New Research: 7 in 10 IT Leaders are Skipping the Foundation Required for Safe Enterprise AI

Fleet Device Management 'Road to AI in IT' survey reveals that organizations are racing toward AI automation while overlooking infrastructure as code, the operational foundation needed to deploy AI with governance, auditability and control

SAN FRANCISCO, July 23, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Organizations are investing heavily in AI to automate coding processes, but new research released today by Fleet Device Management shows that most are completely missing the foundational element that allows AI to operate safely and make enterprise IT teams more efficient.

According to the Fleet 'Road to AI in IT' report, surveying more than 500 enterprise IT leaders, nearly half (46.5%) rank AI-driven automation as the top investment priority over the next 12-24 months, yet only 29.6% are prioritizing infrastructure as code (IaC), the version-controlled, auditable operating model that enables AI to make changes safely, with human review and rollback capabilities. This means 70% of organizations are trying to buy a finished outcome while missing the baseline requirement.

"While you can turn an AI agent loose, you probably shouldn't. Software engineering didn't embrace AI coding assistants until Git-based workflows provided the necessary guardrails. IT organizations need the same kind of machine-readable, version-controlled infrastructure before AI can safely manage endpoints, automate remediation and perform operational tasks," said Allen Houchins, CIO, Fleet. "Without that foundation, organizations risk chasing AI outcomes without the governance, visibility and controls required to deploy them confidently."

Despite this appetite to invest in AI, just 13% of respondents describe their organizations' endpoint management as "fully autonomous," while 87% still rely on manual or partially automated workflows. The findings suggest that, for most organizations, AI ambitions have outpaced the operational foundations needed to support them.

That gap is reflected in the challenges IT leaders expect to face over the next three years, many of which IaC is designed to address. The Fleet survey found that the top concern is the ability to patch critical vulnerabilities quickly enough to keep pace with attackers. With IaC, fixes can be deployed as reviewed, version-controlled code, moving at the speed of a merge rather than a ticket queue. The next most common concerns were keeping up with growing device complexity, managing disruptive changes that cannot easily be rolled back and falling behind on AI adoption.

These concerns are well founded, as they reflect the operational reality many IT teams are managing today. For instance, 79% of organizations take more than a day to deploy critical security patches, even as attackers increasingly exploit vulnerabilities within hours. Six in 10 organizations still lack complete visibility across their device fleets, and 59% take longer than 24 hours to fully provision a new employee device. More than a quarter take four days or longer, directly impacting employee productivity. Meanwhile, 87% rely on at least three endpoint management tools rather than a single, unified platform, adding complexity to nearly every operational task.

While organizations rapidly deploy AI across the business, IT teams are often expected to govern technology they cannot fully see or control. The average enterprise now runs 14 AI applications, yet IT has visibility into just four of them, and 78% of employees use personal AI tools at work.

The result is a growing shadow AI problem that adds further complication to IT operations, expands the attack surface and creates hidden financial risk. According to IBM's Cost of a Data Breach report, breaches involving shadow AI cost organizations an average of $670,000 more than those without it, increasing the average breach loss from $3.96 million to $4.63 million. The Fleet report argues that organizations cannot effectively govern AI until they first modernize the operational foundations that underpin endpoint management.

"Infrastructure as code turns AI from a chatbot into a force multiplier for IT teams," said Mike McNeil, CEO and co-founder of Fleet. "Because every change is reviewed, version-controlled and reversible, AI can automate routine operations without giving up human control and oversight. In other words, the people who deployed Claude, Codex and other AI tools can now actually use them."

Reinforcing the need for IaC, four out of eight of this year's hottest IPOs have adopted Fleet to embrace this new way of working.

To read the full report, visit http://fleetdm.com/ai.

About Fleet (fleetdm.com):
Fleet is the open device management and vulnerability management platform for Macs, PCs, iPhones, iPads, Android, Chromebooks, desktop Linux, and cloud infrastructure. Organizations in 90 countries use Fleet to manage millions of devices at scale, enhance security, and stay compliant. The company's mission is to bring transparency, efficiency, and control to the world of computing devices through its open and extensible platform. Learn more at fleetdm.com.

For media inquiries, please contact:
Alyssa Pallotti for Fleet
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SOURCE Fleet Device Management