What Leaders and Technical Specialists Say About AI: Riverbed’s Global Survey 2025

AI has moved from the sidelines to the center of IT operations. From automating root cause analysis to predictive remediation and enhancing digital experience monitoring, AI is now shaping how organizations solve problems, anticipate issues, and keep operations running smoothly.

But here’s the real question: are enterprises ready to operationalize AI at scale?

That’s what Riverbed’s Global Survey 2025 set out to uncover. We asked 1,200 leaders and technical specialists about their progress, challenges, and priorities around AIOps. The findings reveal a sector in transition—optimistic about AI’s potential but facing foundational gaps that could stall progress.

AIOps ROI: Promise vs. Reality

There’s plenty of enthusiasm for AIOps. But when it comes to execution? Progress is slow.

Only 49% of organizations report that their AIOps investments have met or exceeded ROI expectations. However, just 12% have fully deployed AIOps solutions in the past year.

This low deployment signals a clear readiness gap. Many IT leaders are still navigating fragmented architectures, legacy tooling, and siloed data. Until those obstacles are addressed, AI’s real value will remain out of reach.

Tool Sprawl: Complexity Is the Enemy of Agility

AI needs clean, reliable data. The problem? Confidence in data quality is shaky. Only 46% of respondents say they trust the integrity of their data, even though 88% (nearly nine out of ten) acknowledge that high-quality data is critical to AI success.

And there’s a disconnect: business leaders consistently rate their data quality higher than technical specialists do. This perception gap could lead to misaligned strategies and underinvestment in data governance. Both of these are risks IT leaders can’t ignore.

Then there’s tool sprawl. The average enterprise is juggling 13 observability tools from 9 different vendors. That kind of fragmentation creates operational drag, slowing down integration, adding complexity, and making incident response harder.

No surprise then that over 55% of respondents say that unified platform capabilities are “very important” to their consolidation strategy. An even bigger majority—93%—say a unified approach would accelerate issue resolution and improve overall IT performance.

For IT leaders, the message is clear: tool rationalization isn’t just about cost. It’s about control, speed, and scalability.

Unified Communications: Central but Vulnerable

Unified communications (UC) platforms sit at the heart of daily operations with 42% of employees’ time spent on these tools., but blind spots persist. UC tools account for around 15% of monthly help desk tickets, with most resolved in over 40 minutes.

As hybrid work becomes the norm, delivering consistent, high-quality UC experiences is no longer optional. It’s expected. To keep up, IT teams need real-time UC monitoring and optimization to be part of a broader observability strategy, especially as these platforms become more tightly integrated with AI-driven workflows.

OpenTelemetry: The New Observability Standard

If there’s one bright spot, it’s OpenTelemetry (OTel). It’s quickly becoming the standard for scalable observability and AI enablement. According to the survey, 88% of organizations have begun implementing OTel—41% fully, 47% partially.

By standardizing on OTel, IT teams can unify telemetry data across infrastructure, applications, and services. This creates a consistent, vendor-neutral foundation for AI-driven insights and automation.

Network Infrastructure: The Unsung Hero of AI Strategy

AI workloads demand fast, reliable data movement. That makes the network more critical than ever. Ninety-one percent of enterprises view the movement and sharing of AI data as vital to their strategy—33% call it critical, 58% say it’s very important.

To deliver, IT leaders will need to rethink network architecture for real-time data flows, low-latency processing, and scalable bandwidth—all essential for AI success.

Six Priorities for AI Readiness

Riverbed’s survey identifies six priorities to accelerate AI readiness and unlock enterprise-wide value:

1. Align business and IT on AI readiness, talent, and timelines
2. Consolidate tools to eliminate silos and reduce operational drag
3. Prioritize unified observability to eliminate blind spots
4. Standardize on OpenTelemetry for scalable AI observability
5. Enhance network infrastructure to support AI data movement
6. Invest in data quality and governance to ensure reliable insights

These aren’t just tactical recommendations—they’re strategic imperatives for IT leaders looking to future-proof their operations.

Riverbed’s Expertise: Helping Enterprises Put AI to Work

With deep expertise in AI, machine learning, and observability, Riverbed is helping global enterprises optimize user experiences and modernize IT operations.

The Riverbed Platform delivers full-stack observability powered by real data. It enables predictive AIOps, accelerates root cause analysis, and helps teams fix issues before users even notice.

Just as importantly, the Riverbed Platform drives tool consolidation — replacing fragmented point solutions with a unified platform. This reduces cost, eliminates data silos, and ensures every team is working from the same source of truth.

The bottom line: AI won’t deliver results without the right foundation. That’s why Riverbed unifies AIOps, observability, and acceleration into a single platform—so IT leaders can simplify operations, solve problems faster, and keep digital experiences performing at their best.

Explore more: Riverbed’s Global Survey 2025: The Future of IT Operations in the AI Era