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IT Pros Want AI and AIOps but Are Concerned About Data Quality

Despite a near-unanimous desire to adopt AI technology, very few respondents have confidence in their organization's readiness to integrate AI, pointing to limitations in data and infrastructure and security concerns, according to the 2024 IT Trends Report, AI: Friend or Foe?, based on a survey of nearly 700 IT professionals conducted by SolarWinds.

The report found that while IT pros have a growing interest in embracing AI technology, with nine out of ten already using or planning to use AI, concerns remain about data quality, database infrastructure readiness, and — above all else — security and privacy.

"While talk of AI has dominated the industry, IT leaders and teams recognize the outsize risks of the still-developing technology, heightened by the rush to build AI quickly rather than smartly," said Krishna Sai, SVP, Technology and Engineering at SolarWinds. "With the proper internal systems in place and by prioritizing security, fairness, and transparency while building AI, these technologies can serve as a valuable advisor and coworker to overworked teams, but this survey shows that IT pros need to be consulted as their companies invest in AI."

Overall, the industry's sentiment reflects cautious optimism about AI despite the obstacles. Almost half of IT professionals (46%) want their company to move faster in implementing AI despite costs, challenges, and concerns, but only 43% are confident that their company's databases can meet the increased needs of AI. Moreover, even fewer (38%) trust the quality of data or training used in developing AI technologies.

The report unveiled significant insights into IT professionals' perspectives on AI, including:

AIOps Drives Efficiency and Productivity

IT pros cited AIOps as the AI technology that will have the most significant positive impact on their role (31%), ranking above large language models and machine learning. More than a third of respondents (38%) said their companies already use AI to make IT operations more efficient and effective.


Source: SolarWinds

Distrust of Data Powering AI

Only 38% of respondents are very trusting of the data quality and training used in AI technologies, and rank data quality as a major barrier to AI adoption, second only to security and privacy risks. Because of this, today's IT teams see AI as an advisor (33%) and a sidekick (20%) rather than a solo decision-maker.

Privacy and Security Concerns Are Barriers to AI Adoption

Respondents overwhelmingly named privacy and security concerns as the most significant barrier to AI integration. When asked about their challenges with AI, four out of 10 (41%) respondents said they've had negative experiences. Of those, privacy concerns (48%) and security risks (43%) were most often cited as the reasons why.

IT Pros Call for Government Regulation

IT pros specifically call for increased government regulations to address security (72%) and privacy (64%). More than half of respondents also believe government regulation should play a role in combating misinformation, as training AI models — including data quality — is a matter of both ethics and security.

To ensure successful and secure AI adoption, IT pros recognize that organizations must develop thorough policies on ethics, data privacy, and compliance, pointing to ethical considerations and concerns about job displacement as other significant barriers to AI adoption. The report found that more than a third of organizations (35.6%) still don't have these policies in place to guide proper AI implementation.

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IT Pros Want AI and AIOps but Are Concerned About Data Quality

Despite a near-unanimous desire to adopt AI technology, very few respondents have confidence in their organization's readiness to integrate AI, pointing to limitations in data and infrastructure and security concerns, according to the 2024 IT Trends Report, AI: Friend or Foe?, based on a survey of nearly 700 IT professionals conducted by SolarWinds.

The report found that while IT pros have a growing interest in embracing AI technology, with nine out of ten already using or planning to use AI, concerns remain about data quality, database infrastructure readiness, and — above all else — security and privacy.

"While talk of AI has dominated the industry, IT leaders and teams recognize the outsize risks of the still-developing technology, heightened by the rush to build AI quickly rather than smartly," said Krishna Sai, SVP, Technology and Engineering at SolarWinds. "With the proper internal systems in place and by prioritizing security, fairness, and transparency while building AI, these technologies can serve as a valuable advisor and coworker to overworked teams, but this survey shows that IT pros need to be consulted as their companies invest in AI."

Overall, the industry's sentiment reflects cautious optimism about AI despite the obstacles. Almost half of IT professionals (46%) want their company to move faster in implementing AI despite costs, challenges, and concerns, but only 43% are confident that their company's databases can meet the increased needs of AI. Moreover, even fewer (38%) trust the quality of data or training used in developing AI technologies.

The report unveiled significant insights into IT professionals' perspectives on AI, including:

AIOps Drives Efficiency and Productivity

IT pros cited AIOps as the AI technology that will have the most significant positive impact on their role (31%), ranking above large language models and machine learning. More than a third of respondents (38%) said their companies already use AI to make IT operations more efficient and effective.


Source: SolarWinds

Distrust of Data Powering AI

Only 38% of respondents are very trusting of the data quality and training used in AI technologies, and rank data quality as a major barrier to AI adoption, second only to security and privacy risks. Because of this, today's IT teams see AI as an advisor (33%) and a sidekick (20%) rather than a solo decision-maker.

Privacy and Security Concerns Are Barriers to AI Adoption

Respondents overwhelmingly named privacy and security concerns as the most significant barrier to AI integration. When asked about their challenges with AI, four out of 10 (41%) respondents said they've had negative experiences. Of those, privacy concerns (48%) and security risks (43%) were most often cited as the reasons why.

IT Pros Call for Government Regulation

IT pros specifically call for increased government regulations to address security (72%) and privacy (64%). More than half of respondents also believe government regulation should play a role in combating misinformation, as training AI models — including data quality — is a matter of both ethics and security.

To ensure successful and secure AI adoption, IT pros recognize that organizations must develop thorough policies on ethics, data privacy, and compliance, pointing to ethical considerations and concerns about job displacement as other significant barriers to AI adoption. The report found that more than a third of organizations (35.6%) still don't have these policies in place to guide proper AI implementation.

Hot Topics

The Latest

AI is the catalyst for significant investment in data teams as enterprises require higher-quality data to power their AI applications, according to the State of Analytics Engineering Report from dbt Labs ...

Misaligned architecture can lead to business consequences, with 93% of respondents reporting negative outcomes such as service disruptions, high operational costs and security challenges ...

A Gartner analyst recently suggested that GenAI tools could create 25% time savings for network operational teams. Where might these time savings come from? How are GenAI tools helping NetOps teams today, and what other tasks might they take on in the future as models continue improving? In general, these savings come from automating or streamlining manual NetOps tasks ...

IT and line-of-business teams are increasingly aligned in their efforts to close the data gap and drive greater collaboration to alleviate IT bottlenecks and offload growing demands on IT teams, according to The 2025 Automation Benchmark Report: Insights from IT Leaders on Enterprise Automation & the Future of AI-Driven Businesses from Jitterbit ...

A large majority (86%) of data management and AI decision makers cite protecting data privacy as a top concern, with 76% of respondents citing ROI on data privacy and AI initiatives across their organization, according to a new Harris Poll from Collibra ...

According to Gartner, Inc. the following six trends will shape the future of cloud over the next four years, ultimately resulting in new ways of working that are digital in nature and transformative in impact ...

2020 was the equivalent of a wedding with a top-shelf open bar. As businesses scrambled to adjust to remote work, digital transformation accelerated at breakneck speed. New software categories emerged overnight. Tech stacks ballooned with all sorts of SaaS apps solving ALL the problems — often with little oversight or long-term integration planning, and yes frequently a lot of duplicated functionality ... But now the music's faded. The lights are on. Everyone from the CIO to the CFO is checking the bill. Welcome to the Great SaaS Hangover ...

Regardless of OpenShift being a scalable and flexible software, it can be a pain to monitor since complete visibility into the underlying operations is not guaranteed ... To effectively monitor an OpenShift environment, IT administrators should focus on these five key elements and their associated metrics ...

An overwhelming majority of IT leaders (95%) believe the upcoming wave of AI-powered digital transformation is set to be the most impactful and intensive seen thus far, according to The Science of Productivity: AI, Adoption, And Employee Experience, a new report from Nexthink ...

Overall outage frequency and the general level of reported severity continue to decline, according to the Outage Analysis 2025 from Uptime Institute. However, cyber security incidents are on the rise and often have severe, lasting impacts ...