Most IT leaders want AI to help manage their Macs, but few are ready for it
A new report from Fleet shows that many companies believe they’re nowhere close to using AI on their Mac fleets. 46.5% of IT leaders said AI-driven automation as their top investment priority for the future.
Intelligence analysis by Llama
A new report from Fleet shows that many companies believe they’re nowhere close to using AI on their Mac fleets. 46.5% of IT leaders said AI-driven automation as their top investment priority for the future. However, 78% of employees are already using personal AI tools at work, and IT is only aware of 4 of them.
Imagine you have a lot of tools at work that help you do your job, but you don't know how to use them all. That's kind of like what's happening with AI tools in companies. Most employees are already using AI tools, but the IT team doesn't know how to manage them. This can cause problems like security issues and cost overruns.
Analysis
Shadow AI is Happening Whether IT is Ready or Not
According to the survey results, 46.5% of IT leaders said AI-driven automation as their top investment priority for the future. This is the highest-ranked category in the entire survey, topping vulnerability remediation (42.5%) and device visibility (42.1%).
One of the more shocking results is that 78% of employees are already using personal AI tools at work. Fleet shows separate data showing that the average enterprise runs 14 AI tools internally, while IT is only aware of 4 of them. This gap for IT managers and teams is a visibility problem, while also a cost and security one.
The survey says that one company that burned through its entire 2026 token budget in 4 months after rolling out an AI coding tool to 5,000 of their engineers. IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach report found that breaches caused by shadow AI cost an extra $670K on average compared to a typical breach.
IT teams are expected to handle security, cost management, vulnerability management, and training as well. This is on top of their existing jobs and roles. Nothing is getting taken away. This reminds of me of when IT had to learn enterprise Wi-Fi- during the mobility era and manage it on top of existing roles and responsibilities.
The entire survey is a good read and points out some issues I’ve believed for a few years now. IT has been given the mission to drive AI usage in a healthy, secure, and cost-effective way, but really lacks the tools to do it across their fleets. There’s a lot of work to be done here in terms of device management, network filtering, education, and telemetry.
For me, one of the troubling aspects of this era is that its yet another thing IT has to absorb and figure out without additional headcount.
Key points
- 46.5% of IT leaders said AI-driven automation as their top investment priority for the future.
- 78% of employees are already using personal AI tools at work.
- IT teams are only aware of 4 of the 14 AI tools used internally by the average enterprise.
- Companies are burning through their token budgets after rolling out AI coding tools to employees.
- Breaches caused by shadow AI cost an extra $670K on average compared to a typical breach.
If companies can develop better tools for managing AI, they may be able to reduce the risks associated with shadow AI and make the most of their AI investments. This could lead to increased productivity and efficiency, as well as improved security and cost management.
If companies fail to develop better tools for managing AI, they may be left vulnerable to the risks associated with shadow AI. This could lead to costly data breaches, security issues, and other problems that could have a negative impact on the business.
