ANZ businesses urged to prioritise AI readiness & strategy

Techday NZ

09-07-2025

As AI Appreciation Day approaches, industry leaders are reflecting on the remarkable advancements artificial intelligence has made and emphasising the urgent steps required to ensure its responsible, effective integration into business and society. With AI transitioning from experimental stages to become central in strategic planning, experts highlight both the transformative opportunities and the key challenges now facing organisations, particularly in Australia and New Zealand.
Jeremy Pell, Area Vice President for ANZ at Elastic, stresses that AI has reached what he describes as a "critical inflection point." "AI has evolved from basic automation to intelligent systems that can connect enterprise applications and workflows," Pell explains. The success of such systems, however, depends on their ability to access structured and unstructured data rapidly and accurately. This evolution, he asserts, is visible in daily life through applications such as Uber's ride-matching and food delivery platforms, which leverage Elastic's Search AI technology to provide faster, more personalised, and context-aware services worldwide.
Pell also notes AI's increasingly critical role in cybersecurity. "Cybersecurity teams must leverage generative AI to strengthen defences against threats like deepfakes and phishing," he maintains. Enhanced search powered by AI is enabling organisations to reduce false positives in threat detection, accelerating both the identification and resolution of incidents. This, Pell believes, is shifting the security landscape and offers a major advantage to proactive businesses willing to embrace these tools.
As the technology becomes more integrated and influential, Pell points to the growing responsibility that comes with such progress. The Business Council of Australia's AI Agenda, for instance, sets forth ambitious goals to position the country as a global AI leader by 2028, focusing on digital infrastructure, skills, and the safe adoption of AI across industries. While AI's potential to reshape industries and improve quality of life is significant, Pell believes its true value will only be realised on open, adaptive platforms capable of offering real-time, holistic data insights. "At Elastic, we're proud to empower organisations to harness this new era of AI with confidence and agility," he says.
A complementary perspective comes from Kumar Mitra, Executive Director, CAP & ANZ, ISG, at Lenovo. Mitra heralds AI Appreciation Day as a "timely reminder that AI is no longer a distant frontier – it's a business-critical priority." Citing Lenovo's CIO Playbook 2025, developed with IDC, Mitra notes that more than 63% of Australian CIOs view aligning AI to business strategy as their top priority. Despite this, he points out, 58% of those surveyed identify data infrastructure as their principal barrier to advancing AI programmes. "It's clear that scaling AI isn't just about capability – it's about readiness," he insists.
Lenovo sees the path forward in what Mitra terms "Hybrid AI" – a distributed, flexible approach to running AI workloads wherever they deliver the greatest value, whether in the cloud, on-premises, or at the edge. Such agility addresses both security concerns and varying business needs. "AI done right can drive both economic and human progress," he adds, citing examples from transforming supply chains and accelerating healthcare diagnostics to enabling inclusive solutions for people with disabilities. For Mitra, it is essential for organisations to move beyond small-scale pilots and instead embed AI as a core component of their growth and inclusion strategies, realising its potential for "sustainable growth, inclusion, and real-world impact."
Both Pell and Mitra agree that the promise of AI lies not only in innovative applications but in strategic vision and robust infrastructure. As organisations in Australia and around the world mark AI Appreciation Day, the industry emphasis is on collaboration, responsible stewardship, and investment in systems that will enable AI to drive meaningful progress well into the future.