500-265 learn - Cisco Advanced Security Architecture System Engineer (ASASE) Updated: 2024

Cisco on Monday confirmed three new architecture-based specializations in the categories of Borderless Networks, Collaboration and Data Center. The changes to the program primarily affect Cisco Gold and Silver level partners, who starting in August 2012 have new certification requirements with those architecture specializations for maintaining their status.

Under the current partner program, Cisco Gold partners need four technology-based specializations, in categories such as security, wireless LAN, routing and switching, or unified communications. Silver partners need two, and Premier partners already get Cisco's Express Foundation Specialization.

Under the new program, Cisco Gold partners will need to attain all three new architecture specializations, and Cisco Silver partners will need a minimum of one architecture specialization, to couple with a technology specialization. Cisco Premier partners can choose to have an architecture specialization or keep the Cisco Express Foundation Specialization to maintain their status with Cisco.

It won't all happen immediately, stressed Ricardo Moreno, senior director of strategy, planning and programs at Cisco, in an interview with CRN. Existing Cisco partners will have between 16 to 28 months to certify on the architecture specializations, which don't become mandatory for partners until the date of their Cisco partnership anniversary beginning August 2012 through July 2013.

According to Cisco, getting certified under the architectures will also be a little cheaper and less time-intensive than many partners are used to.

For a new Cisco Gold Certification, the cost of attaining certification is $50,000 less than the cost of the technology-based certifications under the current program, Cisco argues, because it'll require less lab time than in the past and also rely on more online training.

"That's based on partner feedback," Moreno said. "We removed a lot of the training that was not as relevant for certain requirmements."

Total training hours, according to Moreno, have also been reduced by 25 percent. What's more, Cisco will also offer $5,000 in Cisco Learning Credits to each of the first 500 partners to complete the recertification process.

"We don't do evolutions of this magnitude very often," Moreno said. "It's been about a year since we started talking about it and since then we've been working with partners so we can evolve towards it. Partners do that a lot: they see the market, follow the transitions and help drive it. A number of partners already play at the architectural level."

The certification application period begins in August 2011. It's not that partners' technology certifications will become null and void, Moreno explained; partners should connect with their Cisco representatives to learn how their existing statuses and levels of training will be credited toward their new certifications. But Cisco Gold and Silver Partners won't be able to badge themselves as such if they don't re-certify by the deadlines.

The level of investment needed to re-certify will depend on partner levels and the partner's current standing with Cisco, he added.

"It's about giving partners options," Moreno said. "They can go deep, or they can go broad."

In addition to the new, architecture-based certifications, Cisco has also updated its Learning Partner Program, whose members train partners, engineers and networking experts on Cisco curriculum around the world.

Specifically, Cisco Learning Partners will now use the program in one of two tracks, Learning Partner Associate and Learning Partner Specialized. The former is focused on core technology training and preparing end-users for certification, and the latter is for providing training to map users into the new Cisco Architecture Specializations.

Cisco's Learning Partners now number 450 in 130 countries.

Cisco announced it is expanding its learning portfolio with new business architecture training and certifications designed to accelerate the pace of business transformation, innovation and growth. Providing professionals with the latest skills, tools and best practices enables them to build and strengthen the bridge between technology solutions and business needs. These new offerings mark the second accurate addition to Cisco’s business transformation-focused learning portfolio.

“The relationship between customer and vendor is being significantly disrupted by digital transformation, with the long-term result being a closer relationship, spanning more than the deal,” said Shadi Salama, Channel Leader – East Region, Cisco Middle East. “As the industry transforms and companies try to evolve their businesses, new talent gaps are forming. Our new Business Architecture training and certification offerings target the business skills that go hand in hand in conjunction with the technology skills to address the growing talent needs brought forth by business transformation.”

According to a accurate analyst report, only about 15 percent of organizations feel they have the right talent in place for digital transformation. Cisco is addressing this skill gap by expanding its training, certification and enablement programs. Three new specialist certifications and related training courses have been designed to progressively build and validate expertise in business architecture:

• Cisco Business Architecture Analyst Certification
  • Equips professionals with a general awareness of business architecture principles and provides a methodology for uncovering a company’s business goals. These desired outcomes could then be bridged to the technology solutions required to achieve them, thus building credibility and rapport with customers or key internal stakeholders.

• Cisco Business Architecture Specialist Certification
  • Builds on the foundational skills and knowledge assessed at the Analyst level with a focus on change management and the creation of a customized transformation roadmap.

• Cisco Business Architecture Practitioner Certification
  • Expands upon the Specialist level by validating a candidate’s mastery in leveraging tools, methodologies and best practices to bridge IT solutions with the organization’s business goals. Participants will be assessed for their ability to create and map the customer engagement journey to deliver tangible business outcomes and value.

Training courses supporting each of these certifications, respectively, include:

• Adopting the Cisco Business Architecture Approach
• Applying Cisco Business Architecture Techniques
• Mastering the Cisco Business Architecture Discipline

These new offerings broaden Cisco’s Business Transformation portfolio initiatives, launched in April 2017, with the introduction of the Customer Success Manager certification. Cisco continues to develop a pipeline of additional training and certifications that will further advance skills in this area.

Tejas Vashi, senior director, product strategy and marketing, Cisco Services: “As Cisco helps customers transform their businesses, we’re leveraging our expertise and leadership to address both technology and talent concerns across the industry. Understanding business architecture is key as business transformation continues, because successful organizations will increasingly rely on professionals who can foster flexibility and cross-functional collaboration to deliver optimal business outcomes.”

You don’t so much interview John Chambers as intercept him. When CRN grabbed its 30 minutes with Cisco’s chairman and CEO early this month, he was fresh from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and finishing up partner, customer and analyst visits in the United Kingdom. On the dance card for the day were an interview with ’60 Minutes’ and who knows what else. This is not an executive easily scheduled.

But tucked into his cozy but unremarkable office in Building 10 of Cisco’s sprawling San Jose, Calif., headquarters -- TelePresence, yes, window, no -- Chambers is happy to expound. Having just entered his 16th year as Cisco’s top executive, he’s as affably intense as ever, anticipating questions and subquestions and follow-up questions: a mind percolating before your eyes even as, in conversation, he politely waits for you to finish your thought.

’At the 10,000-foot level, what’s most exciting is that many of the market transitions we anticipated happening are happening,’ Chambers told CRN. ’The network is becoming the platform not just for all forms of communications and IT, but it’s going to enable a different generation of productivity around collaboration, it’s going to change the data center, it’s going to change health care, it’s going to be at the center of everything from security to video. The exciting thing about Cisco and its partners is we’re going to play there together. We are better together.’

The Cisco of 2011 is no longer just the king of networking vendors. The two-year-old Unified Computing System -- its major server and data center play -- ensured that, with Chambers noting ’there hasn’t been a new hardware player in the data center for decades, and contrary to all the prognostications, we are breaking away there.’

Cisco’s next big gambit will be getting its partners to fully embrace the cloud. To help them get at that opportunity, executives at next week’s Partner Summit in New Orleans will roll out cloud partner programs that provide VARs multiple avenues into the cloud, from building clouds to operating clouds to reselling clouds.

The rollout could be huge not only for Cisco partners but for the channel as a whole, since Cisco is widely viewed as the leader in delivering innovative channel programs that bring partners big profits in tough-to-tackle markets.

The cloud initiative is at the heart of Chambers’ vision, which is far beyond that of a networking and infrastructure vendor with a nifty server play. These days Chambers is asking solution providers to invest heavily in his vision of network architectures: the idea that the network is the center of platforms and frameworks for all forms of communications products and services, as opposed to just siloed, product vs. product sales.

The architecture play, as Cisco sees it, is all-encompassing, with the cloud as the next frontier. It extends from network core to network edge -- data center to mobile device -- and serves as an organizing principle for everything from switches and routers to video, servers, wireless access points and security.

Cisco can, and does, do them all. And what Chambers is asking partners to do isn’t to be everything to everyone and attempt to sell everything but, in essence, see the architectural forest for the product trees and map the way they sell Cisco to that strategy.

’If you’re selling a single, stand-alone product, you’re ignoring perhaps the strongest thing Cisco does, which is an architectural approach, which protects their investments, allows them to move into new markets relatively seamlessly,’ Chambers said.

’Many of our partners will say what level of differentiation they want to add. So there’s room for just making the architectural stack work well together. There’s room for saying, ’We need to go sell that in a given geography or industry vertical.’ And that’s much better than their counterparts that are selling stand-alone unified communications, stand-alone security, stand-alone wireless, stand-alone routers and switches -- which, by the way, were designed to work together,’ he said.

NEXT: Market Transitions Don’t Wait

Market Transitions Don’t Wait

Five years down the line, Chambers said, IT and business processes will be so entwined they’ll be practically one and the same. It’s Cisco’s architecture vision that will best accommodate that trend, he said.

’In people’s minds that might have been a stretch three to five years ago, but when I talk to the top 5 percent of CEOs in the world, they not only get it, but when you sit and listen to them, you can’t tell what’s IT and what is their business,’ Chambers said. ’It’s starting to occur and plays extremely well for Cisco and our partners.’

The architecture strategy is part of what takes Cisco beyond its legacy as a network plumber and pushes it into the upper echelons of tier-one IT vendors: a long-haul competitor to the Hewlett-Packards and IBMs of the world.

It’s also driving Cisco’s ambition to be the ruling technology power in 30 or more ’adjacencies’ -- Chambers’ preferred term for market and product segments such as health care, smart grid and video, where he believes Cisco can be the No. 1 player, and where challenges are solved in the network.

’Have we spread ourselves a little bit thin? I’ve always spread us thin at Cisco,’ Chambers said. ’The key is market transitions wait for no one. This verticalization, whether it’s good or bad, is happening. And unlike our peers that we’re competing against, we share the majority of our direction with our partners, including even the services level where I would expect our partners to generate five, 10 times the services revenue we do, even though we’re all needing to move to a services-led sell and services-led implementation.’

NEXT: The Financial Picture

The Financial Picture

Cisco skeptics say the company’s expansion hasn’t solved the increasingly competitive pressure on its core businesses. In its most accurate earnings announcement, for the second quarter of its fiscal 2011, Cisco’s profit declined 18 percent year over year, switching revenue was down 7 percent year-over-year (11 percent sequentially), and routing was up 4 percent (down 7 percent sequentially) -- less-than-encouraging numbers for product categories that together still make up about 46 percent of Cisco’s overall revenue.

On the second-quarter earnings call, which took place after CRN’s interview, Chambers said Cisco was going through ’a period of transition’ that was happening faster than Cisco anticipated, and that newer and future Cisco products would compete far better at the level of price performance. Cisco has no intention of competing with vendors on price itself, he said. And beyond the routing and switching declines, the story of Cisco’s newer products -- notably data center virtualization, up 59 percent year over year, and collaboration, up 37 percent -- was definitely a bright one. But along with softness in its consumer business and concerns for public sector, the numbers served to amplify a third straight quarter of disappointing results. Cisco’s gross margins also tightened to 60 percent, from 65 percent a year earlier.

’Cisco believes its 2011 fiscal year revenue will grow somewhere in the 9 percent to 10 percent range, which raises the question as to whether the company’s growth prospects are as bright as they were a few quarters ago,’ Scott Dennehy, engagement manager/senior analyst at Technology Business Research, wrote in a accurate research note. ’While TBR believes Cisco’s overall strategy is solid, the company may simply be too large and dispersed to achieve growth rates comparable to smaller and more-focused competitors.’

When it comes to its key networking competitors, many are looking to exploit Cisco’s aggression as hubris. HP, for example, has been relentless in touting HP Networking wins vs. Cisco and in December launched a trade-in program through which VARs can save 20 percent on HP Networking gear if they trade in certain Cisco Nexus or Catalyst switches.

Many of Cisco’s other competitors, from Juniper Networks and Brocade on the data side to the marquee names in wireless, videoconferencing and WAN optimization, have also stayed on the attack against Cisco, painting Cisco’s end-to-end architectural vision as too expensive, too closed, too proprietary.

Some analysts have taken up that mantle as well. A much-circulated November 2010 report by Gartner took specific aim at Cisco and the idea of single-vendor dominance in networking and infrastructure.

’After interviewing various organizations that have introduced a second vendor into their Cisco infrastructures, it is clear that in most cases today there is no financial, operational or functional basis for this argument,’ wrote analysts Mark Fabbi and Debra Curtis. ’The reality is that a single-vendor Cisco network isn’t necessarily less complex, easier to manage or more reliable than a network with multiple vendors when implemented with best practices.’

But in the interview with CRN, Chambers insisted that Cisco’s architecture approach -- its flexibility and its variability -- will be what preserves partners for the long haul. More importantly, partners who want to survive have no choice but to adapt, especially with market transitions happening so quickly, he said.

NEXT: Will Partners Follow?

Will Partners Follow?

For the most part, Cisco’s top partners are willing to go down the architectural path.

Long View Systems, Calgary, a Cisco Gold partner, has invested heavily in Cisco’s data center and virtualization side and its collaboration and video side, and expects to see its Cisco business grow significantly in those areas this year. ’It’s been a mutual investment. They’ve been driving advanced selling through their internal organization and also through our sales team,’ said Kent MacDonald, vice president of business development.

Long View, for example, recently folded its UC, video, TelePresence, Show and Share Webcasting and Cisco Quad collaboration platform businesses into a new practice it’s calling Collaboration. It’s also taken advantage of training opportunities Cisco offers via consultants and Cisco learning partners like Atlanta-based Firefly, MacDonald said.

There will be continued pressure from competitive vendors on Cisco’s core product lines, MacDonald said (Long View’s HP practice, notably, is also growing). But Cisco has proven its worth to partners behind the portfolio play.

’It’s a drive to that architectural sale vs. a siloed technology play,’ he said. ’Cisco’s tack is to change the game and make it a data center play vs. a price-per-port comparison. The ecosystem [around Cisco] is very active.’

Troubadour Ltd., a Houston-based Cisco partner, also has invested heavily in Cisco’s data center vision, and the solution provider added EMC and NetApp to its line card in the past year to take advantage of UCS-led data center deployments with each. Troubador’s services business with Cisco is also expected to double this year, according to Jay Kirby, executive vice president of sales and marketing.

’We’re investing in the data center space because it’s a relevant place where a lot of things are changing,’ Kirby said. ’People are really doing virtualization, and Cisco comes along and offers a UCS platform that extends the value and the connectivity. It’s become a reality. We believe in it. I think the customers believe in it too.’

The complexity of UCS is a hurdle for some customers, Kirby noted. But UCS and Cisco’s data center architecture presents a compelling endgame for customers. It lets solution providers sell behind a road map, he said, not just product speeds and feeds.

’Without a doubt our discussions have gone quickly up the food chain at customers,’ Kirby said. ’We hear from the top guys, ’I want to fully understand what you’re talking about here because it’s different than in the past.’ ’

Solution providers that don’t make the leap to architecture selling have limited room to grow, Kirby reasoned.

’Integrators who don’t change will not win in this game,’ he said. ’Cisco wants everyone to change, but in this case, I don’t believe Cisco is going to wait. This is the first time we’ve seen architectural changes and consumption models change at the same time. It’s a lot to swallow.’

IVCi, a Hauppauge, N.Y., Cisco partner and video and A/V specialist, signed on with Cisco for video a few months before Cisco acquired Tandberg. IVCi had been one of Tandberg’s largest U.S. VARs, and Robert Swing, IVCi’s CEO, applauded the work Cisco has done to map IVCi into its new Authorized Technology Provider program for TelePresence Video.

IVCi has sizable practices behind both Cisco/Tandberg and Polycom, which Swing said were both needed. But he agreed that Cisco’s program -- and its collaboration architectural vision -- is well suited to the convergence of video and A/V solution providers with the broader UC channel.

’I don’t know how many enterprises are getting into it now, but three, four, five years from now, it’s going to be, ’Can you deploy my videoconferencing, my VoIP, my messaging?’ It’s a move toward a total UC play,’ Swing said. ’We’re looking at acquiring or investing in bringing those complementary technologies on board.’

All three partners were united on one thing in particular: Cisco’s channel program will need to continue to adapt along with the move from products to architectures, and if partners specialize they need safeguards to protect their margins and reward them for their architecture focuses, be they data center, or video, or another.

’The old way of differentiating partners -- Gold, Silver -- is so ancient and irrelevant,’ Kirby said. ’Their portfolio is big enough that they need to start looking at the areas of their business and building around the partners that invest in those areas. I want them to look at Troubadour and say, ’Hey, Cisco field sales, if you’ve got [a customer] looking to redesign the data center with these requirements in mind, here’s a company that focuses on that.’ Not, ’Here’s a Cisco Gold reseller who can sell you every product in the book and might have one guy trained on data center.’ ’

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Earning specialized certifications is a surefire way to advance your career in the IT field, regardless of industry or current career level. The right certification validates your skills and knowledge, which makes you more desirable to future employers who want to attract and retain the best employees. Below, we’ll explore the top IT certifications and share how to examine your goals to choose the right path forward. 

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As we transition from one year to the next, it's a season of reflection and looking forward. As an analyst, the end of the year is a time to learn from past work, analyze its outcomes and consider its potential impact on the future.

In 2023, enterprise data management (EDT) solutions underwent significant changes due to the influx of generative AI technologies. These technologies have fundamentally altered how businesses approach data management, analysis and usage. In this post, I’ll review some of 2023’s highlights in this field.

How Different Areas Of EDT Are Evolving

Over the past year, there have been promising developments in EDT across several key areas. These include data management itself, where the focus has been on using AI to Boost how data is organized and accessed. The data cloud sector has also experienced growth, with more businesses adopting cloud-based solutions because of their flexibility, scalability and facility for integrating tools that handle unstructured data.

In data protection and governance, there has been a continuous effort to enhance security measures to safeguard sensitive information. Database technologies have also improved, particularly in handling and processing large data volumes more efficiently by incorporating generative AI.

Recent advancements in data integration and intelligent platforms have been geared towards better aggregating data from multiple sources, allowing for more comprehensive data analysis. The integration of AI and ML has further enhanced the capabilities of these platforms, improving data analysis interpretation and offering more profound and insightful analytical outcomes.

Full disclosure: Amazon Web Services, Cisco Systems, Cloudera, Cohesity, Commvault, Google Cloud, IBM, LogicMonitor, Microsoft, MongoDB, Oracle, Rubrik, Salesforce, Software AG, Splunk, and Veeam are clients of Moor Insights & Strategy, but this article reflects my independent viewpoint, and no one at any client company has been given editorial input on this piece.

Bringing AI To Data Management—And Vice Versa

“In a way, this AI revolution is actually a data revolution,” Salesforce cofounder and CTO Parker Harris said during his part of this year’s Dreamforce keynote, “because the AI revolution wouldn't exist without the power of all that data.” Harris's statement emphasizes the vital role of data in businesses and points to the increasing necessity for effective data management strategies in 2024.

As data becomes more central, the demand for scalable and secure EDT solutions is rising. My accurate series of articles focusing on EDT began with an introductory piece outlining its fundamental aspects and implications for business operations. This was followed by a more in-depth exploration of EDT, particularly highlighting how it can benefit businesses in data utilization. These articles elaborated on the practical uses and benefits of EDT and its importance in guiding the strategies and operations of modern businesses.

As businesses continue to leverage generative AI for deeper insights, the greater accessibility of data is set to revolutionize how they manage information. This development means enterprises can now utilize data that was previously inaccessible—a move that highlights the importance of data integration for both business operations and strategic decision-making. For instance, untapped social media data could offer valuable customer sentiment insights, while neglected sensor data from manufacturing processes might reveal efficiency improvements. In both cases, not using this data equates to a missed opportunity to use an asset, similar to unsold inventory that takes up space and resources without providing any return.

Revolutionizing Data Cloud Platforms

Incorporating AI into data cloud platforms has revolutionized processing and analyzing data. These AI models can handle vast datasets more efficiently, extracting previously unattainable insights due to the limitations of traditional data analysis methods.

Over the year, my own collaborations with multiple companies suggested the range of technological progressions. As I highlighted in a few of my articles, Google notably improved its data cloud platform and focused on generative AI with projects including Gemini, Duet AI and Vertex AI, reflecting its solid commitment to AI innovation. Salesforce introduced the Einstein 1 Platform and later expanded its offerings with the Data Cloud Vector Database, providing users with access to their unstructured enterprise data, thus broadening the scope of their data intelligence. IBM also launched watsonx, a platform dedicated to AI development and data management. These moves from major tech firms reflect a trend towards advanced AI applications and more sophisticated data management solutions.

At the AWS re:Invent conference, I observed several notable launches. Amazon Q is a new AI assistant designed for business customization. Amazon DataZone was enhanced with AI features to Boost the handling of organizational data. The AWS Supply Chain service received updates to help with forecasting, inventory management and provider communications. Amazon Bedrock, released earlier in the year, now includes access to advanced AI models from leading AI companies. A new storage class, Amazon S3 Express One Zone, was introduced for rapid data access needs. Additionally, Amazon Redshift received upgrades to Boost query performance. These developments reflect AWS's focus on integrating AI and optimizing data management and storage capabilities.

Recent articles have highlighted Microsoft's role in the AI renaissance, one focusing on the launch of Copilot as covered by my colleagues at Moor Insights & Strategy, and another analyzing the competitive dynamics in the AI industry. Additionally, Microsoft has expanded its data platform capabilities by integrating AI into Fabric, a comprehensive analytics solution. This suite includes a range of services including a data lake, data engineering and data integration, all conveniently centralized in one location. In collaboration, Oracle and Microsoft have partnered to make Oracle Database available on the Azure platform, showcasing a strategic move in cloud computing and database management.

Automating Data Protection And Governance

With the growing importance of data privacy and security, AI increasingly enables the automation of data governance, compliance and cybersecurity processes, reducing the need for manual oversight and intervention. This trend comes in response to the rise in incidents of data breaches and cyberattacks. AI-driven systems have become more proficient at monitoring data usage, ensuring adherence to legal standards and identifying potential security or compliance issues. This makes them a better option than traditional manual approaches for ensuring data safety and compliance.

Security is not only about protecting data but also about ensuring it can recover quickly from any disruptions, a quality known as data resilience. This resilience has become a key part of security strategies for forward-thinking businesses. Veeam emphasized “Radical Resilience” when it rolled out a new data protection initiative focused on better products, improved service and testing, continuous releases and greater accountability. Meanwhile, Rubrik introduced its security cloud, which focuses on data protection, threat analytics, security posture and cyber recovery. Cohesity, which specializes in AI-powered data security and management, is now offering features such as immutable backup snapshots and AI-driven threat detection; in 2023, it also unveiled a top-flight CEO advisory council to influence strategic decisions. Commvault has incorporated AI into its services, offering a new product that combines its SaaS and software data protection into one platform.

LogicMonitor upgraded its platform for monitoring and observability to include support for hybrid IT infrastructures. This enhancement allows for better monitoring across an organization's diverse IT environments. Additionally, Cisco has announced its intention to acquire Splunk. This acquisition will integrate Splunk's expertise in areas such as security information and event management, ransomware tools, industrial IoT vulnerability alerting, user behavior analytics and orchestration and digital experience monitoring that includes visibility into the performance of the underlying infrastructure.

Key Changes for Database Technology

Advancements in AI and ML integration are making database technology more intuitive and efficient. Oracle Database 23c features AI Vector Search, which simplifies interactions with data by using ML to identify similar objects in datasets. Oracle also introduced the Fusion Data Intelligence Platform, which combines data, analytics, AI models and apps to provide a comprehensive view of various business aspects. The platform also employs AI/ML models to automate tasks including data categorization, anomaly detection, predictive analytics for forecasting and customer segmentation, workflow optimization and robotic process automation.

In my previous discussion about IBM's partnership with AWS, a major highlight is the integration of Amazon Relational Database Service with IBM Db2. This collaboration brings a fully managed Db2 database engine to AWS's infrastructure, offering scalability and various storage options. The partnership between AWS and IBM will likely grow as the trend of companies forming more integrated and significant ecosystems continues.

Database technology also evolved with MongoDB queryable encryption features for continuous data content concealment. MongoDB Atlas Vector Search now also integrates with Amazon Bedrock, which enables developers to deploy generative AI applications on AWS more effectively. It’s also notable that Couchbase announced Capella iQ, which integrates generative AI technologies that exploit natural language processing to automatically create trial code, data sets and even unit tests. By doing this, the tool is streamlining the development process, enabling developers to focus more on high-level tasks rather than the nitty-gritty of code writing.

Leveraging Data Integration Platforms

Generative AI technologies have also improved data integration capabilities by using historical data, analyses of trends, customer behaviors and market dynamics. This advancement is particularly influential in the finance, retail and healthcare sectors, where predictive insights are critical for strategic and operational decisions. There's been a shift towards adopting data lake house architectures, which combine the features of data lakes and data warehouses to help meet the challenges of handling large, varied data types and formats, providing both scalability and efficient management. This evolution in data architecture caters to the growing complexity and volume of data in various industries.

Integrating various data sources is crucial for many companies to enhance their business operations. Software AG has introduced Super iPaaS, an evolution of the traditional integration platform as a service (iPaaS). This advanced platform is AI-enabled and designed to integrate hybrid environments, offering expansive integration capabilities. Cloudera has also made strides with new data management features that incorporate generative AI, enabling the use of unstructured data both on-premises and in cloud environments. Its hybrid approach effectively consolidates client data for better management. Informatica's intelligent data management cloud platform integrates AI and automation tools, streamlining the process of collecting, integrating, cleaning and analyzing data from diverse sources and formats. This creates an accessible data repository that benefits business intelligence and analytics.

That’s a Wrap!

In my collaborations throughout the year with various companies, one key theme has emerged in this AI-driven era – data has become even more fundamentally important for businesses. It's clear that the success of AI heavily relies on the quality of the data it uses, and AI models are effective only when the data they process is accurate, relevant and unbiased.

For example, in applications such as CRM or supply chain optimization, outcomes are directly influenced by the data’s integrity. Instances where AI failed to meet expectations could often be traced to poor data quality, whether it was incomplete, outdated or biased. This year has highlighted the necessity of not just collecting large amounts of data but ensuring its quality and relevance. Real-world experience underscores the need for strict data governance and the implementation of systems that ensure data accuracy and fairness, all of which are essential for the effective use of AI in business.

As AI technology advances and data quality improves, the use of generative AI in understanding and engaging with customers is becoming ever more prominent. Backed by good data management, this enhances the customer experience by making the customer journey more personalized and informative. It allows businesses to gain valuable insights from customer interactions, helping them continuously refine and Boost their offerings and customer relations. I expect this trend to grow, further emphasizing the role of AI in customer engagement and shaping business strategies. In fact, this symbiotic relationship between AI-driven personalization and customer engagement is becoming a cornerstone of not only data management strategy but modern business strategy overall, significantly impacting how companies connect with their customers.

Wrapping up, it's evident that the emphasis on data quality is critical for improving AI's performance. Data management, cloud services, data protection and governance, databases, data integration and intelligent platforms have all significantly contributed to the advancement of AI. In 2024, I expect we’ll see even more emphasis on ensuring the accuracy and relevance of data so that AI can provide dependable insights.