JAKARTA, Indonesia — Enterprise IT management software provider ManageEngine urged organizations to strengthen their digital infrastructure, cybersecurity and data governance before pursuing autonomous artificial intelligence (AI), saying enterprise readiness — not the latest AI model — will determine whether AI investments succeed.
Speaking at the company’s Southeast Asia UserConf 2026 in Jakarta on July 7-8, Chief Executive Officer Rajesh Ganesan said most organizations remain in the early stages of AI adoption despite the rapid rise of generative and agentic AI technologies.
Ganesan said businesses generally progress from being “AI-curious” to “AI-ready” before eventually becoming “AI-driven,” but warned that only a small number of enterprises have reached the latter stage.
“The AI outcome will not be delivered by the smartest model that you can buy,” he said. “It will be delivered by the readiness of your infrastructure, of your team.”
He said organizations should first assess the reliability of their digital infrastructure, the quality of their data, governance practices, cybersecurity controls and computing capacity before deploying AI-powered systems capable of making autonomous decisions.
According to Ganesan, fragmented data, weak governance and poor operational visibility remain among the biggest obstacles preventing enterprises from moving beyond AI experimentation. He also cited growing power requirements, limited graphics processing unit availability and rising token costs for large language models as practical constraints on large-scale AI deployments.
The company outlined its strategy of helping enterprises build resilient IT environments that can support autonomous AI rather than simply adding AI features to existing systems.
As part of that strategy, ManageEngine recently introduced the ManageEngine Marketplace, a developer ecosystem that allows partners, software vendors and customers to build, publish and deploy extensions and AI agents for the company’s enterprise management platforms. According to the company, the marketplace already hosts more than 170 extensions developed by over 17 partner organizations, with more than 10,000 downloads worldwide.
The marketplace is designed to let organizations customize workflows and integrate third-party applications while maintaining centralized governance and security standards through a validation process, the company said.
ManageEngine also expanded its Zia AI capabilities, enabling customers to create autonomous AI agents that can automate IT management tasks across multiple systems using natural-language prompts. The company said customers may use its proprietary language models or integrate external models while maintaining control over enterprise data.
During a briefing with regional media, Ganesan said the company believes organizations will increasingly rely on smaller, task-specific AI models instead of a single large model for every business function, citing efficiency, governance and operating costs as key considerations.
For the Philippines, ManageEngine sees continued growth as organizations expand digital transformation initiatives while strengthening cybersecurity.
Arun Kumar, the company’s regional vice president for Asia-Pacific, said the Philippines has been growing faster than the regional average over the past several years, driven by the banking, financial services and IT-business process management sectors.
Kumar said the country’s continued demand for on-premises deployments should not be interpreted as resistance to cloud computing.
Instead, he attributed the trend largely to compliance with data protection and data sovereignty regulations, while noting that cloud adoption continues to gain momentum.
“The success in terms of on-premises is predominantly to do with regulations, data protection and data sovereignty compliance,” he said.
He added that the Philippines also presents opportunities as organizations work to improve their cybersecurity posture amid growing cyber threats and expanding hybrid work environments.
According to Kumar, many enterprises continue to rely on fragmented security tools that do not share information effectively, limiting their ability to detect attacks early. He said organizations should integrate infrastructure management, cybersecurity and employee experience instead of treating them as separate functions.
Kumar also said AI should complement — not replace — the cybersecurity workforce. While AI can automate routine operations and improve threat detection, attackers are also using AI to launch increasingly sophisticated attacks, creating greater demand for skilled cybersecurity professionals.
He said organizations should focus first on establishing accurate systems of record, integrated workflows and governance controls before deploying agentic AI, warning that implementing autonomous AI without those foundations could expose businesses to greater operational and security risks.
The executive said ManageEngine plans to continue expanding its presence across Southeast Asia, including increasing its local operations in the Philippines as demand for enterprise IT management and cybersecurity solutions continues to grow.
