Too many AIs, too little progress: the sprawl stalling business success (www.techradar.com)

Enterprises are confronting a growing epidemic of "AI sprawl"—the unmanaged proliferation of AI and SaaS tools by individual teams—which initially boosts productivity but quickly fragments IT environments, raises costs and multiplies security, compliance and integration risks. Industry research cited in the piece shows 68% of organizations have experienced AI-related data leaks while only 23% have comprehensive AI security policies; 64% deployed generative AI with critical security flaws (31% only found them post-incident). The average enterprise runs 125 SaaS apps, some managing more than 100 AI tools, driving ballooning SaaS bills, loss of app interoperability, and longer incident response: AI breaches take ~290 days to detect and contain, with average breach costs of $4.9M. The EU AI Act also creates exposure to fines up to €35M. The article urges CIOs, SAM and finance leaders to shift from permissive adoption to coordinated oversight: continuous inventory and consolidation of AI/SaaS, cross-functional governance (security, IT, compliance, finance and business units), regulatory sandboxes and pilots, real-time monitoring, agile policy and regular audits. The practical aim is fewer, better-integrated tools that demonstrate measurable business value while meeting security, transparency and regulatory standards—balancing innovation with risk management to preserve trust, efficiency and long-term ROI.