Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo 2024 APAC: Day 1 Highlights

We are bringing you news and highlights from Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo, taking place this week on the Gold Coast, Australia. Below is a collection of the key announcements and insights coming out of the conference.

On Day 1 of the conference, we are covering sessions on how to evaluate emerging technologies for your industry; the future of AI; how to measure and quantify the cost, risk and value of AI initiatives; and how to use generative AI without compromising sustainability.

• Gartner Predicts 40% of Generative AI Solutions Will Be Multimodal By 2027

Presented by Nick Ingelbrecht, Senior Director Analyst, Gartner

As emerging technologies continue to generate buzz within organizations, many struggle to see the business value and quantify whether it's worth the effort and investment. In this session, Nick Ingelbrecht, Senior Director Analyst at Gartner, outlined tools to help CIOs cut through the hype to unleash the power of technologies relevant to their industry, and influence investment decisions with the executive team and board.

• “Don’t waste resources chasing emerging technologies that won’t deliver tangible value. Focus on those that will help your organization make money, save money and achieve meaningful outcomes.”
• “Scan the horizon for emerging technologies that will matter most to your organization and industry; then assess whether they could be adoptable, adaptable, marginal or situational.”
• “Examine emerging technologies that will impact your organization via generic adoption and explore ecosystem partners’ plans to deploy them.”
• “Evaluate whether the value proposition for adaptable and situational technologies supports the level of investment needed.”
• “Watch for new use cases or acquisitions of marginal technologies that introduce new relevance and more suitable offerings.”

Presented by Erick Brethenoux, Distinguished VP Analyst, Gartner

AI is moving very fast, but what realistic expectations should we have about the future of AI, and how will the technology continue to impact organizations and society? In this session, Erick Brethenoux, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner, discussed the foundational elements required for the future of AI and how organizations can prepare for the next big AI surprise.

• “Move beyond productivity and consider ‘sidekick’ like use cases to fully deliver the promise of AI."
  
• “Develop minimum viable products by composing and mixing multiple innovative AI techniques as the AI learning curve is incompressible.”
• “Prepare for the future and improve the success rate of AI initiatives by applying AI engineering practices.”
• “Foster the continuous, effective and responsible use of AI by organizing an AI literacy training program.”
• “Adopt responsible AI practices to prepare for more AI regulation through AI risk management.”
• “Decouple AI from human intelligence. Aim for AI that enhances problem solving without compromising cognitive diversity.”

Presented by Luke Ellery, VP Analyst, Gartner

Cost is one of the greatest near-term threats to AI success. Calculating that cost represents a significant challenge for leaders. In this session, Luke Ellery, VP Analyst at Gartner, discussed how to identify the cost drivers for AI, as well as the ensuing risks that need to be estimated, managed and mitigated.

• “Effectively estimate cost, risk and value by categorizing opportunities into three initiative types - ‘defend’ for marginal gains and micro-innovations; ‘extend’ to grow market size, reach, revenue or profitability; and ‘upend’ to bring new products to market quickly.”
• “Build a cost estimate by focusing on the cost factors relevant to your initiative type. Get your assumptions correct, otherwise costs can blow out 5 to 10 times their estimates.”
• “Mitigate risk by allocating budget, resources, training and tools to ensure a safe, secure, ethical and reliable AI solution. Don’t under invest, as it could be detrimental to your organization’s brand and reputation.”
• “Predict your GenAI cost and cost risk by modeling several scenarios incorporating over 100 different cost line items.”
• “While productivity is the leading benefit most organizations expect from AI initiatives, maximize value realization by incorporating multiple benefit measures of GenAI.”

Presented by Michael Warrilow, VP Analyst, Gartner

Generative AI promises to bring new value to all organizations, but the potential environmental impacts of AI modeling and inference could negate any benefits. In this session, Michael Warrilow, VP Analyst at Gartner, provided recommendations for organizations to mitigate the negative environmental impacts of using generative AI.

• “Balance the impacts of your generative AI strategy with the sustainability benefits that you can achieve.”
  
• “Run AI workloads in data centers powered by renewable energy, and ensure renewable energy procurement is additive to the grid.”
  
• “Minimize energy consumption by using energy efficient data centers and AI-optimized hardware, as well as optimizing cloud resource consumption, data storage and management.”
  
• “Design for sustainability by minimizing network traffic and using green software designs and architectures.”
  
• “Sustainability can be operationalized by running large-scale AI processes in off-hours and optimizing AI model tuning.”