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Every successful enterprise project begins with a clear business case that secures stakeholder buy-in, unlocks budget, and aligns development resources around measurable outcomes. Yet in today’s AI rush, too many organizations are prioritizing adoption over value, chasing the hype rather than solving real business problems. The result is often a costly illusion of progress: pilots that don’t scale, investments that don’t return, and strategies that never materialize. If this sounds familiar, it’s because it is. From the dot-com boom to the cloud frenzy, enterprises have been here before, caught in cycles of overpromising technologies that deliver more confusion than clarity when strategy is an afterthought.
We spoke with Brian Johnson, a Solution Director at OSI Digital who has spent nearly two decades guiding global enterprises through major technology transformations. From the rise of the cloud to the shift to microservices, he has seen these cycles play out before and argued that the industry's current approach to AI is repeating the same fundamental mistakes. For Johnson, the path forward for enterprise AI requires a disciplined return to first principles.
The Integration Mandate: Johnson advised enterprises should focus on the holistic integration strategy to start, because "without strong integration, AI projects are destined to fail," he said. Johnson's sentiment echoes other experts, who argue that having a holistic data foundation, with proper governance controls from the start, can enable AI initiatives to succeed across an enterprise application landscape. "It's critical to invest heavily in your data governance and access controls so that both humans and agents have proper access leveraging the information the rest of the organization knows."
For Johnson, ignoring this prerequisite doesn't just limit ROI; it introduces profound risk. He sees leaders adopting AI tools and agents on a whim, creating a level of confusion and failed pilots that is reminiscent of the big cloud push over a decade ago.
Agents of Chaos: "It could do more harm than bring value," Johnson warned. Unlike humans, who can be trained to safeguard information, “an agent, so far, is not trained not to share information.” This lack of control creates the risk of exposing sensitive enterprise data, especially as every platform embeds its own siloed AI. Without strong governance, Johnson cautioned, these agents may create more harm than value—introducing chaos that echoes the same unchecked adoption patterns he’s seen throughout past hype cycles.
A Familiar Cycle: Johnson said AI is following the same trajectory as cloud technology did a decade ago. "Everyone wanted to do cloud, whether it was good for them or not. And then look what happened. Now they're coming back to private cloud and hybrid cloud," Johnson said. For AI initiatives to avoid a similar fate, Johnson doubled down on his integration strategy to anchor projects in reality, despite vendors’ tendency to push shiny solutions without real alignment. "All they want to do is put some kind of AI in their solutions without even knowing how it's going to help their product or even the end users, because if they don't, their competitors will."
Johnson explained this problem is amplified by the fact that every major software platform is now embedding its own siloed AI, creating a governance nightmare that mirrors a recent challenge that CIOs will immediately recognize: the chaos of API sprawl. The solution, he argued, is the same.
The API Playbook: In Johnson's experience, the lesson from API sprawl applies directly to AI, enterprises need a framework to manage, integrate, and govern across systems. "When you use the AI capability within any tool, it’s good in that tool, but it’s not going to be good across applications or databases. With the rise of AI agents, similar to the rise of APIs, you need a management framework to govern that sprawl."
Ultimately, Johnson's approach pivots the conversation away from a technology-first mindset to a business-led one. He said this philosophy is already taking root in a new generation of executives who understand how being an enabler versus the initiator provides opportunities to drive more immediate ROI, emphasizing successful initiatives start with business needs and end-user impact.
Business, Not IT, Must Lead: Johnson identified an optimistic trend emerging where instead of IT building and disseminating tools or applications top-down, the requirements are starting to come from business leaders. "It's their need: listen from the business point of view and then determine the best approach to solve their challenge. Not everything has to be automated either, sometimes you can fix the business processes without automating or bringing in technology."
A New School of Leaders: From Johnson's experience, he recognized today's CIOs are equipped with a different skillset and background compared to the executives who owned the role's responsibility fifteen years ago. "Most of the 'old school' CIOs were all coming from a technical background and trying to learn the business. But the new school of CIOs and CTOs are coming from the business background and trying to learn technology, which is a game changer because the tech is easy to learn but business is hard to know."
The charge Johnson provided executives is clear: AI isn't optional, but neither is strategy. The enterprises that win in this new environment will be those that treat integration and governance as their foundation and let their business needs, not the hype, set the pace. "AI is the way to go. You cannot push it away. If you don't do it, someone else will do it," he concluded. "But don't go 100% blind. Look at how much value it is adding to your business or your partners, instead of just trying to build an agentic platform to shine and look good on LinkedIn."
