GEC NEWS WIREGenerative AI was named the years’ most exciting trend by respondents to F5’s 2024 State of Application Strategy Report1.
The news comes as companies continue to build on digital transformation efforts to harness AI and machine learning in their decision making.
56% of those surveyed are more energized than ever about Generative AI, well ahead of other top trends such as IT centralization (40%), multicloud networking (35%) and application security (33%).
The report also found plenty of evidence that companies are acting on their intent. Three-quarters of respondents (75%) said they are working on digital transformation projects that F5 categorizes as “AI-assisted business”, up from 61% in 2022, and just 17% in 2020.
According to F5’s Digital Enterprise Maturity Index, this stage of digital transformation is where companies begin to apply AI and machine learning to data generated from their apps. This follows the preparatory stages of “task automation” (deploying apps to streamline manual processes) and “digital expansion” (modernizing, connecting, and scaling those apps).
“In a world of technological innovation, digital transformation has no fixed destination. No one’s ever done,” said Cindy Borovick, Director of Market and Competitive Intelligence, F5
“As AI use matures and unforeseen technologies enter the scene, complexity, and hybrid IT will continue as the status quo. Clearly, the advantage will go to those who build a flexible IT stack capable of rapidly supporting new technologies and reaping the associated benefits. With the right foundation in place, those organizations can capitalize on all emerging innovations.”
Another key finding in this years’ report is that, whether modern or traditional, today’s apps and the APIs that accompany them, are overwhelmingly being deployed into a multicloud landscape.
Nearly 90% of organizations now operate in multicloud environments. In fact, more than one third of respondents – 38%, nearly double the 2023 figure – operate apps deployed in six different environments. In 2020, only 18% used five.
With apps more widely distributed than ever, their management becomes ever more challenging.
Although no single challenge dominates, the top difficulty, as in 2023, is managing operational complexity. Day-to-day, this entails multiple tools and dashboards, bespoke security solutions and policies, lack of visibility into app health, too many vendors, and telemetry trapped in silos.
Migrating apps between environments has risen from fifth place last year to become the second most cited challenge. Around one-third of respondents still struggle with multi-cloud security, a perennial concern since at least 2017.
App visibility, another lingering concern, hovers in the middle of the pack this year. These shifts suggest some organizations are meeting those two challenges with solutions such as with Security as a Service (SECaaS).
Against this backdrop, the urgency to further alleviate complexity resulted in multi-cloud networking being flagged as organizations’ third most exciting trend for the second year in a row.
“Multicloud networking can connect apps across deployment environments and enable what’s been called a supercloud architecture. In essence, it simplifies and standardizes the way networks operate across environments—whether public or private cloud, data center, or the edge. A network mesh imposed across them all reduces complexity by employing the same constructs, configurations, and consoles to operate and monitor every app location,” explained Lori MacVittie, F5 Distinguished Engineer.
