AI strategy is becoming infrastructure strategy

AI adoption is accelerating. Business value is not keeping pace.

Three proof points:

• Deloitte reports worker access to AI rose 50% in 2025. The number of companies expecting at least 40% of their AI projects in production is set to double within six months.
• Cisco reports only 15% of organizations have networks fully ready for AI, compared with 71% of AI Pacesetters.
• IBM found only 25% of AI initiatives delivered expected ROI, while only 16% reached enterprise scale.

For CxOs, this changes the investment conversation:

• Networking determines performance, resilience, and user experience.
• Data-center capacity, power, and cooling shape cost and scalability.
• Cybersecurity protects data, models, agents, and business trust.
• Observability connects technology performance and spending to customer experience and business outcomes.
• Governance establishes accountability for decisions made by AI.

AI ROI is no longer a model-selection question. Execution is the constraint.

My takeawayCompanies connecting AI, data, infrastructure, security, and observability under one business strategy will move from experimentation to measurable value faster.

Is your AI roadmap treating infrastructure as a strategic business capability, or as an IT line item?