Red Hat Survey: UK Organizations Ready for Widespread AI Adoption, but Skills Gaps, High Costs and 'Shadow AI' Threaten Ambition

LONDON - 9 October, 2025 - Red Hat, Inc., the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced new survey results highlighting the prominence of AI for UK organizations’ IT strategies¹. The findings reveal UK organisations surveyed anticipate boosting AI investment by an average of 32% by 2026². 

When asked about their organisation's IT strategy for the next 18 months, AI is the top-ranked priority along with security, according to 62%³ of UK respondents in each case, followed by hybrid or multi-cloud (58%³) and virtualization (57%³).  

However, 89%⁴ of organisations surveyed report they are not yet driving customer value from their AI investments⁵. 

To overcome these challenges and help turn ambitions to reality, UK organizations are embracing open source across all areas of IT strategy. The survey shows enterprise open source software is considered important⁶ for AI strategy by 84% of respondents, for virtualization by 88%, hybrid and multi-cloud by 86% and security by 83%. 

AI a work in progress

The highest AI priority for respondents (68%³) is agentic AI, AI systems that operate with high degrees of autonomy and can execute complex, multi-step tasks with limited human intervention. After agentic AI, enabling broad employee adoption and operationalising AI are also on the priority to-do list, 68%³ and 65%³ agree respectively. 

Almost all (95%⁴) of respondents experience barriers to AI adoption, especially high costs of implementation and maintenance (34%), data privacy and security concerns (30%), and integration challenges with existing systems (28%). 

Additionally, 83%⁷ of respondents report they are experiencing a “shadow AI” problem - i.e., unauthorised use of AI tools by employees.

Confidence tempered by complexity

Confidence in the UK’s potential on the global AI stage is relatively high, with 83%⁸ of respondents agreeing that the UK is a global AI powerhouse or has the potential to become one within three years⁹. However, this is lower than other nations in Europe, including Spain where the figure is 99%, and Sweden, Germany, and the Netherlands, 98%¹⁰. Respondents cite a lack of talent pipeline (34%), limited public funding (32%) and insufficient private sector engagement (32%) as the main reasons limiting the UK’s rise to AI prominence¹¹.

Cloud remains top three on the IT priority list, with AI adding to the complexity as another workload needing to align to evolving cloud strategies. Barriers to cloud adoption continue: respondents point to internal silos (46% agree³), sovereignty concerns (44%³), decision pauses on infrastructure investment due to market uncertainty (42%³) and unclear ROI (41%³). Drilling down into cloud sovereignty strategy over the next 18 months, UK respondents are prioritising operational control and autonomy (72%³), securing the software supply chain (69%³) and flexibility and choice of IT suppliers (69%³).

Supporting Quotes 

Joanna Hodgson, Country manager, UK, Red Hat:  

“This year’s UK survey results show the gap between ambition and reality. Organizations are investing substantially in AI but currently only a few are delivering customer value. In the journey from experimentation to sustainable production, enterprise knowledge and integration with enterprise systems must pave the road to achieving value from AI. Openness is a force for greater collaboration, sharing best practice and enabling flexibility. As is the case with successful hybrid cloud investments, open source will continue to be the bedrock for making AI more consumable and reusable.”

Hans Roth, Senior Vice President & General Manager EMEA, Red Hat: 

“Organisations want greater operational control and IT resiliency to adapt in a world of constant disruption. The survey results, as well as our daily conversations, show sovereignty prominently on the agenda for enterprise’s ongoing cloud strategies and the budding AI opportunity. Open source is central to this shift as it provides businesses with the transparency and flexibility to innovate rapidly without compromise. Red Hat helps enterprises retain choice about where their data lives, how their infrastructure runs and who they partner with. Sovereignty and resilience comes from ecosystems, not silos, and Red Hat’s mission is to enable any model, any accelerator, and any cloud – with trust at the heart of it all.” 

¹ Methodology: the research, conducted by Censuswide, surveyed 909 IT managers and directors (including infrastructure and cloud infrastructure roles) and AI engineers (including software engineers in AI/ML, NLP and LLM engineers and data scientists) from companies with 500+ employees across EMEA (in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UAE and the UK). Of these, 100 are from the UK.  Censuswide abides by and employs members of the Market Research Society and follows the MRS code of conduct and ESOMAR principles. Censuswide is also a member of the British Polling Council.

² Almost one-fifth of respondents (18%) expect to increase investment by 51–75% while two-fifths expect increases of 21–50% (42%) and 5–20% (38%). 1% plan above 75% increase. No respondents plan no investment increase or sub-5% investment increase. 1% were unsure. 

³ ‘Strongly agree’ and ‘Somewhat agree’ responses combined

⁴ Inverse of those who selected “Phase 5: Driving customer value” when asked ‘What phase is your organization at with AI adoption, if any? Please select the option that most applies.’

⁵ Respondents were asked to select the phase that most applies to their organisation:  

12% of UK respondents are in phase 1 - building awareness of AI

23% of UK respondents are in phase 2 - preparing for AI

38% of UK respondents are in phase 3 - exploring AI use cases

16% of UK respondents are in phase 4 - maximising AI investment

11% of UK respondents are in phase 5 - driving customer value.

When asked about the future, 20% of respondents answered that they hope to be driving customer value in five years time. 

⁶ ‘Very important’ and ‘Somewhat important’ responses combined

⁷ All ‘Yes’ answer options combined

⁸ ‘Yes, my nation is one already’ and ‘Not yet, but my nation has the potential to become one in the next three years’ responses combined

⁹ 43% of respondents believe the UK is already a leading global powerhouse of AI, 40% believe it could become one in three years

¹⁰ Spain had the highest proportion of respondents saying their nation is, or has the potential to become, a global AI powerhouse (99%), followed by Sweden, Germany, and the Netherlands (all 98%). Italy had the lowest portion at 76%

¹¹ Out of subset of respondents who do not think / are not sure if their nation is, or can become, a leading global powerhouse of AI in the next three years