The AI Readiness Crisis: What Enterprises Need from Hybrid Cloud Storage in 2025

At this point, it’s common knowledge that enterprise tools, and an organization’s AI readiness in general, are only going to be as effective as the data they have to work with. In our latest research report, we also found that just about every enterprise is prioritizing AI initiatives. So why is it that only 20% of enterprises are confident their data is AI-ready? 

These contrasting findings emerged from The Era of Hybrid Cloud Storage 2025. Based on responses from 1,000 purchasing decision makers, the report is packed with insights, but here we’re going to focus specifically on what we learned about enterprise AI strategies, adoptions, and concerns.

In addition to that disparity between strategic prioritization and data readiness, here are four other interesting takeaways:

1. AI is a C-level priority

Decisions on AI are now shared between IT and executive leadership, and AI is driving spending in other areas. On average, AI drove increases in cloud budgets by 18% across industries, with the media & advertising space seeing a 30% increase. This matches with what we’re seeing from our own media and advertising customers. Their creatives are major adopters of GenAI technologies, and they’ve been cloud-centric for years because they collaborate so much between distant studios and creative groups.

2. Measurable ROI is elusive

While there is solid evidence that AI adoption can drive ROI within enterprises, most of the decision-makers we surveyed aren’t seeing that yet. Only 27% of AI projects currently deliver a clear return on investment. This may be more of a measurement problem than a results issue, as AI tools are impacting businesses and driving efficiencies in hard-to-track ways. A retailer logging the savings that come from reducing the number of human customer service agents required for their operations will have an easier time demonstrating ROI than a media firm capturing the value of a new generative AI tool that helps their creative teams ideate, brainstorm, or produce novel work.

3. Security & privacy are major concerns

The major barriers to AI implementation are data security and privacy (34%) and a shortage of skilled personnel (27%). This further highlights the need for a strong, secure data strategy.

4. AI focus is near-universal

Only 2% of the organizations we surveyed don’t consider AI a priority. At least 98% of the respondents in the Architecture, Engineering, Construction (AEC), Manufacturing, Media & Advertising, and Healthcare & Life Sciences industries say they are prioritizing AI.

Time to prioritize data

Still, the most surprising finding may be the fact that only 20% of decision makers are confident their data is AI-ready. This shouldn’t be the case. In the current era of hybrid cloud storage, global organizations can rely on a single unified framework for storing and accessing data. With a hybrid solution like the Nasuni File Data Platform, you can make any or all your data securely accessible to AI tools.

We’ve been doing this for some of the largest global organizations in the world. Our platform is built to enable unified, AI-ready file data infrastructure at any scale. If AI is truly an organizational priority, then you need to adopt hybrid cloud storage to ensure your data is AI-ready.

Download the report today and learn more about why you need storage built for AI.