Artificial intelligence models trained on proprietary data, also known as private AI, are on the rise.

After migrating part of their data to the cloud, companies are finding that on-premises data centers better serve some of their needs. Cloudera Inc. looks to offer both options — cloud and on-prem — to its customers.

Cloudera’s CEO, Charles Sansbury, talks about the debate between cloud and on-prem.

“Historically, customers get the performance, the return on investment, the safety from a vendor like Cloudera,” said Charles Sansbury (pictured), chief executive officer of Cloudera. “But then the cloud-based providers would give you more convenience, quicker time to value. With what we’ve done in engineering over the past six, nine, 12 months, is we create a situation where they don’t have to choose.”

Sansbury spoke with theCUBE’s Dave Vellante at theCUBE + NYSE Wired: AI Factories – Data Centers of the Future event, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed Cloudera’s hybrid platform and the benefits of on-prem versus cloud.

Large companies seek private AI

While cloud remains a good option for smaller and medium businesses, larger organizations are harnessing their existing data centers to drive AI innovation. Training models on proprietary data enables these companies to make better recommendations to their internal staff and to their customers, Sansbury noted.

“Quality AI is built on having quality data,” he added. “Companies are now thinking about not just access to public training data, but what seems to make the difference in the quality of output from models is also leveraging your private data to fine-tune your model to give you optimal results for your company.”

The Cloudera Data Platform, speeds up a company’s ability to do just that. It also comes with a suite of services, including Cloudera AI and Cloudera Data Flow, that give data practitioners the ability to build and deploy AI-based applications. Cloudera also gives customers the option to be on-prem or in the cloud, with a single user interface that acts as a layer of abstraction over different data environments, according to Sansbury.

“What we’ve been trying to do is give people the tools, capabilities and frameworks to be able to implement those technologies in a way that they view as being safe and within their purview,” he said. “That’s not to minimize the importance of cloud. As we move forward, we’re going to basically have the same form function for our cloud-based private cloud and on-prem data services.”

The shift to private AI is a consequence of companies moving data to the cloud too quickly, a phenomenon Sansbury terms “cloud hangover.” With banks, for example, the ability to use proprietary data to make customized recommendations to clients is particularly appealing. Going forward, Sansbury predicts that Cloudera’s biggest clients will want to build their pipelines in both the cloud and their private data centers.

“What customers are doing is they’re creating these private data stacks,” he explained. “It could be a private cloud, it could be private on-premises, but they’re using that as the environment, even more stringent in security. Some companies are requiring data sovereignty and creating sovereign clouds within a specific geography.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of theCUBE + NYSE Wired: AI Factories – Data Centers of the Future event:

Photo: SiliconANGLE