The acceleration of Artificial Intelligence adoption among European enterprises is bringing long-hidden structural weaknesses to the surface. Despite 97% of companies stating that they use AI, the growing complexity of data infrastructures is emerging as the main obstacle to fully realizing the value of these investments. This is highlighted by the State of Data Infrastructure Report 2025 by Hitachi Vantara, which examines the current state of technology through insights from more than 1,200 IT leaders worldwide.

The challenge of infrastructure complexity
In Europe, data volumes and platform fragmentation are growing faster than companies’ ability to manage them. Seventy-seven percent of organizations report a rapid increase in complexity, a condition that exposes businesses to systemic risks.
The fragility of data foundations has a direct impact on security:

• 51% of IT leaders admit that complexity makes it difficult to detect breaches in a timely manner.

• 36% believe that top management would be “alarmed” if it fully understood how fragile the current infrastructure is.

• AI-enabled breaches are identified by 39% of respondents as a primary threat.

Focus on Italy: reputation and governance
The Italian landscape shows distinctive differences compared to the European average. While AI adoption is almost universal (98%), only 32% of companies already consider it business-critical, compared to a European average of 36%.

What concerns Italian companies most is reputational impact: 42% fear a loss of trust from customers or investors following data-related incidents (versus 35% in the EU). This concern is fueled by still-immature governance: only 18% of Italian companies define their AI governance as “industry-leading,” and just 60% report having a clearly defined executive vision.

Infrastructure as an enabler of ROI
The survey results highlight a fundamental principle: the effectiveness of artificial intelligence is not tied to spending capacity or organizational size, but rather to the maturity of the data infrastructure. There is a direct correlation between the strength of technological foundations and the ability to generate real return on investment (ROI).

Specifically, organizations that have reached an advanced stage of development benefit from three key competitive advantages. First, they enjoy greater reliability of algorithm outputs, reducing uncertainty in decision-making processes. Second, they are able to manage growth through automated workload scalability, adapting quickly to demand fluctuations.

Finally, infrastructure maturity translates into higher operational resilience, a critical factor in defending against ransomware attacks. This issue is particularly sensitive in the Italian context, where confidence in the ability to withstand such threats drops sharply to 54%, highlighting a security gap that only a well-structured data foundation can address.

Translation of the article “Data Infrastructure and AI: the European Gap Between Ambition and Complexity”
Source: AdnKronos