The majority of AI projects fail– largely because of data quality issues. With AI rapidly becoming the key competitive advantage for businesses, data quality, data products and data security are essential for AI success.
This is according to speakers at an Executive Forum hosted by Quest Software in partnership with ITWeb in Sandton earlier this month. The topic was "Elevating IT performance and resilience in the AI era: Turning data into resilient advantage".
Quest Software, a software solutions developer of 40 years’ standing, has recently rebranded and refocused its operations to specialise in solutions that build the foundation for enterprise AI.
Heba Zaki, regional sales director for CEEMEA at Quest Software, said Quest Software focuses on data management and governance, cybersecurity, and platform modernisation solutions to address the most pressing challenges organisations face in taking full advantage of AI. The company also recently announced a $350 million investment in accelerating its AI innovation and growth initiatives.
Zaki said AI was transforming the world at an unprecedented rate, with companies that successfully embrace AI achieving significant performance improvements and cost savings.
“Companies are at an inflection point that will determine their competitive position for the next decade,” she said. “The question for enterprises is - is your data ready for the AI era?”
She cited studies that found many AI projects were not delivering as expected. “Up to 99% of companies face data quality issues, and up to 86% have AI-related security concerns and incidents,” she said.
Quest Software notes that AI is driving the need for a dramatically new approach to data management.
Lessons learned
Geoff Hodgkinson, presales consultant at Quest Software, outlined learnings from Quest Software customers who had successful AI initiatives.
“Firstly, enterprises must identify and prioritise their business use cases for AI,” he said. “They should also focus on data products - reusable, packaged data solutions - to support the business use cases.”
He highlighted E.ON, a renewable energy supplier, which powers data readiness, metadata management, data governance and data modeling with erwin by Quest.
“In five years, E.ON identified two million euros in business impact by working with Quest,” Hodgkinson said. This included a 30% saving on data management and a 50% reduction in time spent on data discovery.
Trusted data with the erwin Data Management Platform
Hodgkinson said: “Trusted data is core to AI success, and the Quest erwin Data Management Platform is built to enable this. As a platform for trusted AI-ready data at scale and speed, it might be described as a ‘catalog of catalogs’ that overcomes siloed data functions and data fragmentation to enable significantly greater trust in data and a 54% faster time to data product delivery.”
The erwin Data Management Platform integrates data modeling, governance, quality, observability and marketplace, as well as data cataloguing and business glossary. The platform unites modeling and intelligence in one system, simplifying governance and automating tasks to slash the time taken to deliver AI-ready data products.
Trusted data is core to AI success, and the Quest erwin Data Management Platform is built to enable this.
Geoff Hodgkinson, Quest Software
“The data product is packed with the five components integrated, to deliver raw data into a strategic, reusable, business-aligned resource for cross-organisation collaboration,” he said. “It includes dynamic trust scores and real-time management across nine categories. AI features are being added to the platform - for example, to make onboarding and classification of data sources up to 20 times faster.”
The erwin Data Modeler, integrated with erwin Data Intelligence, allows organisations to integrate data from various sources while standardising definitions and formats, and connects models to governed metadata and business context.
Hodgkinson announced that the latest erwin Data Modeler is set for release this month.
Juan Fourie, regional enterprise sales manager at Quest Software, invited prospective customers and partners to engage with the company to build a foundation for their AI journey. “Our customers, partners and distributors are the heart of Quest, and we invest the time and money to bring top technology to market and add value to it,” he said.
Share