FEATURE : DATA MANAGEMENT

Matt Watts , Chief Evangelist at NetApp , tells us how businesses can leverage Artificial Intelligence , unified data storage and robust cybersecurity strategies to transform their operations and gain a competitive edge in today ’ s datadriven landscape .

Below , I outline four ways I predict that organisations will reimagine their data-driven businesses in 2024 and transform their operations .

Models will give way to data in Artificial Intelligence innovation

Over the last year , we ’ ve seen organisations rush to find ways to use generative Artificial Intelligence as it becomes more ubiquitous , with seemingly endless potential uses . Recent developments in large language models and multimodal AI have created new opportunities to process text and images and respond to prompts , allowing them to handle customer service interactions , create human-like avatars and even generate code .

Continuing innovation in areas like AI and analytics has given these businesses new ways to apply their data , but they need to ensure their underlying IT and business infrastructures can process and analyse all that data , no matter where it ’ s stored or when it ’ s needed . Those that can make their data work for them will operate more efficiently and drive business value .

In fact , a study from the Boston Consulting Group shows that 30 % of data-driven businesses are expected to increase revenue by more than 10 % by the end of 2024 compared to only 13 % of laggards .

As organisations start to use AI to help unlock new insights and automate certain parts of their business operations , they may realise their models are a good start , but not as adaptable as they want them to be . AI models by their nature are limited by their preset parameters . Instead , organisations will start to focus on creating steady data pipelines to power AI applications so that they can learn from the latest information and update accordingly . This will enable businesses to use AI to put their data to work and operate with greater agility .

Breaking down data silos

Organisations are going to break down silos between different data types with unified data storage – which combines all of a company ’ s data types across onpremises and cloud environments – to fuel the new era of Artificial Intelligence and analytics innovations .

As companies dig deeper into analytics to generate business insights , they will find that their existing data storage architectures have separate streams for each

38 INTELLIGENTCIO EUROPE www . intelligentcio . com