As artificial intelligence evolves toward autonomy, enterprises face a new mandate: agentic AI readiness. Without it, deploying and governing advanced systems becomes a high-stakes gamble with limited upside.

To help enterprises bridge the agentic AI gap, QlikTech International AB and International Data Corp. have partnered to focus on critical areas, such as AI literacy. AI literacy empowers organizations with the knowledge and skills necessary to understand, manage and ethically engage with autonomous AI systems, according to James Fisher (pictured, right), chief strategy officer at Qlik.

IDC’s Ritu Jyoti and Qlik’s James Fisher talk with theCUBE about the important role of agentic AI readiness.

“It’s really a shifting framework,” he said. “Data literacy is the thing that’s held us back in the [business intelligence] world for 20 years, and now, AI literacy I think will have the same impact if we don’t address that, as well. Our job is to continue to be part of that ecosystem, to continue to work with partners like IDC as we understand what’s happening in the market and put ourselves in the right place to help customers get where they need to get to.”

Fisher and Ritu Jyoti (left), general manager and group vice president for AI, automation, data and analytics at International Data Corp, spoke with theCUBE’s John Furrier and Bob Laliberte at Qlik Connect, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed how Qlik and IDC have laid the groundwork for agentic AI readiness. (* Disclosure below.)

Real-time data powers agentic AI readiness

Real-time data is critical to agentic AI readiness because it empowers AI systems to operate autonomously, adapt to changing conditions and make timely, effective decisions in dynamic environments. Agentic AI is built to function with minimal human intervention, making access to up-to-date data essential for optimal performance, according to Jyoti.

“When we are headed into agentic AI, very few people are thinking about it that it will all be about real-time [and] event-driven,” she said. “Technically, AI is not going to work in silos. For certain use cases, they’re going to make use of gen AI. Some may be predictive AI, some may be agentic AI, and we are going to crawl, walk and run in the agentic AI maturity.” 

Agentic AI readiness demands a solid foundation in data intelligence and data integration. These capabilities enable agentic AI to perform goal-driven tasks, make autonomous decisions and engage in continuous learning safely and effectively, according to Jyoti.

“[Qlik is] not just doing the data readiness, data intelligence and data integration, but they also have a very, very powerful suite in the analytics market, and both the markets are going to be impacted by the agentic transformation,” Jyoti said. “With gen AI, it amplifies human productivity. Suppose an analyst was able to extract insights from five different sources and plug them together, gen AI could make them faster, but agentic AI is going to take it to the next level.”

Data and AI literacy are essential foundations for harnessing the benefits and minimizing the risks of agentic AI. These capabilities enable participants to ask informed questions, interpret AI outputs accurately and make smarter strategic and operational decisions, according to Fisher. 

“I think we’ve seen so many experiments with AI that now people are really focused on measuring a return, and they’re trying to do that by embedding AI and agenting into the existing business process rather than trying to do it on an island,” he said. “The notion for me is this idea of data for AI. What infrastructure do you need to get data ready to support AI use cases, but then how do you use AI to support data? The idea of preparing data, driving access to data, lowering data literacy, driving AI literacy, all … factor into that.” 

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Qlik Connect:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Qlik Connect. Neither QlikTech International AB, the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE