Artificial intelligence, following a few years of hype in which it was treated as a new concept set to immediately transform our existence, is now firmly in Gartner’s Trough of Disillusionment. User organisations have realised that costs will be significant and experimental projects have been challenged to scale up effectively but it’s not all doom and gloom. Much of current AI landscape is typical of the developmental path taken by most transformative technologies, it’s just that we’re in a learning phase and more work needs to be completed to unlock the technology’s full potential.
“As an organisation, we’ve supported AI for a long time,” confirms Steve Daly, the Senior Vice President of Solutions in the Global Digital Transformation Group at New Era Technology.
“AI has been around for 70 years but the recent hype has seen a peak of inflated solutions. The reality is that, at $30 per user/per seat Copilot for Microsoft365, is attractive for an organisations doing proof of concepts but once those stop, companies haven’t found the value proposition or return on investment to multiply that $30 by 12 months by the number of users.”
It's not only the cost of AI that is holding back uptake. Many organisations have justifiable concerns about sharing data and keeping AI secure. “New Era has a very strong data and security practice that we have pivoted to provide Copilot Studio which allows organisations to build genAI solutions with a much tighter blast radius,” adds Daly. “With Copilot Studio, you can tighten down to a single file or Sharepoint library or website. You can have much tighter control.”
No More Overpromise, Under-deliver
Reinforcing confidence in AI is multi-layered. Addressing security and data control concerns is a fundamental foundation which goes alongside determining the business model to make sense of AI investments. Then, organisations need to exercise patience and ensure they keep projects on track to their fruition – or termination.
