UK IT leaders prioritize cloud investment – but AI skills shortages continue to cause worries

Preparing for AI adoption has become a major factor in determining cloud strategies in the UK, but more than eight in ten IT managers say there’s an urgent AI skills gap.

Almost all (98%) leaders surveyed for a new Red Hat report said they saw advantages in adopting enterprise open source solutions for AI, mostly through accelerating innovation and cost-efficiency.

Four in ten, however, said that while their organization has scalable, flexible, and accessible IT platforms it lacks the right skills to fully harness AI’s potential.

More than eight in ten (81%) pointed to an alarming AI skills gap when it comes to areas including generative AI, large language models (LLMs), and data science. This figure is up from 72% last year and now represents the biggest skills headache, ahead of the cybersecurity skills shortage (75%) and strategic thinking (68%).

The report found AI is also driving other concerns, with 43% worried about data privacy and security, 39% about the excessive energy consumption and sustainability impacts of AI, and 32% concerned about a lack of infrastructure for AI.

Cloud-native application development and DevOps is another priority for IT managers, the survey found, along with evolving cloud strategy in line with business objectives, both cited by nine in ten (89%) survey respondents.

The survey was carried out by Censuswide on behalf of Red Hat, taking in responses from 609 IT managers across large businesses in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UAE between 15-23 August.

“We see a strong desire from UK businesses to innovate with cloud technologies to stay competitive, while needing to respond to cost pressures and find efficiencies. AI has the potential to help address a range of business demands,” said Jo Hodgson, country manager, UK, Red Hat.

Respondents identified cloud technology investment as a priority for 2025. Almost a third (28%) of respondents indicated that they will place strong focus on innovation and new technologies in 2025, while nearly two thirds (61%) will balance growth between upgrades to their current systems and new additions. Of these, more than half (53%) indicated they will boost investment by between 21% and 50%.

Virtually all (96%) respondents told Red Hat that siloed teams present obstacles to cloud adoption, with 53% encountering this issue frequently. Lack of oversight driven by this siloed approach had negative impacts on security and compliance spanning multiple providers according to more than half (54%) of respondents and increased costs according to 42%.

“Cloud technology continues to unlock significant advantages in scalability, cost efficiency and faster time to market,” said Hans Roth, senior vice president and general manager EMEA, Red Hat.

“Yet, this adoption can also drive increased complexity, with many organizations finding themselves slowed down by internal silos, as shown in this latest survey.”

Rising cloud costs are an increasing headache for IT leaders, with three in five telling Civo recently that their cloud spending had increased over the past year – and with nearly 40% experiencing cost hikes of over 25%. More than a third concluded that the cloud hasn’t turned out to be as cost-effective as promised.