Recent advances in artificial intelligence have opened up a whole new world of data usage for enterprise developers.

The ability of AI to channel massive amounts of data and apply models that will perform near-instant analysis has created a new dynamic where programmers become active participants in how data is used.

“Up until now, data was the domain of groups that managed data,” said Brian Gracely (pictured, right), head of marketing at Solo.io. “As a developer, you said: ‘I’m kind of hands-off from it. I just go and access it.’ Now, AI has put that power back in everyone’s hands. The data is still its own domain, but the ability to give people self-service or more access to it themselves becomes more interesting.”

Gracely spoke with theCUBE industry analyst John Furrier (second from left) at the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe event, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. He was joined by Louis Ryan (second from right), chief technology officer of Solo.io, and Saad Malik (left), co-founder and chief technology officer of Spectro Cloud Inc., and they discussed how AI will impact the use of enterprise data and distill signals for network security. (* Disclosure below.)

Opening unstructured data

In addition to broader data access through self-service tools, advances in AI have impacted the potential value of unstructured data as well. Larger amounts of information can be pulled into platforms and rapidly synthesized into meaningful insights.

“Data used to be a lot more structured,” Malik said. “Now with AI technologies we’re able to look at any unstructured data and make meaningful revelations out of it. It’s become much more useful in going back in time and reading all of the data into your platforms now.”

Technologists foresee a concurrent impact on security techniques as AI becomes more widely dispersed within the enterprise. In the future, the focus will be on high-value areas, according to Ryan.

“You’ll see a large focus on pulling in all these diverse signals and producing assessments about security,”  he said. “There are aggregate signals in there about what is actually going on within your infrastructure, your network traffic, the traffic you have with partners. Anything that helps you synthesize from all those signals quickly and respond to them quickly is going to be immensely valuable.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe event:

(* Disclosure: This is an unsponsored editorial segment. However, theCUBE is a paid media partner for KubeCon + CloudNativeCon. Neither Red Hat Inc. nor other sponsors of theCUBE’s event coverage have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE