Technology partners predict major revenue shift to AI

Cisco’s Global AI partners study revealed 40% of partners in Asia Pacific believe that over 50% of their revenue will come from AI technologies over the next 4 to 5 years.

Around the world, AI continues to drive business expansions in technology. In Asia Pacific, AI continues to dominate digital transformation and modernization conversations organizations have with their tech partners and vendors.

IDC predicts AI and Generative AI investments in the region are projected to reach US$110 billion by 2028. This surge highlights the region’s critical influence in shaping the future of AI innovation and driving technological progress on a global scale.

For technology partners, this creates a massive opportunity for them. According to Cisco’s Global AI Partners study, IT partners around the world are anticipating a transformative wave of AI technology demand that will drive the majority of their revenue over the next four to five years.

Titled Bridging the Customer AI Readiness Gap – The opportunities ahead for partners, the study also revealed that 40% of the partners surveyed in the Asia Pacific region believe that over 50% of their revenue will come from AI-related technologies during this period.

This is not surprising given the region’s continued growth in AI development and deployment. While China and India continue to demonstrate faster AI adoption, Singapore has emerged as one the fastest growing countries in the world for AI development among industries. In fact, the entire Southeast Asia region is showing continuous investments in AI development and deployment over the past year, especially with governments and regulations being in favor of the technology.

Cisco’s study also revealed that 44% of partners believe the demand for AI-related technology investments will grow by more than 75% in the next four to five years . Investments in infrastructure (31%), cybersecurity (17%), and customer experience (9%) were regarded by partners surveyed as the top three drivers of AI technology demand in the coming years.

At the same time, partners also foresee a significant shift in their revenue mix, as the demand for AI surges. In the short-term, 35% anticipate AI will contribute between 26% to 50% of their revenue a year from now, while in the long run that contribution is expected to become even higher.

“The potential for AI to transform business operations is immense and realizing this requires a concerted effort to strengthen our partners’ practical deployment capabilities,” said Alex Pujols, VP, Global Partner Engineering, Cisco.

Pujols also mentioned that the study highlights the significant revenue opportunities for IT partners to lead AI deployment. He added that by focusing on AI readiness, Cisco and its valued partner ecosystem are well-positioned to drive transformative outcomes for their customers and leverage the opportunities of the AI era.

Despite the positive outlook from the study for partners, there are still concerns on the challenges that lie ahead for some of them. The increased adoption of AI requires partners to be able to provide the necessary skills as well to support businesses in their journey. This includes being sure of providing the right expertise to queries customers may have on a particular AI component or even on the entire AI infrastructure ecosystem.

Interestingly, the findings indicate a robust confidence among partners in their knowledge and understanding of various aspects related to AI technologies. The assessment focused on several specific solutions and capabilities for AI deployment across the four pillars of infrastructure, data, governance, and talent.

These capabilities include building scalable and adaptable AI-ready infrastructure and also ensuring sufficient GPU resources for ongoing projects. Partners are also confident in assessing and maintaining latency and throughput of data centers as well as understanding data sets, data sovereignty and privacy laws across different regions and countries.

However, confidence in knowledge and understanding of deploying AI technologies is not going to solve the key challenges. Partners understand that some of the challenges organizations will face in AI will need to be addressed. The biggest challenges organizations will face are inexperience in deploying new technologies (64%), lack of knowledge of systems and processes (54%), and a lack of available technologies (52%).

As such, to address these challenges, partners are already heavily investing in upskilling existing employees in AI-related competencies, with 80% conducting either internal training or inviting external vendors to provide specialized training.