Integrating AI-driven data analytics into enterprise systems presents both opportunities and challenges. As businesses embrace artificial intelligence to drive efficiency and innovation, they face a growing need to balance technological advancements with robust data strategies.

For companies such as Teradata Corp., this focus on scalable AI and reliable data management is vital to maintaining a competitive edge. By leveraging strategic partnerships, Teradata enhances its AI capabilities while ensuring that its data infrastructure supports innovation and operational resilience.

Steve McMillan, chief executive officer of Teradata, talks with theCUBE about the future of Teradata and what customers look for in an AI company.

“Over the last 40 years, but especially in the last four years, we’ve been able to pivot the company to develop a trusted hybrid platform for AI at scale,” Steve McMillan (pictured), chief executive officer at Teradata, told theCUBE during the event. “And we are delivering those solutions right here, right now … leveraging the partnerships we’ve just announced with folks like Nvidia [Corp]. If we can really leverage the AI capabilities and our massively parallel architecture, our core technologies around workload management [and] pre-optimization to really deliver in that AI world, I think it’s going to make a massive difference to the company.”

During Teradata Possible 2024, theCUBE Research’s Rob Strechay and co-host Savannah Peterson spoke with industry leaders who provided insights into Teradata’s expanding ecosystem. Discussions also focused on the company’s recent technological innovations and Trusted AI initiative, which drive its strategy to build scalable AI platforms that enable organizations to access AI’s full potential in their data-driven decision-making processes.

Here are three key insights you may have missed from theCUBE’s coverage of Possible 2024 (* Disclosure below):

1. Teradata’s sustainable hybrid AI platform and open data integration emphasize AI-driven data analytics and operational efficiency.

Teradata Corp. has been steadily transitioning from its legacy systems to a more agile, hybrid AI platform with a strong focus on AI-driven data analytics, emphasizing the importance of sustainability and flexibility in data management. The company leverages its partnerships with cloud giants such as Google and Amazon Web Services to extend its hybrid analytics capabilities and bring AI-driven insights to customers right where their data resides, according to McMillan.

“Our Teradata approach in the past has been: ‘Bring all of your data into our ecosystem,’” he told theCUBE during the event. “But we’ve recognized the fact that data is going to be in many places in the customer ecosystem, and we should move the query engine to the data rather than moving the data to the query engine, which is a very, very different approach.”

Dan Spurling, senior vice president of product management of Teradata, talks with theCUBE about how open table formats and AI integration tie into customer engagement.

A central pillar of Teradata’s strategy is its use of open table formats and AI-driven data analytics to break down silos and enhance data accessibility across the enterprise, according to Dan Spurling, senior vice president of product management at Teradata.” A central pillar of Teradata’s strategy is its use of open table formats and data democratization to break down silos and enhance data accessibility across the enterprise, according to Dan Spurling, senior vice president of product management at Teradata. This approach boosts operational efficiency and supports the seamless integration of AI capabilities into various business processes.

“Do you really need to [build a complex data mesh], or do you need to figure out how to have some type of trusted way to centralize this data and bring the engines or the tools to the data?” he told theCUBE during the event. “We’re seeing open table formats emerge as a natural solution to this challenge of data silos and then giving customers choice … flexibility … and options,” he said.

With AI increasingly driving business decisions, Teradata focuses on making AI integration more straightforward and scalable, according to McMillan. The company’s infrastructure supports hybrid AI, enabling data scientists to run AI models efficiently on central processing units and graphics processing unit infrastructures without compromising performance.

“The real magic of Teradata is [its] massively parallel architecture, and the way that we orchestrate workloads enables us to run complex AI and gen AI workloads just as well on a [central processing unit] infrastructure as they can run on a [graphics processing unit] infrastructure and that’s a massive leap ahead for us,” McMillan said.

Teradata’s innovative approach emphasizes technical capabilities and commitment to trusted, ethical AI practices, McMillan noted. The company’s AI infrastructure aims to reduce energy consumption and optimize performance, positioning Teradata as a sustainable leader in AI technologies.

“If you think about the energy usage predictions for these huge inference engines, you start to get to the point [that] you’ve got to be able to run it efficiently and effectively,” he said.

Here’s the complete video interview with McMillan, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE Research’s coverage of Teradata Possible:

2. Teradata’s focus on AI security, compliance and regulatory challenges aims to safeguard data integrity and adhere to evolving global standards.

Security, compliance and regulation concerns grow as AI becomes more integrated into enterprise operations, which introduces new cybersecurity challenges as malicious actors look for vulnerabilities in AI systems to exploit. Teradata’s focus on AI security highlights the importance of creating robust defenses against these evolving threats, according to Billy Spears, chief information security officer of Teradata.

“Today we have these cloud products, two amazing products customers can choose from,” he told theCUBE during the event. “And inside of that, we’ve built things like threat models. That’s all the behind-the-scenes risks. We think about it so you don’t have to.”

Compliance in the area of AI-driven data analytics is becoming increasingly complex due to the global nature of data transfer and stringent regulatory standards, according to Spears. Companies must navigate frameworks such as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and the International Organization for Standardization to maintain secure operations.

Billy Spears, chief information security officer of Teradata, talks with theCUBE about how companies can navigate the intersection of cloud computing, AI and regulatory compliance.

“It’s complicated, and there are so many regulations, rules, and frameworks … there are so many different sets of controls,” Spears noted. “We’re talking hundreds if not thousands of controls you have to think about. On-prem, you have to manage that all by yourself. In the cloud, we do all that homework for you, which is phenomenal.”

Looking ahead, the Digital Operational Resilience Act is set to raise the bar for financial services, demanding new levels of cloud recovery and data protection capabilities. Teradata is already preparing for these upcoming changes by aligning its solutions to meet these stringent requirements.

“We know exactly where this DORA is, and it is probably the most stringent regulation since we’ve seen [the General Data Protection Regulation],” Spears said. “We’re already ahead of those things. We have all these certifications across all of our product lines now, and we’re still achieving greater heights.”

Here’s the complete interview with Spears, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE Research’s coverage of Teradata Possible:

3. Teradata’s strategic AI partnerships and trusted data drive business outcomes.

Teradata’s recent partnership with Nvidia has expanded its AI capabilities, integrating Nvidia’s AI-accelerated technologies into Teradata’s ClearScape Analytics platform, according to Meeta Vouk, vice president of product management AI and analytics of Teradata. This collaboration aims to provide Teradata’s customers with the tools they need to efficiently manage and deploy AI-driven data analytics workloads, enhancing both speed and scalability in their data analytics efforts.

“We are saying, ‘Bring AI to the data rather than move the data to AI,’” Vouk told theCUBE during the event. “If you’re a data scientist and you want to experience all of the capabilities that ClearScape Analytics offers, you can quickly spin up a node, experiment, or get some results out of AI and then shut it down.”

Teradata’s strategy emphasizes trusted data when deploying AI models, leveraging its partnerships to create seamless, scalable AI solutions, according to Jacqueline Woods, chief marketing officer of Teradata. By focusing on high-quality, curated datasets, Teradata aims to address one of the most critical challenges in AI — the need for accurate, reliable data to drive meaningful insights.

“We are the golden record keeper,” Woods told theCUBE during the event. “One of the things that companies rely upon us for is our capability of having these trusted records, which we call golden records. And to understand that what we do is what people are looking for, particularly in this time of AI.”

Meeta Vouk, vice president of product management AI and analytics of Teradata, talks with theCUBE about a new partnership with Nvidia Corp. and the growing use cases for AI.

Teradata has also partnered with NewtonX Inc. to tackle challenges such as aligning AI initiatives with business strategies. Companies often experience a gap between ambition and execution due to siloed data, according to Leon Mishkis, chief operating officer of NewtonX. Teradata’s trusted data solutions help bridge this gap, ensuring AI delivers tangible outcomes.

“We’ve been partnering with Teradata over the last few years on various research initiatives around brand health, around establishing the right [key performance indicators] for the brand,” Mishkis told theCUBE during the event. “Most recently, we launched a very exciting research in the AI space, specifically around trust in AI of senior executives.”

The impact of these AI innovations is already visible in real-world applications, according to Vouk. For example, a large retailer using Teradata’s AI-driven data analytics capabilities was able to personalize a marketing campaign that reached four million customers, resulting in a 28% increase in sales.

“The use cases are getting so complex, and to solve for them in really meaningful ways, you’re going to need multiple models and multiple capabilities,” Vouk said. “It’s not really AI for AI’s sake or gen AI for gen AI’s sake. It’s really fit-for-purpose AI.”

Here is the complete video interview with Woods and Mishkis, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE Research’s coverage of Teradata Possible:

To watch more of theCUBE’s coverage of the Teradata Possible 2024 event, here’s our complete event video playlist:

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

Photo: SiliconANGLE