Companies in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region are overhauling their data infrastructure to keep pace with the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence, with 98% saying they delayed or cancelled an AI project in the past year because of data governance, compliance or regulatory hurdles, revealed a survey of 400 IT and business leaders by Cloudera, a hybrid data and AI platform company based in US.

Releasing its latest global survey, The Great AI Re-Architecture, the company revealed a fundamental shift in enterprise IT as organisations redesign their data architectures to meet the demands of AI. 

Based on responses from 1,500 Enterprise Architects, Cloud Infrastructure Leads, and Data Architects worldwide, the report finds that while AI adoption has become mainstream, legacy data architectures are increasingly limiting organizations' ability to scale AI securely, efficiently, and cost-effectively.

Fundamental shift in enterprise IT architect

The findings point to a fundamental shift in enterprise IT architect by companies in the EMEA region. 

The study also showed that 81% of enterprises believe their existing data architecture needs a significant overhaul, while 74% have already made major changes to their data storage and architecture practices to support AI. 

Feeding sensitive corporate data into AI models has made data governance more difficult for 65% of EMEA IT leaders, while 30% of organisations plan to shift from public cloud-only environments towards hybrid-first infrastructure over the next two years.

A pioneer in big data, the company delivers a consistent cloud experience that converges public clouds, on-prem data centers, sovereign clouds, and the edge, leveraging a proven open-source foundation.

Together, these findings highlight what Cloudera calls "The Great AI Re-Architecture"—the mass transition from legacy data architectures toward hybrid environments that enable organizations to bring trusted AI to trusted data, wherever it resides.

"This current era of AI is forcing organizations to rethink the foundations of their technology infrastructure," remarked Sergio Gago, Chief Technology Officer at Cloudera. 

"Many enterprises are discovering that the architectures built for traditional analytics weren't designed for the scale, governance, and flexibility AI demands today. Success will depend on building a data foundation that gives organizations the freedom to run AI wherever it makes the most sense, without compromising control or security," he stated.

AI driving an enterprise infrastructure reset

AI has moved well beyond isolated pilot projects and is now embedded across enterprise operations. As organizations expand AI across the business, they're placing mounting pressure on infrastructure that was never designed for AI at scale.

Three-quarters (75%) of respondents say AI integrations have changed their organization's data storage and architecture practices, while 84% report increased infrastructure costs driven by AI workloads. Together, these findings suggest organizations are rethinking not only where data lives, but how it is managed, governed, and delivered to AI systems.

As organizations scale AI, governance is becoming foundational to enterprise AI success. Earlier this year, Cloudera's Data Readiness Index found that 75% of organizations said AI is exposing the limitations of their legacy governance processes. This latest research suggests those challenges are only intensifying as AI adoption grows.

Nearly three-quarters (73%) of respondents say AI has made data governance more complex, and more than half (55%) report delaying or canceling more than six AI projects over the past 12 months due to governance, compliance, or regulatory challenges.-TradeArabia News Service