A new Cloudera survey of 1,484 IT leaders has revealed that AI agents are rapidly becoming core to enterprise operations, with 61% of deployments occurring within IT departments. The report highlights how organizations are using these intelligent systems for performance optimization, cybersecurity, and software development. Even as data privacy and integration challenges persist.
According to the findings, 96% of organizations plan to expand their AI use in 2025, while 57% have already implemented AI agents over the past two years. Within IT, performance optimization bots (66%), security monitoring agents (63%), and development assistants (62%) top the list of applications. Beyond IT, enterprises are increasingly adopting AI agents for customer support (78%), process automation (71%), and predictive analytics (57%).
Key insights from the survey include:
- 66% of companies build AI agents on enterprise AI infrastructure platforms. While 60% leverage agentic features within core applications — reflecting a shift toward scalable, data-centric architectures.
- Data privacy (53%), system integration (40%), and implementation cost (39%) are cited as the biggest barriers. Over one-third of IT leaders (37%) say agent integration has been “very” or “extremely” challenging.
- Respondents want stronger data privacy and security (65%), faster model training (54%), and improved natural language and contextual understanding (51% and 50%).
Industry-specific applications vary widely — from fraud detection in finance (56%) to supply chain optimization in manufacturing (48%) and diagnostic assistance in healthcare (50%).
Cloudera’s report concludes that AI agents represent the next wave of enterprise AI, enabling more targeted, function-specific automation. However, success will hinge on robust data integration, clear governance, and reskilling employees to collaborate effectively with AI-driven systems.
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