Penetration of AI in Russia depends on investments into IT infrastructure and specialists - a research of TAdviser

In artificial intelligence technologies business attracts an opportunity to transform work in the most different directions – AI already apply to performance improvement of work and customer service quality, creation of new products and so forth. The most widespread types of solutions based on AI in the Russian practice are virtual assistants or chat-bots. There are universal solution AI which find application in the different industries for increase in efficiency of document flow, optimization of work of accounting, legal department, HR or Service Desk.

According to a research, for the end of 2020 of 68% from the polled organizations already use solutions in the field of AI or machine learning. About a quarters more of respondents plan start of such initiatives or pilots in the next few years.

In most cases (92%) domestic business prefers to deploy solutions AI based on own infrastructure. Among the choice reasons for benefit of such solution – existence of already ready computing resources, restrictions from internal security services, waiting that at storage of bigger amount of data it will be possible to manage costs better. At solving of tasks which do not require processing of confidential data the private cloud can be used. Mass transition to remote work against the background of a pandemic of 2020 will increase loyalty to cloud services. Nearly a half of respondents (45%) noted that they adhere to the hybrid approach, using both own clusters for calculations, and leased capacities. At the respondents planning in the nearest future start of AI projects, distribution similar: 92% of respondents are guided by own resources under them, at the same time 42% assume parallel use of cloud solutions.

More than a half of the polled companies confirmed increase in the budget at AI projects in 2020. Generally it is about growth by 10-20% in the large organizations which are already gaining some effect of use of these technologies, for example, increase in revenue or cost reduction. Annual growth of corporate expenses on AI is caused, first, by need of considerable expansion of infrastructure under problems of artificial intelligence, and secondly, the serious competition for the personnel in the field of AI, investments into their preparation and increase in FOT of specialists.

The companies are guided by the most technology mature solutions, and more than 75% consider acquisition of solutions of foreign suppliers. The organizations of a public sector and also owners of critical infrastructure – in power, the oil and gas industry can be limited in such purchases; including, the companies getting under sanctions risks. In the approaches to the choice of the platform for AI already more than a third (38%) of the polled companies are guided by minimization of these risks, and even more than a quarter (26%) are going to pass to the same principle of purchases of solutions shortly.

Key parameters when choosing the platform for AI set the price (78%), quality of service (74%) and performance (70%). For a third of 30% import substitution became an important factor, and not only commercial Russian developments, but also solutions based on the open code were meant here.

Most of respondents consider the most perspective platforms for the analysis of Big Data solutions with the open code and paid technical support (78%) and also the commercial platforms unrolled in own infrastructure (64%). At the same time and continuity are little interesting to the large organizations for which security accreditations are critical cloud platforms of foreign producers and Open Source of the platform in itself, without technical support.

AI – a set of universal technologies which can be integrated into a broad spectrum of solutions in the different industries. This very perspective direction to which will be removed special attention now: large-scale research work is carried out, new technologies are developed, the solutions optimized for the solution of specific business challenges are created, – Denis Serechenko, the director of digital transformation of Huawei Enterprise in the region Eurasia says. – In 2018 we announced the global strategy in AI, and then provided a series of Ascend AI processors, the computing platform for artificial intelligence of MindSpore, a series of modules and payments of the AI accelerator and also the Atlas AI servers, the fastest cluster in the world for training of AI models, cloud services based on Ascend AI processors. AI is already actively used for the solution of corporate tasks and gradually begins to enter life of ordinary people.

Solutions based on artificial intelligence directly affect competitiveness of the companies, today their penetration grows in different spheres of business. Respectively, load of infrastructure of storage and data processing, used for AI services constantly raises. The Russian companies go the way increasing investments into own capacities, however use also possibilities of cloud solutions. In parallel they increase FOT selected for specialists of data-science - the need for them annually grows and will not be reduced in the next years. Together it will lead everything to increase in expenses of the companies at implementation of AI more than for 50% in the next 2-3 years, – Alexander Levashov, the Chief Editor of TAdviser notes.

Today the tone in a question of practical use of artificial intelligence is set by the large companies: they have experience of application, received certain results and made a conscious choice for benefit of their further development in business. Technoserv has also an experience of implementing solutions based on AI, and experience of creation of an infrastruktra under them. This research confirmed our confidence in demand of technologies of this range and first of all – platforms of Big Data of domestic production based on an open source code with industrial technical support of level of the large companies and business solutions of analytics/AI, – Sergey Solovyov, the CEO of Technoserv Group commented on results of a research.

The complete version of a research "IT infrastructure artificial intelligence in Russia" is available here.