Navigating the AI Infrastructure Journey: From Early Exploration to Strategic Adoption

AI is moving from isolated pilots to enterprise-wide initiatives, but infrastructure strategies often lag. Many organizations face compute constraints, fragmented tooling, and unclear deployment or sourcing approaches. As AI workloads grow in scale and complexity, the need for purpose-built, scalable infrastructure aligned with business goals becomes essential.
This report introduces AIMPACT, Everest Group’s framework for structured AI infrastructure planning. It offers a clear lens on how enterprises can profile AI workloads, assess readiness, and make informed decisions on deployment models, sourcing strategies, and stack design. The report also explores the broader shifts influencing how infrastructure is designed, operationalized, and governed in an AI-first world.
This report provides a practical roadmap to move from fragmented pilots to scalable execution. CIOs, infrastructure leaders, AI teams, and service partners can use this report to bring structure to decision-making, align technology investments with business goals, and build infrastructure strategies that are grounded, adaptive, and future-ready.