Businesses in every industry are being transformed by artificial intelligence (AI). Interest in AI is growing, and companies need to decide whether to build in-house AI solutions or use AI managed services. Both sides have good arguments. In this article, we look at the main things to think about to choose the ideal method for you.
Overview of AI Managed Services
AI-managed services give you access to AI tools, platforms, and experts without you having to build an in-house team. On-demand AI managed services are offered by leading technology vendors to help companies accelerate the adoption of AI.
Benefits typically include:
- Faster Time-to-Value: With managed services, you can use pre-built AI solutions rather than building them from scratch. It helps you provide value very quickly.
- Reduced Costs: Economies of scale are generated by shared infrastructure and resources between customers. Instead, they are paid on a subscription basis rather than large upfront investments.
- Flexibility: There are many services that offer access to AI using cloud-based APIs. It allows you to begin small and scale up effortlessly when you need to.
- Expertise On-Demand: Consulting and implementation services are provided by vendors to make sure you use AI successfully and avoid pitfalls.
Key Pros of AI Managed Services
1. Faster Implementation
Building custom AI solutions comes with long development cycles and large data preparation. Pre-built solutions through managed services can help you get around the process. For instance, you don’t have to build a custom natural language processing model; instead, you can use a preexisting question-answering service or employ custom chatbot development services to get instant human-like interactions.
The fastest results come through integrating SaaS applications with embedded AI capabilities. Integration is much simpler compared to building your own machine-learning models and prediction services. This accelerated time-to-value gets you tangible benefits quicker.
2. Lower Risk
In-house AI projects carry substantial risk due to unreliable results and uncertainty in forecasting costs and timelines. Over 80% of model development time is spent on data preparation/feature engineering. It’s challenging to estimate these efforts upfront. Failed or stalled projects waste budget and erode confidence in AI.
In contrast, managed services allow you to bypass many of these uncertainties. The service provider handles data management, model building, deployment, and ongoing enhancement. They provide SLAs on availability and prediction quality. This transfers much of the technology risk away from your team.
3. Enhanced Agility
AI capabilities are scaling, but their quality also needs to scale, so there’s a lot of resource management and process rigor that’s required. It includes data collection pipelines, model retraining schedules, accuracy benchmarking, and deployment orchestration. It is hard to adapt models quickly due to this overhead.
These complex processes are managed services behind the scenes. That allows your team to be more agile in reassigning AI capabilities. Rather than rebuilding models, you simply call different API endpoints provided by the service. New features and algorithmic innovations are automatically rolled out to customers through regular service upgrades.
4. Augmented Internal Capacity
Even large enterprises struggle to acquire enough AI talent. Service providers maintain large data science teams with specialized expertise in statistics, machine learning, and deep learning. These collective capabilities far exceed the abilities of most company’s internal teams.
Through managed services, you expand your team’s competencies overnight. Consultants help apply institutional knowledge to avoid pitfalls. By complementing internal efforts with external skills, you amplify results beyond your organization’s constraints.
Key Cons of AI Managed Services
1. Limited Competitive Differentiation
Widespread access to managed services limits your ability to achieve meaningful competitive differentiation. Since rivals can leverage the same off-the-shelf solutions, AI becomes table stakes rather than a true strategic advantage. Commoditization effects pressure companies to shift from AI-driven differentiation to execution-based differentiation. This requires looking beyond technology to processes, talent, and business models.
2. Data & Model Ownership
Most managed service providers retain control and ownership over the underlying data and models. While understandable from an IP protection standpoint, this introduces issues around privacy, security, and vendor lock-in. You must safeguard sensitive data stored and processed outside enterprise walls. It also creates migration barriers – switching providers means starting model development from scratch.
3. Limited Customizability
Pre-built solutions deliver faster time-to-value but constrain flexibility. Though many services allow for some customization, you lose fine-grained control compared to internal solutions. Access to underlying data and models is restricted, which limits advanced experimentation. Any enhancements must go through the service provider rather than be tweaked directly by your team.
Key Pros of In-House AI Solutions
1. Competitive Differentiation
Building custom AI solutions internally allows you to tailor the capabilities to your unique needs. Because in-house solutions are not shared across competitors, they provide a way to distinguish your business. The solutions can incorporate proprietary data and embed deep domain expertise that is hard for competitors to replicate. Over time, these AI capabilities can become a source of sustained competitive advantage.
2. Complete Control
Owning end-to-end development of AI solutions gives you full control over data, models, and platforms. You can fine-tune solutions for your exact use case versus relying on generic off-the-shelf offerings. Complete visibility into the underlying components also facilitates advanced experimentation, customization, and optimization by your team. Rather than being a “black box”, internal solutions provide the flexibility to refine behavior continuously.
3. Future-Proof Investments
Internal AI skills and data infrastructure create reusable assets over time. In contrast to managed services with recurring subscription fees, investing in internal capabilities builds assets that have a lower long-term cost of ownership. The platforms, knowledge and skills accumulate within the organization to inform future projects and products. This makes your capabilities harder to replicate.
Key Cons of In-House AI Solutions
1. Talent Shortages
Building an AI practice requires specialized skills like data engineering, machine learning operations (MLOps), and model governance. In the midst of a global AI talent crunch, hiring these capabilities can be extremely difficult. Many organizations end up with incomplete teams and fragmented skill sets that slow progress. Even large tech giants routinely cite AI talent as their #1 constraint today.
2. High Fixed Costs
In-house solutions require upfront investments in data infrastructure, model development tooling, AI accelerators, and technical talent. These fixed costs create a high price of entry that places AI out of reach for many companies. Efforts are also highly vulnerable to churn – if key team members leave, they take knowledge with them. Lack of scale makes it hard to cost-justify the large investments required.
3. Long Lead Times
Developing solutions in-house involves a lengthy process of data collection, model development, testing, and deployment. Teams need to climb the learning curve across AI best practices around data labeling, feature engineering, model evaluation, interpretability, and MLOps. It typically takes 6+ months before machine learning models can be productionized. Ensuring robust, reliable performance involves many iterations and delays.
Key Factors When Deciding Between AI Managed Services vs. In-House Solutions
With compelling arguments on both sides, how do you determine what approach is right for your business? Here are some key factors to consider:
- User Sophistication – In-house solutions provide more customization for complex use cases but require sophisticated data science teams. Simpler managed services may better serve business users with limited analytics maturity.
- Data Sensitivity – If your data includes regulated content like personal health information (PHI) or other privacy restrictions, managed services may not meet compliance needs.
- Solution Maturity – Emerging AI applications with lots of uncertainty may benefit more from internal experimentation versus off-the-shelf managed services.
- Strategic Importance – AI solutions that are critical to long-term competitive differentiation warrant in-house investments with tighter control.
- Cost – Calculate total cost of ownership (TCO) over a 5-year horizon to accurately compare upfront versus ongoing costs.
- Time-to-Value – If you need to demonstrate business value in less than 6 months, managed services may be the only way to meet aggressive timelines.
Hybrid Approach
Rather than treating AI managed services and in-house solutions as an “either/or” decision, many organizations pursue a hybrid approach that combines both. You can tap managed services to address interim or tactical needs while building custom internal capabilities for long-term differentiation. The external services act as accelerants, while internal teams focus on high-value initiatives. This balanced approach allows you to optimize for agility, innovation, and scale.
Key Takeaways
AI managed services provide faster time-to-value and lower costs but less customization and control compared to in-house solutions. They are best for interim needs or simpler use cases.
In-house AI solutions enable competitive differentiation and full customization but require more talent, data infrastructure, and longer timelines. They suit complex needs and long-term strategy.
Evaluate key factors like user sophistication, data privacy needs, solution maturity, strategic importance, cost, and time-to-value when deciding between approaches.
A hybrid approach combines managed services for agility and internal teams for innovation and control. This balanced approach helps optimize investments.
The needs and constraints of every business are different. As the AI landscape continues advancing rapidly, being able to iterate across service providers, partners, tools, and internal options will help you adapt most effectively. Use the framework outlined here to determine the right AI sourcing strategy for your organization.
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