Preparing I&O for an AI-Augmented Future

LAS VEGAS — It's an AI-augmented future for I&O professionals and leaders, and with that future come exciting opportunities along with significant challenges, including heightened stress.

"Think about all the new tools and breakthrough capabilities announced in 2024, especially around AI and generative AI. There are more choices on what to buy or build than ever," Roger Williams, VP analyst at Gartner Research & Advisory, said during the opening keynote address at the 2024 Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations & Cloud Strategies Conference this week. "We're still expected to keep driving down costs. Plus, our CIO and senior leaders need us to keep up. Thus, feeling some stress is understandable. … So how do we manage that stress effectively?"

The good news, according to Williams, is that there are "calm and deliberate steps [I&O teams can take] to meet all the challenges of 2025."

Vision for I&O in 2025

Two key themes will shape organizations' strategies over the next year: generative AI and the digital employee experience (DEX), according to Autumn Stanish, director analyst of Gartner Research & Advisory.

Generative AI is already bringing about impressive results. "IT leaders have shared with us they're seeing productivity gains over 10% from these investments," she said. "To put that in perspective, that is at least 48 minutes that employees are getting back to their work every single day."

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There is a catch, however, she said. Many leaders feel pressured to adopt AI now to avoid falling behind, often planning to address the details later. Gartner has found that "that is just the quickest way to waste a whole lot of time," Stanish said.

Stanish sought to ease the minds of I&O leaders in the audience, assuring them they have not fallen behind — not yet at least.

"Leading up to this keynote, we had searched and searched for game-changing stories within infrastructure and operations teams," she said. "And you want to know what we found? Nothing!"

Stanish's tip? "Pace yourself in the AI races."

However, there needs to be greater emphasis on genAI skills. According to Stanish, by 2026, 90% of I&O teams will suffer more than 10 production-impacting events annually due to insufficient genAI skills investments.

"That's because the genAI capabilities that we develop are only as effective as the workforce skills that we have to use them," Stanish said. "Consequently, we've seen the rapid adoption of a digital employee experience, or DEX, strategy." DEX is a strategy that focuses on employee experience with company-provided technology.

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Gartner's Digital Workplace Maturity Assessment assesses maturity at five levels.

"At level 5, we are partnering with the business to support transformation efforts through employee technology, and nobody has been found here yet," Stanish said. And only 1% has scored at level 4. However, 62% of those leading level 4 digital workplaces have a seat at the CIO's table as a strategic partner, she emphasized.

If this is the future you want, Stanish said you should observe these two best-in-class principles:

"You're the connective thread between employees and their work," she said.

"So let's summarize our vision for your 2025 future," Stanish said. "Generative AI will be an everyday productivity enhancer. So, adopt new use cases for it to synthesize data and deliver information so you can capitalize on its value. And then transform your end-user services teams into human-centric DEX leaders."

CREDIT: Gartner

Strengthening I&O

But how do you deliver on these goals?

When preparing for an AI-augmented future, what sets the best leaders apart is their ability to adapt and be agile, according to Hassan Ennaciri, senior director analyst of Gartner Research & Advisory. To be successful, leaders need to break work into manageable tasks, visualize progress, and make "retrospectives" — why the magic happens; where your team learns, improves, and truly becomes agile — non-negotiable practices, he said.

"[Agility] is also about the infrastructure platforms that we build," he said. "What does good look like for I&O platforms? It's platforms that are continuously available, resilient, and adaptive. When a new AI initiative comes down from your CIO, no problem, you can deliver. [When] a zero-day vulnerability hits? Push a button. It's fast. Even when a full cloud region fails, no worries. You can restore everything with minimal disruption. This is how to be ready for anything, and this is the standard that you need to aim for."

To achieve this, Gartner recommends two approaches:

"The magic really happens when we combine IPE and SRE," Ennaciri said. "That's when we see the greatest outcomes."

IPE is agility in action and allows you to think big, according to Ennaciri. But while IPE enables velocity, "speed alone is irrelevant if we are breaking things," he said. You need to balance it with reliability and resilience. That's where SRE comes into play.

"The combination of IPE and SRE provides the best approach to enable innovation and agility while reducing risk," Ennaciri said.

Equipping Executives to Take Advantage of I&O

"Clearly, we have a lot of opportunities to make I&O stronger for our AI-augmented future," Williams said.

That's not enough, however: "We must also equip our CIO and other senior leaders to take advantage of all that I&O can do for the organization."

I&O is more than a tactical service provider and order-taker and fixer. "I&O has unique expertise and knowledge that can drive organization success," Williams said. "We play a vital role in whether our AI investments fail or succeed, but how do we help the CIO and our executives best make use of our full potential?"

Williams proposed two approaches to achieve this:

Building executive confidence, he said, comes down to one word: trust. I&O workers need to close the trust gap with executives. And to build trust you need empathy.

"This is how we show that we care about the people we work with, those we serve, and the mission of our organization because if your executives don't feel your empathy for them, they're unlikely to support your proposals," he said.

Another thing I&O can do for their executives is help with cloud investments, as more and more of them are dissatisfied with the value they are getting from the cloud.

There are two primary sources of dissatisfaction with the cloud: cloud expenditure overruns and cloud project failures — both are opportunities in which I&O can make a difference, Williams said.

While FinOps is one framework for managing cloud economics, "it is expensive, and it takes a lot of care and feeding," he said. "So instead, start with basic cloud cost hygiene."

There is also an opportunity to intervene in failing cloud projects that threaten your organization's cloud strategy success. In a recent Gartner cloud survey, less than one-fifth of respondents said they haven't had any failed cloud projects, with 21% saying they've experienced five or more.

"Of course, even just one barrier might be enough to freak out an executive … so the pitfall to avoid here is this tired, unhelpful flight response that people are banning the cloud and moving everything back to the data center," Williams said.

Instead of abandoning the cloud, work with executives to pause (to minimize further spending and set boundaries), rescue (run a rescue workshop to determine whether to kill, fix, or reduce the scope of the project), and reset (finalize tentative decisions quickly) failing cloud projects.

Credit: Gartner

By effectively managing cloud economics and intervening in failed cloud projects, I&O can reduce executive dissatisfaction with the cloud, paving the way for executives to value I&O's generative AI investments, he said.

"When we equip our CIO and executives to harness I&O to its full potential, we will take a giant step forward toward our AI-augmented future," Williams concluded.