focus was shifting from whether organisations should adopt AI to how effectively they could operationalise it at scale. Continued success would depend on translating investment and ambition into more resilient, efficient and proactive IT operations.
Saudi organisations were already reporting strong capabilities in using AI to improve IT operations and reduce employee disruption.
The survey found that 44 % of Saudi respondents considered their IT operations teams extremely effective at using AI to identify and resolve issues before employees noticed a disruption, compared with 34 % globally.
In addition, 96 % expected AI-powered operational intelligence to have at least a moderate impact on frontline IT and service desk capabilities within the next two years, while 36 % anticipated a shift in service desk operations from reactive support towards proactive prevention.
The findings suggested that the success of autonomous IT would increasingly be measured not simply by the number of automated processes or the reduction in service desk activity, but by organisations’ ability to anticipate problems, prevent disruption and deliver consistently highquality digital employee experiences.
As Saudi organisations progressed towards more autonomous IT environments, unified visibility and simplified technology infrastructure were becoming increasingly important.
Almost all Saudi respondents( 95 %) considered multi-domain visibility at least somewhat important for successful AI-driven IT operations. However, only 22 % reported having fully unified visibility across networks, applications, endpoints and cloud environments.
The research also found that 94 % agreed tool consolidation could reduce operational friction, while the same proportion believed a unified platform could simplify problem identification and resolution. •
30
INTELLIGENT CIO MIDDLE EAST www. intelligentcio. com