Flattened Spending Points to More Thoughtful Planning 

Generative AI’s explosive growth is cooling as businesses face cost and security hurdles. Global AI spending plans are down sharply, with only 63% planning increases (vs. 93% last year). USA-based organizations remain above average with 69% planning to increase AI spend. While investment remains high, more companies are prioritizing thoughtful planning to balance the potential of this new technology with managing risks and costs. 

Deployment Delays Stall ROI 

Despite initial hype, slow deployment and low success rates are commonplace, with only 25% of planned projects fully implemented. This lag is stalling anticipated ROI, with 42% of companies yet to see a significant benefit from generative AI initiatives. Tech and retail sectors stand out with higher deployment and realized gains, but overall, most industries are slow to move beyond the pilot phase.

Implementation Costs Raise Alarms

Security remains a top concern for business leaders, but cost worries have surged 14x in the past year. Additionally, concerns around response accuracy have risen 5x, likely due to issues with hallucinations. This highlights the need for careful large language model selection to balance cost and ensure accurate, secure results.

Practical Applications Are First to Deployment

Businesses are using generative AI to establish clear guidelines for AI use (governance) and automate tasks like generating first drafts of code (reducing G&A costs). This trend is driven by concerns around data privacy, security, and skyrocketing implementation costs. Qualitative applications like generating FAQs are seeing success, but more complex quantitative applications like fraud detection in financial services or predictive maintenance in manufacturing are lagging behind. The ability to analyze unstructured data and generate actionable insights holds the greatest potential for generative AI’s future value.

“The initial wave of enthusiasm for generative AI is being met with a more strategic approach,” said Mike Sinoway, CEO, Lucidworks. “Businesses are recognizing the potential of this technology, but they’re also cautious about the risks and costs. This is reflected in the flattened spending, which suggests a shift toward more thoughtful planning. This planning ensures AI adoption delivers real value, balancing the need to stay competitive with managing costs and potential risks.”

The 2024 benchmark study also includes the following findings:

• Across all organizations, 36% of leaders plan to keep spending flat, compared to only 6% in last year’s survey
• ​​Only 49% of Chinese leaders plan to increase AI spending in 2024, a massive drop from 100% in 2023
• Close to 70% of financial services companies plan to increase spending over the next 12 months, followed closely by tech at 68% and B2C retail at 64%
• Roughly 20% of companies report significant delays during deployment with only one in five planned revenue and growth initiatives and one in eight OpEx cost reduction initiatives implemented
• Retailers have some of the highest concerns around cost (63%), likely due to the required responsiveness and high number of customer queries
• Nearly eight in 10 companies use commercial LLMs and 21% have opted for open source only 
• A third of business leaders feel like they’re falling behind competitors despite almost everyone struggling to implement this new technology

Download the complete 2024 Generative AI Global Benchmark Study here to learn industry trends, top concerns, best practices and planning insights.

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Databricks Unity Catalog delivers a unified governance layer for data and artificial intelligence (AI) within the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform. Using Unity Catalog enables organizations to seamlessly govern their structured and unstructured data, machine learning modules, notebooks, dashboards and files on any cloud or platform.

By integrating with Databricks Unity Catalog, Cirata Data Migrator unlocks the ability to execute analytics jobs as soon as possible or to modernize data in the cloud. With the ability to support Databricks Unity Catalog’s functionality for stronger data operations, access control, accessibility and search, Cirata Data Migrator automates large-scale transfer of data and metadata from existing data lakes to cloud storage and database targets, even while changes are being made by the application at the source. Using Cirata Data Migrator 2.5, users can now select the Databricks agent and define the use of Unity Catalog with Databricks SQL Warehouse. This helps data science and engineering teams maximize the value of their entire data estate while benefiting from their choice of metadata technology in Databricks.

“As a long-standing partner, Cirata has helped many customers in their legacy Hadoop to Databricks migrations,” said Siva Abbaraju, Go-to-Market Leader, Migrations, Databricks. “Now, the seamless integration of Cirata Data Migrator with Unity Catalog enables enterprises to capitalize on our Data and AI capabilities to drive productivity and accelerate their business value.”

“Cirata is excited by the customer benefits that come from native integration with the Databricks Unity Catalog,” said Paul Scott-Murphy, Chief Technology Officer, Cirata. “By unlocking a critical benefit for our customers, we are furthering the adoption of data analytics, AI and ML and empowering data teams to drive more meaningful data insights and outcomes.”

This expanded Cirata-Databricks partnership builds on previous product integrations between the two companies. In 2021, the companies partnered to automate metadata and data migration capabilities to Databricks and Delta Lake on Databricks, respectively. With data available for immediate use, the integration eliminated the need to construct and maintain data pipelines to transform, filter and adjust data, along with the significant up-front planning and staging.

Cirata Data Migrator is a fully automated solution that automates Hadoop data transfer and integration and moves on-premises HDFS data, Hive metadata, local filesystem, or cloud data sources to any cloud or on-premises environment, even while those datasets are under active change. Cirata Data Migrator requires zero changes to applications or business operations and moves data of any scale without production system downtime, business disruption, and with zero risk of data loss.

Cirata Data Migrator 2.5 is available now with native integration with the Databricks Unity Catalog. For more information, join Cirata for the upcoming webinar, “Accelerate Hadoop Migration to Databricks,” here.

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Over 40% of security leaders cite enhancing and optimizing technology and processes in the security operations center (SOC) as a top priority for improving defenses against the rise of AI powered threats according to the Darktrace State of AI Cybersecurity 2024 report. As a leader in applying AI to the challenge of cybersecurity, Darktrace has transformed security operations for thousands of customers for more than a decade. Building upon this expertise Darktrace introduced its MDR service in March 2024, empowering customers to maximize the benefits of effective human-AI collaboration. The service offers customers expanded hands-on analyst support with 24/7 managed detection and response, featuring SOC investigation and action on Darktrace alerts, across network, cloud, operational technology (OT), endpoints and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications.

With MDR, Darktrace’s SOC team will monitor customer environments for high priority alerts indicative of an attack, conduct investigations to alert customers of potentially severe incidents and begin initial triage with human engagement on the AI’s actions. The SOC will carefully review the response measures the autonomous AI has taken and subsequently take proactive steps on behalf of the customer to contain threats, which may include extending or escalating response actions. By doing so, the SOC buys valuable time for internal teams to prepare for engagement while also gathering essential context for effective remediation efforts.

Darktrace’s existing global SOC team comprised of 100+ world-class cybersecurity analysts support the service, offering a breadth of real-time knowledge, threat analysis and containment expertise, and extensive field experience. Darktrace’s SOC offers 24/7 support, utilizing a follow-the-sun model with operations headquartered in the United Kingdom, United States and Singapore, to ensure analysts are available and ready to support around-the-clock.

The service builds upon Darktrace’s leadership and expertise with best-in-class detection and response capabilities. The Darktrace ActiveAI Security Platform utilizes its unique self-learning AI engine to detect known, unknown, and novel threats in real-time and provide an autonomous response to contain active threats without disrupting business operations. However, high-priority threats often require humans to engage and make decisions following the initial containment. Darktrace Managed Detection & Response now enables the Darktrace SOC to immediately step in, conduct the initial triage, and gather context for internal teams, buying them added time to coordinate an effective response to remove the threat. Additional features and benefits of Darktrace Managed Detection & Response include:

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Arista Networks unveiled the Arista Etherlink AI platforms, engineered to provide optimal network performance for the most demanding AI workloads, such as training and inferencing.

Powered by new AI-optimized Arista EOS features, the Arista Etherlink AI portfolio supports AI cluster sizes ranging from thousands to 100,000s of XPUs with highly efficient one and 2-tier network topologies that deliver superior application performance compared to more complex multi-tier networks while offering advanced monitoring capabilities including flow-level visibility.

“The network is core to successful job completion outcomes in AI clusters,” said Alan Weckel, Founder and Technology Analyst for 650 Group. “The Arista Etherlink AI platforms offer customers the ability to have a single 800G end-to-end technology platform across front-end, training, inference, and storage networks. Customers benefit from leveraging the same well-proven Ethernet tooling, security, and expertise they have relied on for decades while easily scaling up for any AI application.”

Arista’s Etherlink AI Platforms

The 7060X6 AI Leaf switch family employs Broadcom Tomahawk 5^® silicon, with a capacity of 51.2 Tbps and support for 64 800G or 128 400G Ethernet ports.

The 7800R4 AI Spine is the 4th generation of Arista’s flagship 7800 modular systems. It implements the latest Broadcom Jericho3-AI processors with an AI-optimized packet pipeline and offers non-blocking throughput with the proven virtual output queuing architecture. The 7800R4-AI supports up to 460 Tbps in a single chassis, which corresponds to 576 800G or 1152 400G Ethernet ports.

The 7700R4 AI Distributed Etherlink Switch (DES) supports the largest AI clusters, offering customers massively parallel distributed scheduling and congestion-free traffic spraying based on the Jericho3-AI architecture. The 7700 represents the first in a new series of ultra-scalable, intelligent distributed systems that can deliver the highest consistent throughput for very large AI clusters.

A single-tier network topology with Etherlink platforms can support over 10,000 XPUs. With a 2-tier network, Etherlink can support more than 100,000 XPUs. Minimizing the number of network tiers is essential for optimizing AI application performance, reducing the number of optical transceivers, lowering cost and improving reliability.

All Etherlink switches support the emerging Ultra Ethernet Consortium (UEC) standards, which are expected to provide additional performance benefits when UEC NICs become available in the near future.

“Broadcom is a firm believer in the versatility, performance, and robustness of Ethernet, which makes it the technology of choice for AI workloads,” said Ram Velaga, senior vice president and general manager, Core Switching Group, Broadcom. “By leveraging industry-leading Ethernet chips such as Tomahawk 5 and Jericho3-AI, Arista provides the ideal accelerator-agnostic solution for AI clusters of any shape or size, outperforming proprietary technologies and providing flexible options for fixed, modular, and distributed switching platforms.”

Arista EOS Smart AI Suite

The rich features of Arista EOS and CloudVision complement these new networking-for-AI platforms. The innovative software suite for AI-for-networking, security, segmentation, visibility, and telemetry features brings AI-grade robustness and protection to high-value AI clusters and workloads. For example, Arista EOS’s Smart AI suite of innovative enhancements now integrates with SmartNIC providers to deliver advanced RDMA-aware load balancing and QoS. Arista AI Analyzer powered by Arista AVA automates configuration and improves visibility and intelligent performance analysis of AI workloads.

“Arista’s competitive advantage consistently comes down to our rich operating system and broad product portfolio to address AI networks of all sizes,” said Hugh Holbrook, Chief Development Officer, Arista Networks. “Innovative AI-optimized EOS features enable faster deployment, reduce configuration issues and deliver flow-level performance analysis, and improve AI job completion times for any size AI cluster.”

Availability

The 7060X6 is available now. The 7800R4-AI and 7700R4 DES are in customer testing and will be available 2H 2024.

To learn more about the Arista Etherlink AI portfolio, visit the website here.

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The announcement builds on Kyndryl’s successful collaboration with AWS, under which the companies have co-invested and co-innovated to build differentiated, scalable security and resiliency offerings. The Kyndryl Threat Insights Managed Service uses Amazon Security Lake to centralize data and apply analysis, resulting in deep insights not possible with siloed, disparate security technologies. Integrated into Kyndryl Bridge, customers benefit from a consolidated view of security risks that could negatively impact their business.

Through the service, Kyndryl provides customers with options for:

• Enhanced cyber resilience: Using an integrated approach coupling security and resiliency improves a customer’s ability to anticipate, protect, withstand and recover from cyber incidents. Kyndryl Threat Insights Managed Service bolsters an organization’s ability to better anticipate and protect against cyber threats and business-critical operational disruptions.
• Improved visibility and simplicity to mitigate cybersecurity risk: Mitigating risk is a key challenge as digital estates transform and grow in complexity to meet business objectives. Through the service, customers use a single pane view into their security and resiliency risks. This helps accelerate their decision-making capabilities for faster intelligence-driven threat detection and more effective and informed response.
• Security operations, including artificial intelligence (AI) / machine learning (ML)-empowered analysis: Anomaly detection with threat intelligence enhancement, coupled with AI/ML-based analysis, allows the service to assess security data, provide insights and prioritize investigation. This results in actionable security insights that allow customers to benefit from an integrated approach for greater detection and automated response, which simultaneously enhances customers’ compliance initiatives.

“Security leaders understand that cyber incidents are inevitable, and they know it’s essential to have sufficient visibility to drive quick response,” said Michelle Weston, VP of Security & Resiliency, Kyndryl. “By joining Kyndryl’s deep cybersecurity expertise with the benefits of Amazon Security Lake, we can address the urgent need for an integrated approach to security and resilience, empowering our customers to not only anticipate and protect against threats but also to quickly withstand and recover.”

For more information about Kyndryl’s collaboration with AWS or Kyndryl Threat Insights Managed Service, please visit the website here.

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Cisco has introduced its initial innovative integrations with Splunk, a company owned by Cisco. These collaborations merge their top-notch observability technologies to expedite full-stack observability for enterprises, helping customers in providing more efficient and secure digital experiences. Throughout this journey of full-stack observability, organizations can achieve unified visibility across any environment, whether on-premises, hybrid, or multi-cloud, and across any stack. This enables them to utilize potent real-time analytics for faster, more precise detection, investigation, and response.

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Developed by working with both AWS and Pega, SoftServe’s Master Key is designed to enable clients using both companies to connect any existing Pega applications to AWS AI and ML services or other AWS solutions. Combining Pega’s workflow automation with AWS analytics and AI services automates the steps an employee typically takes to validate information as more companies move their data to AWS.

“This ‘Master Key’ is the first step to combine AWS’ and Pega’s capabilities, doubling the methods of automation and AI functionalities available to all users,” said Todd Lenox, SoftServe’s SVP of Global Alliances & Partnerships. “The key allows users to automate even more internal work, freeing additional time to focus on paramount and rewarding tasks, as well as improve the accuracy and quality of their work by accessing a breadth of specialized AI services. As the first marketplace solution available to bridge this innovation between AWS and Pega, it has the potential to generate significantly more ROI for their customers.”

Companies using Pega to create personalized customer experiences, improve productivity, simplify regulatory compliance, and accelerate revenue growth through workflow automation can achieve more using SoftServe’s Master Key to connect insights generated within their AWS environment into their existing Pega application workflows. The key essentially allows Pega developers without AWS integration expertise to securely connect their applications to a large catalog of AWS services using the AWS Signature Version 4 standard, empowering Pega application users to complete more work in less time and with fewer errors.

“Enabling our customers to more easily integrate Pega into their AWS services creates tremendous opportunity for cross-platform value creation,” said Judy Buchholz, senior vice president, global partner ecosystems at Pegasystems. “Imagine seeing a potentially significant increase in automation and business processes. This – or any result gained from improved automation – could translate into more capacity to engage with customers, deepen AI knowledge and skills, or handle other critical priorities and strategic initiatives. SoftServe’s Master Key creates a potent combination for doing more impactful work.”

As one of the inaugural AWS Partners to achieve the AWS Generative AI Competency, SoftServe adds another layer of expertise for clients to effectively use and harness the benefits of connecting automation and AI functionalities from both platforms.

SoftServe’s Master Key solution accelerator will be available via the AWS Marketplace and Pega Marketplace at the start of PegaWorld iNspire 2024, happening June 9-11 in Las Vegas. To learn more about SoftServe’s Master Key solution accelerator, visit the webpage here.

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CISOs and their teams are inundated with claims about how artificial intelligence will change the cybersecurity landscape, and there is certainly a lot of potential. Recent reports found that 95% of respondents view AI models as vital for the success of their business, and 55% of organizations plan to adopt GenAI solutions within the next year.

Ontinue announced it now offers Microsoft Copilot for Security Readiness workshops to help organizations understand how they can unlock the power of AI and get the most value from their Microsoft Security investments. 

Ontinue specializes in managed security operations tailored for Microsoft customers and its AI-powered MXDR service, ION, was built on the backbone of the Microsoft security and collaboration product portfolio. Ontinue aims to instill confidence in every organization by serving as an extension of their team, enhancing efficiencies, optimizing their investments, while strengthening their security postures. Earlier this year, Microsoft launched Microsoft Copilot for Security, a generative AI-powered assistant that empowers in-house security and IT teams to respond quickly to threats and upskill security practitioners. To help Microsoft Security customers understand how to get the most value out of Copilot for Security, Ontinue is offering Microsoft Copilot for Security Readiness workshops.  

“When an organization decides to implement AI-based technologies and services, most lack the expertise and therefore struggle to develop strategies and governance for the effective, safe implementation and usage of these offerings,” said Dave Gruber, Principal Analyst at ESG. “This is why finding the right Managed Security partner is so important, as they can help accelerate development and implementation of governance and security controls needed to ensure AI investments are secured and operationalized effectively.”  

The Microsoft Copilot for Security Readiness workshop is designed for Security Operations teams who are looking for guidance on implementing Copilot for Security securely and responsibly within their organization. The workshop offers:

• A definitive understanding of whether Copilot for Security is right for your organization 
• A solid understanding of how to use Copilot for Security to address your core use cases  
• Copilot for Security Ninja certification preparation for all workshop attendees
• A best-practice blueprint for the secure and responsible implementation of Copilot for Security

“Gen-AI is a key consideration for many organizations, and those already invested in Microsoft security are naturally intrigued by the potential benefits of Copilot for Security. At Ontinue, we see ourselves as an extension of our customers’ teams, and we’re happy to now offer this new workshop to help organizations maximize their security investments,” said Daniel Morris, Director of Consulting Services at Ontinue. “Copilot for Security makes in-house security teams faster and more efficient, and in conjunction with Ontinue’s ION MXDR service, we help organizations ensure around-the-clock protection while also increasing overall security program maturity, efficacy and scalability.” 

For more information about Ontinue’s Microsoft Copilot for Security Readiness workshops, including dates and registration information please visit the website here.

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