The emergence of GenAI has introduced a new way of automating and gaining efficiencies for enterprises. However, uncontrolled AI can become a threat as you can start to lose control of what it could be doing for you without proper oversight.
Hitachi Vantara supports data best practices
Part of making GenAI tools a value add instead of a detriment to your business is managing and understanding your data holdings. Hitachi Vantara has a long track record of proven success with data management and now they are using their expertise to help their customers understand the phenomenon that is AI. Many organizations want in on the GenAI revolution, but they don’t always understand how they can integrate it into their enterprise.
“You need to have a controllable environment,” said Greg Bucyk, VP of Partner Strategy, GTM and Strategic Alliances at Hitachi Vantara in an interview with Channel Insider. “What data holding do you want to apply to the AI engines? It’s a learning engine, so the more you educate it, the more it’s going to build off of that.”
Bucyk emphasizes that organizations must understand how to control the data that they want to make available to an AI platform, as well as understanding the impact machine learning has on an organization’s infrastructure. AI is going to create a lot more data and with that, enterprises must account for what happens with this newly created data. Does it supersede the original data? Does it become the new gold copy?
“It’s also the fact that you’re creating more data which means that you’re exposing more opportunities for potential threat of that data usage and that’s where it starts to bleed into the data security concerns,” said Bucyk. From a business perspective, Bucyk adds, data generated from AI needs to be treated in a way that’s secure.
When it comes to managing your organization’s IT infrastructure, Bucyk likes to keep a simple adage in mind: “Haste makes waste.”
It’s not about speed and implementing available tools and resources tomorrow simply because they’re available. You need to have a plan for your organization and understand what you’re trying to accomplish for a project. And, Bucyk stresses, implementation plans must include management and security protocols.
AI and data management insights
Hitachi Vantara is also focused on how to internalize GenAI and use it to improve their customer experience. GenAI, AI tools, and chat bots allow the company to rectify concerns for customers very quickly because it allows them to look at multiple data holdings simultaneously and start to find information faster for the end customer to get a resolution.
“We’re building a scalable system based upon your requirements,” said Bucyk. “But even before you go there, we have approaches to understanding the data. We have assessments around the infrastructure. Can you scale? Is your infrastructure secure? Is there some basic data management that needs to be put in place before you start to throw more chaos into the system?”
Hitachi Vantara champions its rounded and non-singular approach.
The understanding of AI adoption has matured far beyond what it was during the early adopters stage. There is an understanding that there is no golden key and that customers do have to walk, crawl, and then finally run with AI.
To prepare partners within its ecosystem for the AI explosion, Hitachi Vantara is focusing heavily on education and aligning with partners as AI touches upon many different elements. The organization wants to ensure they are providing the end outcome to the customer and “figuring out what is needed for that recipe to make the cake that they want,” Bucyk said.
The future of AI and GenAI
When it comes to AI going forward, one thing that makes it stand out from other emerging technologies is how much more widely it is exposed. Meaning, as Greg Bucyk puts it, when you’re sitting around the Thanksgiving dinner table, conversations around AI may actually come up as opposed to topics like cloud computing, where your relatives still might not fully understand what that means.
“That whole concept of technology in the cloud hasn’t gotten down to the dinner tables and AI has. You go buy a phone today, you see the TV commercials, and it’s just bombarding at every level,” Bucyk said. “Human comprehension is going to get more immersed in AI than it ever has with the cloud. AI is just going to become part of our day-to-day life and it’s going to become something that we all have to learn and embrace to some degree.”
As AI starts to become a language that we all speak, it will put more and more pressure on corporations to determine how to deal with it and what their formal AI policies will cover.
Bucyk says that one of the conversations around AI that needs to be had is about the useful life of data. Having AI persist for eternity may actually start to become a liability versus a value, Bucyk says.
“As we generate more and more data– and machine learning will generate it faster than we have generated in the past– we’re going to need to get our hands on how we’re going to manage this,” Bucyk said. “I think data management is going to become very critical.”
AI doesn’t necessarily help you reduce your data holdings. It can actually get out of control very quickly unless you stay on top of it.
“You have to have that DMAIC approach,” Bucyk said. “You have to define it, you have to measure it, you have to analyze it, you want to improve it, and then, most importantly, you have to have a control factor.”
Bucyk said that organizations will often fail at implementing new solutions if they don’t have control factors, but that’s where data management fits in– it’s part of that control factor.
Additionally, the future of AI will depend on reviewing security protocols when adopting the technology and to maintain security compliance when regulations, like the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), take effect.
Preparing for the future of AI is going to be centered around education, as well as having the right partners to assist in rounding out AI usage and other emerging technologies.
“From our perspective, we want to make sure that we are providing that end outcome to the customer, and we’re the ones that are figuring out what is needed for that recipe to make that cake that they want,” Bucyk said. “It’s our responsibility to bring all those things together.”
Check out how Hitachi Vantara is emphasizing sustainability in the IT channel and helping customers reach their goals.