What does it mean to be ‘AI ready’?

It’s not a simple riddle to crack.

Last year, Gartner reported that 92% of CIOs expected AI to be implemented by the end of 2025. Now, it predicts 60% of AI projects without AI-ready data will be abandoned by 2026.

Unlike previous technology waves, AI readiness is more than adopting tools. It demands a rethink of operating models, alignment with business outcomes, and embedding cultural permission. Above all, it means creating environments where AI delivers value, not complexity.

The organisations that thrive will weave AI into strategy, operations, and culture, making innovation practical, responsible, and scalable.

Here are four areas ripe for investigation:

1. Cloud echoes

In some ways, the journey to AI readiness echoes the ghosts of cloud transformations past. For more than a decade, organisations have chased the promise of the cloud.

What many labelled as the ‘lift-and-shift era’ is firmly in the rearview. What remains is a far harder question.

How do you modernise, optimise, and architect the cloud now so that it can support the most demanding workloads of our time: AI

It’s fair to say lift-and-shift approaches won’t sustain AI workloads. Generative AI, intelligent agents, and distributed analytics all demand accessible, clean, and well-governed data. They also require architectures capable of stretching from the core to the edge.

This is where proven methodologies – like the Azure Well-Architected Framework – provide discipline. It encourages organisations to embed the principles of reliability, security, cost optimisation, performance efficiency, and operational excellence into everything they build – during migration, and then as a continuous operating model. We’ve seen organisations only consider these guardrails during the initial cloud adoption phase. To be AI ready, they must be part of everyday governance.

Equally, the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework gives leaders a structured pathway to evaluate workloads, align with business strategy, and balance sovereignty with innovation. Used together, these frameworks help ensure AI doesn’t sit as an isolated pilot but dovetails into a broader, more resilient technology strategy.

2. Culture is the catalyst

If AI is to transform work, workers need to embrace it. But in our experience, adoption is the most neglected piece of the puzzle. ADAPT reports just 23% of organisations have formal AI training, and only 6% mandate it. Without education at the user level, AI may remain a curiosity – or worse, an existential threat.

By empowering your people to understand and use AI tools in their everyday work; by appointing change champions; and by creating dedicated methods, forums, channels, and tools for knowledge dissemination – like Microsoft Loop or a Teams Channel - you can ensure that they’re part of the AI revolution, not left behind by it.

And it’s not limited to technical training and user engagement.

It’s about storytelling, sequencing, and trust. Leaders need to craft roadmaps that speak to different stakeholders, explain the “why” as much as the “how”, and demonstrate the benefits early.

At Brennan, Level One service desk staff were nervous about adopting AI tools to assist in ticket resolution, fearing it would replace them. Comprehensive training repositioned AI as an “always-on mentor”, reframing it as a team enabler that could improve outcomes, remove repetition, reduce decision fatigue, and lift agent confidence. Not fewer jobs, but more empowered team members.

3. On a sovereign footing

Data quality and data sovereignty are twin cities in the AI landscape. With evolving privacy regulations, geopolitical shifts, and industry-specific compliance regimes, organisations must demonstrate not just where data resides, but how it is protected, governed, and used to create value.

The real imperative is to build trust – with users, customers, regulators, and partners – by designing systems that are transparent, resilient, and adaptable.

A hybrid approach is often the answer: sensitive workloads remain sovereign, while less critical applications leverage global cloud scale. Microsoft’s investment in Australian Azure regions and sovereign hosting models enables organisations to balance compliance with innovation.

Sovereignty is more than a legal hurdle. It’s about ensuring that AI capabilities are both trusted and usable, unlocking value and the freedom to innovate within trusted borders.

4. Using AI to become AI ready

Perhaps the most transformative aspect of AI readiness is organisational, not technical. Unlike hardware or software, AI is no longer a tool bolted onto operations; it is fast becoming a peer in the development process.

AI agents can generate code, analyse architectures, test applications, and so much more, reshaping how teams work and what they can achieve. Human oversight remains essential, but operating models fundamentally shifts when non-human peers contribute meaningful work.

To harness this potential, CIOs must design operating models where AI and agentic agents are treated as true collaborators, subject to the same training, peer review, checks, balances, and governance as human contributors. Building this operating model early – and with continual iteration, rather than a ‘once-and-done' implementation – helps avoid the trap of ‘AI theatre’, where pilots proliferate but sustainable value is elusive.

And it’s here where tools like Microsoft Copilot and GitHub Copilot enter the conversation. More than an end-user productivity tools, they represent how AI can augment the way teams manage environments, generate documentation, streamline development workflows, and accelerate migration assessments.

It’s like the well-worn plot twist used in sci-fi movies – the one in which the riddle of time travel is magically cracked by a future-self travelling back to tell present-self.

But in the case of AI, it might be that this construct really does work: some of the best tools to make you AI ready are themselves powered by AI.

From readiness to reality

To be ‘AI ready’ is many things. More than plugging in a new toolset, it’s about modernising with intent, embedding cultural catalysts, and architecting for both sovereignty and scalability.

Those who succeed will move beyond hype to harness AI in practical, governable, value-creating ways.

Those who don’t risk paying more for the same problems, only now under the wrapper of ‘AI’.

To discover how Brennan can deliver true AI readiness for your organisation, visit their website.