The Infrastructure Reality Behind AI-Powered Businesses

The efficiency, automation, and cost reductions that artificial intelligence (AI) offers businesses continue to drive its demand and integration across multiple industries. But the infrastructure reality behind AI adoption—compute capacity, data pipelines, and scalability constraints—often determines how much of that promised value organizations can actually realize.

For example, e-commerce businesses use AI to recommend tailored products, advertising agencies use it to develop lifelike ads, and retail businesses use it to optimize supply chains and manage inventory.

That being said, unlocking the true potential of AI is highly dependent on one crucial factor: developing the right digital infrastructure. Many businesses fail to successfully implement AI since they don’t have a supportive digital infrastructure in place.

But what exactly is the right digital infrastructure, and how can you develop it? These questions and more will be answered as we explore the following aspects:

Let’s start.

Why AI is a Game Changer for Businesses of All Sizes?

Before I dive into what digital infrastructure is and how you can develop one, let me give you a quick overview of all the ways AI might make you want to develop one.

AI can offer businesses of all sizes a range of benefits, some of the most significant ones being:

• Data-Backed Decision-Making: AI can analyze large sets of data to make predictions and offer courses of action. These suggestions help guide business strategies and reduce risk across multiple functions.
• Increased Efficiency: AI tools can automate many tasks, such as data entry or customer service. This helps employees boost efficiency and productivity while centering their attention on more crucial duties.
• Cost Reduction: AI can identify businesses’ weaknesses, such as wastage, and either provide actionable strategies or take preventive measures, leading to significant cost reductions for businesses.

These three benefits cover the why; let’s dive into the how.

What Is a Digital Infrastructure?

A digital infrastructure is the mix of hardware and software systems that enable seamless communication and operations across all business functions. Depending on the access to resources and the size of a business, they may use one or all of such systems. The foundational ones are shared next.

Four Core Elements of a Digital Infrastructure

A digital infrastructure reality has four core elements, without which the use of technologies like AI may not yield the best results. These are:

• Mobile Telecom and Broadband
• Data Centers
• Networks and Digital Communication Suits
• Virtualization Software

Let’s explore each in more detail.

Mobile Telecom and Broadband

To use AI-powered platforms or hardware such as the Internet of Things, you need to ensure a mode of connectivity for efficient data processing and transfer. This could take the form of either 5G cellular networks or internet services. When picking one for your business, you want to make sure the service is fast and reliable to prevent any delays or loss of important data.

Data Centers

Data centers can take the form of business-owned or third-party remote servers known as clouds. They are where the data AI-powered tools and systems collect from various sources is processed, analyzed, and stored securely. They are important because this data includes sensitive business and customer data, which, if in the wrong hands, can result in some financial losses and legal difficulties too.

Network and Digital Communication Tools

A network refers to the hardware, such as computers, routers, or servers, that facilitates business-wide data and resource sharing. These devices can be linked by wired or wireless technologies such as local or wide area networks, or the internet. Digital communication tools refer to the digital means through which data is shared within a business, which can include email, messaging apps, or video communication apps.

Together, both these factors serve as the backbone for an entire business. However, using digital communication tools requires a fast and reliable internet connection, so you might want to start looking around for quality providers. If you haven’t yet, I’d suggest checking out high-speed Xfinity internet plans.

Virtualization Software

Virtualization is the process of creating virtual versions of physical IT resources on a single server. This task is performed through various software tools, allowing businesses to simultaneously run multiple isolated environments. AI tools may need dynamic, scalable, and isolated environments for complex tasks, easier data access, and seamless resource management. All this allows businesses to unlock innovation, efficiency, and cost-cutting across multiple functions.

Now that you know what a digital infrastructure is made up of, let me guide you through the steps you need to create one and effectively make the most of AI for your business.

Step-by-Step Guide to Create a Digital Infrastructure Reality

Regardless of your business size, the main areas of focus when planning a digital infrastructure should be balancing your needs with scalability, reliability, and efficiency. With these aspects in mind, I’ve shared a 5-step roadmap to help you develop a sound digital infrastructure reality. Let’s explore.

1.  Narrow Down Business Requirements and Goals

To ensure that you effectively invest in and utilize resources and AI, you need to first set clear goals and requirements. This includes narrowing down the business functions you plan to implement AI in and setting S.M.A.R.T goals. For example, if you plan to utilize AI in supply chain management, a goal you can establish could be to reduce wastage by 10% in a month.

When establishing such goals, you need to rank them based on the urgency and reward that an AI implementation could offer for a specific one. A crucial point to remember is to focus on not just current needs and goals, but also future needs, rapidly changing market conditions, emerging technologies, and projected business growth.

2.  Analyze Your Existing Infrastructure

Once you’re done finalizing your needs and goals, the next step is to conduct a business analysis to identify your current digital infrastructure, if you currently have one that is. This includes your existing hardware, software, network strength, and security measures. Doing so will help you identify business functions performing poorly, optimization opportunities, security weak points, and plan the resources needed. When doing so, you want to take a collaborative approach and interview end users, department leads, or the IT team, as all of them can highlight areas of concern that you might potentially miss.

3.  Plan Architecture and Design Policies

If you plan to implement a digital infrastructure, the last thing you want is for the new systems to interfere with current resources. To prevent that, you need to develop integration policies focused on consistency, simplicity, and scalability. These policies should address aspects such as server configurations, network design principles, and last but not least, security measures. Security measures such as encryption, access control, monitoring, and incident response should all be extensively covered.

4.  Plan Ahead for Business Growth, Performance, and Capacity

The infrastructure you implement should be able to accommodate your business growth instead of you having to rebuild the entire infrastructure reality to support new needs. To ensure that it does, you first need to conduct scalability planning. This phase of planning needs to focus on growing the capacity of existing systems or adding more systems to balance workloads.

The next phase of planning needs to focus on performance. This part is about ensuring that the systems implemented perform the functions addressed and add value to the end user. AI systems have different performance requirements compared to traditional systems in terms of latency, throughput, and computation, and depending on your workload, you’ll need to ensure them.

The final phase is capacity planning, which is about projecting business growth and planning required resources. To do that, you’ll need to focus on aspects such as seasonal demands, new technologies, and emerging market conditions.

5.  Implement Renewable Energy Solutions

Did you know that data centers consume 4.4% of the entire electricity in America? This usage is projected to increase further as AI adoption increases. To address this, you’ll need to implement sustainable energy management solutions. These solutions can include generating your own electricity through solar systems, limiting your power purchase, and efficiently storing energy. If situations allow, you could set up your operations in areas with an abundant supply of renewable energy.

AI – Unlocking a Competitive Edge for Businesses

Benefits such as task automation, predictive planning, and tailored suggestions that AI offers businesses can help them unlock higher efficiency, better resource management, and savings through multiple functions.

The key to making it possible is a well-thought-out digital infrastructure reality. You don’t have to invest in every technology out there, just the right ones in the right places. The 5-step roadmap shared above can help you get there, seamlessly implement AI, and unlock a competitive edge for your business.