When we hear million-dollar AI mistakes, the first thought is: What could it be? Was it a massive investment in the wrong technology? Did a critical AI application go up in flames? Or was it an overhyped solution that failed to deliver on its promises? Spoiler alert: it’s often all of these—and more. From overlooked data science issues to misaligned business goals and poorly defined AI projects, failures are a mix of preventable errors.

Remember Blockbuster? They had multiple chances to embrace advanced technology like streaming but stuck to their old model, ignoring the shifting landscape. The result? Netflix became a giant while Blockbuster faded into history. AI failures follow a similar pattern—when businesses fail to adapt their processes, even the most innovative AI tools turn into liabilities. Gartner reports nearly 80% of AI projects fail, costing millions. How do companies, with all their resources and brainpower manage to bungle something as transformative as AI?

1. Investing Without a Clear Goal

Enterprises often treat artificial intelligence as a must-have accessory rather than a strategic tool. “If our competitors have it, we need it too!” they exclaim, rushing into adoption without asking why. The result? Expensive systems that yield no measurable business outcomes. Without aligning AI’s capabilities—like natural language processing or generative AI solutions—with goals such as boosting customer experience or driving operational efficiency, AI becomes just another line item in the budget.

2. Data Woes

AI is only as smart as the data it’s fed. Yet, many enterprises underestimate the importance of clean, structured, and unbiased data. They plug in inconsistent or incomplete data and expect groundbreaking insights. The result? AI models that churn out unreliable or even harmful outcomes.

Case in Point: A faulty ATS filtered for outdated AngularJS skills, rejecting all applicants, including a manager’s fake CV. The error, unnoticed due to blind reliance on AI, cost the HR team their jobs—a stark reminder that human oversight is critical in AI systems.

3. Underestimating the Human Element

AI might be powerful, but it does not replace human judgment. Whether it’s an AI assistant like Claude AI or OpenAI’s ChatGPT API, Enterprises often overlook the need for human oversight and fail to train employees on how to interact with AI systems. What you get is either blind trust in algorithms or complete resistance from employees, both of which spell trouble.

4. Stuck in Experiment Mode

AI adoption often stagnates when businesses fixate on piloting instead of scaling. Tools like DALL-E or MidJourney may excel in proofs of concept but lack enterprise-wide integration. This leaves companies in an endless cycle of testing AI applications, wasting resources without realizing full-scale business value.

5. Ignoring Change Management

Transitioning to AI technology is as much about organizational culture as it is about deploying AI models. Mismanagement, such as overlooking ethical AI considerations or failing to explain AI’s impact on roles, leads to resistance. Whether it’s a small chatbot AI tool or full-scale AI automation, fostering employee buy-in is critical.

How to Avoid These Pitfalls

Start with Strategy: Define clear objectives for adopting artificial intelligence programs.
Invest in Data: Build a robust data infrastructure. Clean, unbiased, and relevant data is the foundation of any successful AI initiative.
Prioritize Education and Oversight: Train teams to work with AI and establish clear guidelines for human-AI collaboration.
Think Big, but Scale Smart: Start with pilots but plan to expand AI in finance, healthcare, operations or other areas from day one.
Focus on Change Management: Communicate the value of tools like AI robots or AI-driven insights to teams at all levels.

Graph of AI adoption across different countries

Mantra Labs is Your AI Partner for Success

At Mantra Labs, we don’t just offer AI solutions—we provide a comprehensive, end-to-end strategy to help businesses adopt the complex process of AI implementation. While implementing AI can lead to transformative outcomes, it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution. True success lies in aligning the right technology with your unique business needs, and that’s where we excel. Whether you’re leveraging AI in healthcare with tools like poly AI or exploring AI trading platforms, we craft custom solutions tailored to your needs.

By addressing challenges like biased AI algorithms or misaligned AI strategies, we ensure you sidestep costly pitfalls. Our approach not only simplifies AI adoption but transforms it into a competitive advantage. Ready to avoid the million-dollar mistake and unlock AI’s full potential? Let’s make it happen—together.

Why Netflix Broke Itself: Was It Success Rewritten Through Platform Engineering?

By : Sampada

Published on Nov 13, 2024

App development Platform Engineering

Let’s take a trip back in time—2008. Netflix was nothing like the media juggernaut it is today. Back then, they were a DVD-rental-by-mail service trying to go digital. But here’s the kicker: they hit a major pitfall. The internet was booming, and people were binge-watching shows like never before, but Netflix’s infrastructure couldn’t handle the load. Their single, massive system—what techies call a “monolith”—was creaking under pressure. Slow load times and buffering wheels plagued the experience, a nightmare for any platform or app development company trying to scale

That’s when Netflix decided to do something wild—they broke their monolith into smaller pieces. It was microservices, the tech equivalent of turning one giant pizza into bite-sized slices. Instead of one colossal system doing everything from streaming to recommendations, each piece of Netflix’s architecture became a specialist—one service handled streaming, another handled recommendations, another managed user data, and so on.

But microservices alone weren’t enough. What if one slice of pizza burns? Would the rest of the meal be ruined? Netflix wasn’t about to let a burnt crust take down the whole operation. That’s when they introduced the Circuit Breaker Pattern—just like a home electrical circuit that prevents a total blackout when one fuse blows. Their famous Hystrix tool allowed services to fail without taking down the entire platform.

Fast-forward to today: Netflix isn’t just serving you movie marathons, it’s a digital powerhouse, an icon in platform engineering; it’s deploying new code thousands of times per day without breaking a sweat. They handle 208 million subscribers streaming over 1 billion hours of content every week. Trends in Platform engineering transformed Netflix into an application dev platform with self-service capabilities, supporting app developers and fostering a culture of continuous deployment.

Did Netflix bring order to chaos?

Netflix didn’t just solve its own problem. They blazed the trail for a movement: platform engineering. Now, every company wants a piece of that action. What Netflix did was essentially build an internal platform that developers could innovate without dealing with infrastructure headaches, a dream scenario for any application developer or app development company seeking seamless workflows.

And it’s not just for the big players like Netflix anymore. Across industries, companies are using platform engineering to create Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs)—one-stop shops for mobile application developers to create, test, and deploy apps without waiting on traditional IT. According to Gartner, 80% of organizations will adopt platform engineering by 2025 because it makes everything faster and more efficient, a game-changer for any mobile app developer or development software firm.

All anybody has to do is to make sure the tools are actually connected and working together. To make the most of it. That’s where modern trends like self-service platforms and composable architectures come in. You build, you scale, you innovate.achieving what mobile app dev and web-based development needs And all without breaking a sweat.

Is Mantra Labs Redefining Platform Engineering?

We didn’t just learn from Netflix’s playbook; we’re writing our own chapters in platform engineering. One example of this? Our work with one of India’s leading private-sector general insurance companies.

Their existing DevOps system was like Netflix’s old monolith: complex, clunky, and slowing them down. Multiple teams, diverse workflows, and a lack of standardization were crippling their ability to innovate. Worse yet, they were stuck in a ticket-driven approach, which led to reactive fixes rather than proactive growth. Observability gaps meant they were often solving the wrong problems, without any real insight into what was happening under the hood.

That’s where Mantra Labs stepped in. Mantra Labs brought in the pillars of platform engineering:

Standardization: We unified their workflows, creating a single source of truth for teams across the board.

Customization: Our tailored platform engineering approach addressed the unique demands of their various application development teams.

Traceability: With better observability tools, they could now track their workflows, giving them real-time insights into system health and potential bottlenecks—an essential feature for web and app development and agile software development.

We didn’t just slap a band-aid on the problem; we overhauled their entire infrastructure. By centralizing infrastructure management and removing the ticket-driven chaos, we gave them a self-service platform—where teams could deploy new code without waiting in line. The results? Faster workflows, better adoption of tools, and an infrastructure ready for future growth.

But we didn’t stop there. We solved the critical observability gaps—providing real-time data that helped the insurance giant avoid potential pitfalls before they happened. With our approach, they no longer had to “hope” that things would go right. They could see it happening in real-time which is a major advantage in cross-platform mobile application development and cloud-based web hosting.

The Future of Platform Engineering: What’s Next?

As we look forward, platform engineering will continue to drive innovation, enabling companies to build scalable, resilient systems that adapt to future challenges—whether it’s AI-driven automation or self-healing platforms.

If you’re ready to make the leap into platform engineering, Mantra Labs is here to guide you. Whether you’re aiming for smoother workflows, enhanced observability, or scalable infrastructure, we’ve got the tools and expertise to get you there.

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