Midmarket IT’s Pragmatism Shows With AI

‘Can’t say that we’ve had any AI success yet,’ one midmarket IT executive said.

With limited budgets and staff, midmarket IT leaders are used to being pragmatic. They shoulder all the responsibilities of IT executives in any large enterprise including keeping the organization safe from cyber threats, leading business transformation, and now tackling AI strategies.

That pragmatism was evident in the results of the MES Midsize Enterprise Summit End User Survey conducted in collaboration with research firm Gartner. Hundreds of IT leaders at midmarket organizations were surveyed.

For example, a significant number of IT leaders said they were moving to hybrid environments (79 percent), eschewing all-cloud or on-premises infrastructures. Reason cited for the adoption of hybrid were most practical: “cost resilience” and “operational efficiency.”

Midmarket IT leaders aren’t getting swept up into AI hype either. The IT leaders surveyed revealed their current business use of AI as limited and small-scale.

At the MES Fall 2025 Summit, held in San Antonio last week, several midmarket IT leaders shared their thoughts on AI:

“Currently, we’re only using everyday AI. We’re doing ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot,” said Tim Ackerman, director, Polytainers, Inc.

“[But] it will be amazing,” about the potential use of AI in his organization. “In a year or more, we’re implementing SAP. We’re going to enable preventive maintenance and predictive maintenance on our production floor ... that will be a game changer.

But we’re not there yet. Today, we’re just getting the benefits of doing the everyday AI stuff and helping us remember things better, and we’re doing transcription things,” he said.

Daniel Mann, director of IT at Seymour of Sycamore LLC, also discussed his company’s measured approach to AI adoption.

“Can’t say that we’ve had any AI success yet,” Mann said. “We’re trying to implement Salesforce. That’s still the very, very beginning. That’ll be our first product,” he said.

However, Mann said he is preparing for an AI future. “I did hire a developer right out. I just worry about people trusting [AI] a little too much.”

Tai Pham, an IT network and cloud manager with GR Energy Services said his company is “still in the stage of trying to set [AI] up and that security risks were first being assessed.

“My biggest concern is people getting data they shouldn’t be getting.,” Pham said.

IT leaders working in regulated industries are even more cautious

“We haven’t started AI yet, we’re in legal. Right now, I’m using AI just for verification. I don’t want my end users using it for now. Our biggest issue is compliance ... medical records... you can’t have clients’ information out with AI,” said Andrew Beltran, IT director, Potts Law Firm

TC Meggs, senior director of technology at David Zwirner expressed enthusiasm over AI and concerns.

"The most exciting part of AI for us isn’t the hype. It’s the hands-on innovation. We’re using LLMs in our data products to normalize messy datasets and connect sources in ways we couldn’t have imagined before. That lets us build pipelines that simply weren’t possible a year ago,” Meggs said.

But: "What worries me most is how quickly new security gaps are opening up, especially through shadow IT. Everyone is rushing to try new AI tools, and too often those tools are designed to capture and train on the sensitive data employees put into them,” he added.

Vendors would be well-advised to recognize midmarket IT leaders’ common-sense, pragmatic approach to adopting new technology and how well they can sift through hype.