How new use cases for artificial intelligence are driving demand – with telecoms at the heart of it

There's been a significant increase in enterprise investment on technologies that analyse, organise, access, and provide advisory services that are based on use cases for unstructured data. In fact, worldwide spending on cognitive and artificial intelligence (AI) systems will reach $19.1 billion in 2018 - that's an increase of 54.2 percent over the amount spent in 2017. With industries investing aggressively in projects that utilise cognitive and AI software capabilities, International Data Corporation (IDC) now forecasts cognitive and AI spending will grow to $52.2 billion in 2021 and achieve a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 46.2 percent over the 2016-2021 forecast period. "Interest and awareness of AI is at a fever pitch. Every industry and every organisation should be evaluating AI to see how it will affect their business processes and go-to-market efficiencies," said David Schubmehl, research director at IDC. IDC has estimated that by 2019, 40 percent of digital transformation initiatives will use AI services and by 2021, 75 percent of enterprise applications will use AI.