New Research Shows 93 Percent of IT Leaders Turning to AI Agents Amid Soaring Resource Demands ....

• 03 Feb 2025
• TM Team
• 0 Comments

As IT resource demands spike, Salesforce said that new research finds that 93 percent of enterprise IT leaders have implemented or plan to implement  AI agents in the next two years. However, integration challenges hinder companies from fully realizing the technology's potential to create a limitless digital workforce, which can significantly alleviate IT workloads.

The findings, gleaned from a survey of 1,050 enterprise IT leaders, reveal that 95 percent of respondents struggle to integrate data across systems. Moreover, only 29 percent of applications are typically connected within organizations, on average, impacting the accuracy and usefulness of AI agents.

AI agent outputs depend on connected data that enables a comprehensive understanding of the context and nuances within user queries. These agents gather structured and unstructured data from diverse sources, including CRM, ERP and HCM, as well as email, PDFs, Slack and more, and use it to make decisions and take action for any business process. By integrating their data, systems and applications, organizations can tap into a limitless, AI-powered digital labor force that can act autonomously across their business to successfully carry out both simple and complex tasks.

One such example is Adecco: Adecco Group is a talent company that's reimagining recruiting and support for job applicants with Salesforce's Agentforce. The organization is harnessing MuleSoft and Data Cloud to centralize data across over 40 systems, enabling recruiters to use Agentforce to drive faster job placements and personalize service at scale, while boosting efficiency and accelerating decision-making.

Key findings from MuleSoft's 10th annual Connectivity Benchmark Report:

- Increased IT demand opens the door for AI agents to improve efficiency, lower cost

IT teams already responsible for maintaining current systems are struggling to meet new demand for AI solutions.

- The percentage of projects not delivered on time has risen to 29 percent in 2024, up from 26 percent in 2023.

- What's more, 86 percent of IT leaders expect workloads to rise in the future. On average, surveyed leaders expect an 18 percent increase in projects from 2024 to 2025.

- To meet increased demand, enterprise IT leaders spent an estimated average of $16.9 million on IT staff in 2024, a massive 61 percent increase from 2023 (estimated at $10.5 million).

AI agents and integration solutions present an opportunity to improve productivity, increase efficiency and lower costs by taking action on behalf of overwhelmed IT teams.

- 93 percent of IT leaders say that AI will increase the productivity of their developers in the next three years. And those using AI agents are even more confident, with 98 percent agreeing.

- 39 percent of IT's team time, on average, is spent ‌designing, building and testing new custom integrations between systems and data to enable digital capabilities and solutions for the business, something that can be automated with the right integration solution.

- Increasingly complex infrastructures hinder AI agent efficacy

The growing number of applications and AI models used by enterprises creates data silos that can limit  agents' ability to operate effectively.

- On average, 90 percent of IT leaders say data silos are creating business challenges in their organization. The challenge is greater at organizations using agents (94 percent) compared to those not using agents (87 percent).

- Organizations today are using 897 applications, on average.
-- Organizations with  AI agents use even more applications (1,103 on average), 45 percent more than those that don't use agents (762).

- The estimated number of AI models used by organizations has doubled (from an average of nine in 2024 to 18 in 2025).
-- Organizations using agents are leveraging an average of 22 AI models, while those not using agents are leveraging 15 AI models.

- APIs, connectivity can enhance IT and AI agent performance

By aligning integration and AI strategies, organization can simplify and unify their data infrastructure, unlocking the full potential of their data to efficiently power AI agents. Using these tools, agents can access critical, business-specific data to function at their best and extend across the enterprise to interact directly with existing systems and automations.

- Among organizations with agents, those using APIs are taking advantage of their capabilities to:
-- Improve IT infrastructure (56 percent)
-- Enable data sharing across teams (49 percent)
-- Integrate disparate systems (46 percent)

- On average, 50 percent of an organization's internal software assets and components are available for internal reuse. This is an opportunity for companies to leverage their reliable data and existing investments with APIs, instead of building from scratch, to create trusted AI agents.

- APIs drive broader business value

In addition to enabling AI agents to access services, databases and functionalities provided by applications, IT leaders also highlight the significant business value of APIs, from increasing efficiencies to impacting revenue.

- Organizations using APIs report these top benefits:
-- Increased productivity (49 percent) and increased speed to meet business needs (49 percent)
-- Increased employee engagement and collaboration (47 percent)
-- Increased innovation (46 percent) and teams managing their own IT needs (46 percent)

- 37 percent of IT teams are leveraging APIs to increase the efficiency of their application development process.

- IT leaders estimate an average of 40 percent of their company's revenue is generated from APIs and API-related implementations. The number is even higher (45 percent) at organizations using agents.

"AI agents are set to transform enterprises with limitless digital labor. We see forecasts of new levels of efficiency and productivity with the unified human and agent workforce. However, to unlock this new capacity, integration and APIs are critical to building an agent-ready foundation. Agents depend on unified data and enterprise actions, powered by integration and automation, to provide accurate, trusted responses and perform complex, multi-step tasks," Andrew Comstock, SVP and GM, MuleSoft.

"In the agentic era, IT leaders are seeking ways to ‌meet the increased demand for efficiency and productivity. This strain on their teams is growing as they navigate balancing current capabilities with business aspirations: steadily incorporating AI and autonomous  agents across an ecosystem of hundreds of distinct applications, while also maintaining those same systems. Leading organizations must establish a proactive integration strategy for unifying the entire IT estate, encompassing apps and systems, automations and APIs, all of which are vital for driving revenue growth and reducing operational costs," said Beena Ammanath, Global Deloitte  AI Institute Leader, Deloitte.

"This report provides invaluable guidance for businesses navigating the complexities of digital transformation and the underlying need for effective data integration. By leveraging these insights and unlocking the power of cutting-edge technology, we empower organizations to unlock the full potential of integration - connecting systems, data and processes to drive innovation, enhance customer experiences and achieve sustainable growth," said Maximilian Schroeck, Global Chief Commercial Officer for Salesforce, Deloitte Global.