2024 Data Streaming Report by Confluent Reveals Data Challenges Limiting Business AI Adoption in Singapore

The “2024 Data Streaming Report: Breaking Down the Barriers to Business Agility & Innovation” report from Confluent, Inc., the data streaming pioneer, found that data-related challenges are holding back Artificial Intelligence (AI) adoption in Singapore.

More than two-thirds (69%) of IT leaders in Singapore believe that investments in GenAI will trend up in the next two years; however, AI rollout is slowed by businesses’ inability to seamlessly integrate new data sources (69%), fragmented ownership of data (68%), and insufficient skills and expertise in AI/ML management (65%).

In facing these challenges, leaders in Singapore are on par with their peers across Asia Pacific (APAC). For instance, the 2024 Data Streaming Report found that businesses’ inability to seamlessly integrate new data sources is a challenge for 66% leaders in the region, while 68% also struggle with fragmented ownership of data across disparate systems and 66% are troubled by insufficient skills and expertise.

The “2024 Data Streaming Report: Breaking Down the Barriers to Business Agility & Innovation” report explores in detail how organisations use data streaming to innovate, accelerate AI adoption, improve business agility, power customer experiences, and overcome data accessibility and management challenges. The 2024 Data Streaming Report is based on a survey of 4,110 IT leaders with experience in data streaming across 12 countries, including Singapore (161 respondents) and APAC (1,424 respondents).

Suvig Sharma, Area Vice President (AVP), ASEAN, at Confluent, said about the 2024 Data Streaming Report: “Companies in Singapore are limiting their growth and performance if they invest in AI but not real-time data. Relevant real-time data is the fuel AI technologies need today to deliver maximum value in a timely, secure, and scalable way for organizations and their customers. Outdated or ungoverned data is not only contributing to ineffective use of AI but also poor and unreliable business decisions.”

2024 Data Streaming Report: Tackling Data Access Crucial in a Data-Driven World

In 2024, 82% of Singapore respondents see data streaming as a strategic or important priority in IT investments and more than 73% believe that data streaming platforms can mitigate their AI and data-related challenges in many situations. More importantly, 93% of respondents see data streaming platforms as critical or important to achieving data and information related goals.

Additional takeaways from the 2024 Data Streaming Report include the following:

Data Streaming Platforms Power Faster AI Adoption

GenAI is top of mind for many companies, including those in Singapore, but for AI models to generate accurate and relevant results, the data must be trustworthy, in the right format, and as real-time as possible. Data streaming enriches retrieval augmented generation (RAG)-enabled workloads with trustworthy and contextual data by tapping into a continuous stream of real-time data from systems that power the business. Data streaming can efficiently transform data into the right format to be used by vector databases for AI applications.

In Singapore:

• 69% state investments in GenAI will trend up in the coming two years; followed by investments in data streaming and continuous flowing of data (59%).
• Over 90% of IT leaders see data streaming platforms broaden access to different data sources to contextualize models and ensure that the data ingested meets appropriate quality standards.

Data Streaming Delivers Significant Benefits for Business Investments

Businesses in Singapore are also grappling with broader data-related challenges. The 2024 Data Streaming Report identified these challenges as follows:

• Uncertain timeliness or quality of data (68%)
• Governance-related disjoints (65%)
• Fragmented data ownership (62%)
• Inconsistency of data sources (61%)
• Data silos (58%) within the organisation.

As businesses learn to do more with less, proving the ROI of tech investments has become even more critical. This 2024 Data Streaming Report shows that data streaming pays off across every industry and that organisations of all sizes are achieving value, despite limited resources.

In Singapore:

• 93% of IT leaders cite 2x to 10x return on data streaming investments.
• 93% state that data streaming improved or is expected to improve cybersecurity and 96% for data-driven operations.
• 90% say data streaming platforms can lead to more product and service innovation in AI and ML development.

Data Streaming Simplifies the Development of Data Products and Encourages Reusability and Cost Savings

Data products are live, refined, fully governed, and ready-to-use data assets that are instantly discoverable, contextualized, trustworthy, and reusable for many use cases. Data products allow organisations to reuse data across a variety of use cases to save costs and time.

In Singapore:

• 69% cite significant benefits from embracing a data product approach.
• 95% cite data products as compelling or worthwhile in enabling more confident data sharing across business units.
• 89% note more meaningful cost allocation or charging based on usage metrics.
• 90% state more robust risk management.

Rajay Rai, Chief Information Officer at Trust Bank, said: “Everything we do is in real time because batch processing is an old way of thinking. The longer your data waits, the less value it has. So, as data comes through, you need to be able to act on it, or enrich it quickly.”

Kamal Brar, Senior Vice President, APAC, at Confluent, added: “The 2024 Data Streaming Report shows that IT leaders in Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, and Singapore are realizing what’s to lose and increasingly investing in continuous flowing of data alongside emerging Generative AI technologies. We’re excited to work more closely with them to connect applications and systems with data that is available in real-time, everywhere it’s needed. With a solid central nervous system enabled by data streaming platforms, companies in APAC can focus on accelerating innovation instead of navigating the maze of point-to-point connections.”