McKinsey suggests that the time is ripe for an industrial revolution, and details a Deutsche Telekom case study -- "The costly build-to-order approach of typical IT infrastructures may soon be a thing of the past, thanks to advances in technology and to new management practices. Leading companies are moving toward a less complex model characterized by standard and reusable products, transparent pricing, and better use of IT resources. Companies can make their information technology systems up to 30 percent more productive by adopting a standardized model. To undertake this shift, CIOs must rethink the organization, architecture, and procurement processes of their IT organizations."
The prevailing narrative around artificial intelligence (AI) has been one of relentless scale. Bigger models, bigger clusters, bigger budgets. The assumption, largely unchallenged until recently, was that raw parameter count translated directly into competitive advantage. New research from Omdia suggests it's time to retire that assumption. According to the latest market study by Omdia, parameter growth in frontier AI models has slowed to around 5 percent annually since 2021, a stark contrast to the more than hundredfold expansion seen between 2019 and 2021. Enterprise AI Market Development For executives who have been making infrastructure and investment decisions based on the assumption that AI would keep demanding ever-larger, ever-more-expensive hardware, this finding deserves serious attention. The race to the top of the model size leaderboard has, at least for now, plateaued. Crucially, Omdia's analysts are not reading this as an AI winter. Alexander Harrowell, senior pri...