A survey of 400 IT and infrastructure decision makers in the UK and US, commissioned by internet exchange operator DE-CIX, found that 96% of respondents believe their networks are ready for future cloud and AI workloads. The same organisations spend an average of 11.5 hours a week fixing cloud connectivity problems.
The gap between stated confidence and measured reality runs through the rest of the numbers. A third of respondents spend between 11 and 20 hours a week resolving connectivity issues; just under 10% spend between 21 and 40 hours. The survey, conducted by Censuswide across organisations with 100 or more employees in early July, found the burden falling disproportionately on smaller companies: 71% of enterprises with 1,000 or more employees use private cloud connectivity, against 31% of those with 100 to 249 employees. Companies in that smaller bracket are also more likely to be spending the longest hours troubleshooting—nearly one in ten reported 21 to 40 hours a week, compared to one in forty among the largest respondents.
The leading connectivity challenges cited were latency or slow performance between cloud environments (28%), security vulnerabilities and DDoS attacks (27%), and downtime or reliability issues (26%). Data sovereignty and geopolitics ranked fourth at 23%, a category DE-CIX attributes to evolving regulations, geopolitical uncertainty, and growing concerns around digital resilience from multi-cloud workflows.
"Every AI application depends on data moving quickly, securely, and predictably between users, clouds, and AI infrastructure. Our research suggests that far too many enterprises are still spending valuable time trying to maintain that kind of connectivity, with more than a third spending between 11 and 20 hours per week, and just under one in ten spending between 21 to 40 hours per week."
— Ivo Ivanov, CEO, DE-CIX
Governments and businesses are committing serious capital to AI infrastructure regardless of the connectivity picture—the report notes that companies worldwide will invest close to $7 trillion in data centre infrastructure by 2030, with the UK having already invested £60 billion in private-sector AI infrastructure since July 2024. The DE-CIX findings suggest that for a substantial portion of that spending, the returns are being eroded by connectivity friction that private interconnection could address.
Of those surveyed, 61% are already using private connectivity to clouds; a further 31% are actively considering it. According to Ivanov: "If the average IT team is spending 11.5 hours each week resolving connectivity issues, then every hour removed from troubleshooting can be redirected toward higher-value work such as AI enablement, cloud modernization, security hardening, and user experience improvement. And smaller companies are being disproportionately burdened with connectivity challenges."
DE-CIX, which describes itself as the world's largest internet, cloud, and AI exchange operator, conducted the research this month through Censuswide with 200 respondents in each of the UK and US markets.
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