AI Trends in IT and Operations Report from Celigo Details Successful Implementations, Barriers to Enterprise-Wide Adoption and Business Objectives Driving Global AI Strategies
Enterprise IT and operations leaders are realizing positive results from early AI deployments, including greater productivity and efficiency, enhanced customer experience and reduced costs, and will significantly increase their AI investments over the next 18 months, according to an independent global survey announced by Celigo, the leading integration platform as a service (iPaaS) for business and IT users.
“Organizational leaders cannot ignore AI nor should they be afraid of it”
The “AI Trends in IT and Operations Report” surveyed more than 1,200 global enterprise IT and Operations leaders about current and future AI implementations, overall business objectives fueling AI strategies and barriers to successful enterprise-wide AI adoption. It found AI is rapidly gaining momentum across enterprises of all sizes and is critical to driving major operational improvements in the coming year. As such, 97% of global enterprise IT and Operations leaders will increase their AI expenditure through 2025 to accelerate AI transformations across corporate departments.
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“The results of the report confirm what we already knew to be true – the AI operations revolution is well underway,” said Scott Henderson, chief technology officer at Celigo. “While AI has quickly become an integral component for successful IT and Operations functions, it is more important than ever for enterprises to have an organization-wide strategy and implementation roadmap. This will inform investments to improve the efficacy of AI deployments, empower non-technical business users to implement AI solutions, and reduce obstacles that inhibit widespread adoption.”
The report revealed that, while IT and operations leaders are experiencing the greatest benefits of AI usage, other departments are leveraging the technology across various front- and back-office processes. Nearly half of those surveyed said their organization is actively using AI to automate Customer Service/Support while Research and Development (41%) and Marketing (37%) were also cited as areas seeing positive outcomes from AI implementations. Just under 50% of respondents reported their organizations saw marked improvement in productivity and efficiency, 45% benefitted from optimized operations, and AI usage led to enhanced customer experience and helped reduce costs at nearly 40% of the global enterprises surveyed.
In addition to identifying the ongoing benefits of AI utilization and commitments to increasing resource allocation, the report surfaced opportunities for broader deployments, key barriers to AI success within various organizations and the critical role of a comprehensive integration strategy. Highlights of the findings include:
IT and operations leaders are eager to utilize AI to transform all business processes over the next year. In fact, IT Services (59%) was the most prioritized sector to address by the end of 2025 among those surveyed, followed by analytics (52%), data processing (51%) and marketing automation (32%).
53% of respondents reported they are currently using AI for data analysis and insights across their business, while 39% are applying it to training and simulation and 38% rely on it to streamline operations.
56% cited security concerns surrounding the use of AI as the most significant obstacle to widespread adoption and acceptance in their workplace. Insufficient education also emerged as a barrier to AI success, as 47% said a lack of understanding on what AI can do for their organization hampered implementation efforts. Additionally, 46% reported that employees and teams fear their jobs and functions will be replaced by AI.
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Optimized data collection and integrating SaaS applications are essential to AI success, yet 52% of respondents said connecting data across applications is the most significant challenge to AI training and workflows within their organization.
While IT and operations leaders recognize the importance of an integration strategy, there are varying approaches to integrating disparate systems. According to the research, 36% of those surveyed rely on an Integration Platform-as-a-Service (iPaaS), another 36% have chosen direct API connections with various systems and 17% depend on stream processing frameworks.
68% of respondents support a “Citizen Developer” mindset to automate front- and back-office operations and 53% are already allowing non-technical business users to implement AI solutions themselves without heavily relying on overburdened and underfunded IT teams for support. The report indicates a foundational integration strategy establishes the appropriate safeguards that enable Citizen Developers to deploy AI applications while maintaining proper IT governance.
“AI is game changing and can help improve business operations in a variety of ways. However, I haven’t seen a wave of new technology over the last 25 years where it has been more critical to partner with experts on implementation,” said Jotham Ty, founder and CEO of Gappify. “Not only is the technology still evolving, but the governance and compliance implications may be too high to manage in-house. Enterprises should consider prioritizing investments in AI with proven solution providers to achieve quicker time to value and ensure their AI implementations have a solid foundation.”
Implementation Roadmap Emerges as Pivotal Piece to Successful Adoption
While the research exposed key adoption and integration challenges, it also showed organizations are actively addressing these issues to accelerate transformation. For example, 82% of global enterprises are following an AI strategy or roadmap for implementation. The report outlines steps IT and Operations leaders should follow to strengthen their implementation roadmap and accelerate AI transformation, such as creating a comprehensive AI strategy that aligns with business goals, upskilling technical and business employees, creating an environment that encourages experimentation with AI technologies, integrating AI into existing business processes and implementing AI tools that boost productivity.
“Organizational leaders cannot ignore AI nor should they be afraid of it,” said Josh Meiri, CTO and CIO at AppWrap. “They should embrace AI because it has tangible, real-world benefits. AI enables our team to focus on critical tasks and elevate roles throughout the organization by handling the mundane work that often consumes the most time and resources.”
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