It’s now commonly accepted that data is the foundation for businesses to drive smarter decisions. Data is what fuels digital transformation. But it’s artificial intelligence (AI) that unlocks the value of that data, which is why AI is poised to transform businesses with the potential to add almost 16 trillion dollars to the global economy by 2030*.

In today’s uncertain business climate, every organization must become smarter and more responsive to intelligently operate and engage the world, resiliently respond to market changes, flexibly optimize costs, and innovate. Fuelled by data, AI is empowering leading organizations to transform and deliver value.

A lot of organizations must overcome data complexity to successfully scale AI throughout a business. Companies today are struggling to manage and maintain vast amounts of data spanning public, private, and on-premises clouds.

Use any search engine to discover how much data is being created every day and estimates will be returned in yottabytes and zettabytes – numbers with too many zeros to comprehend.

The volume of data today is both a blessing and a curse. Too little data means that business decisions have to be based on instinct and gut-feel, too much data means that businesses can’t analyse it fast enough to be of any use in the real-world.

In 2015 Klaus Schwab, the founder and chairman of the World Economic Forum popularised the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The First Industrial Revolution of the 1700s and 1800s was marked by the use of steam power to move away from manual production and the fuel for the today’s revolution is data.

To state the obvious, a data-driven business uses data to support decisions, but it’s not as simple as it sounds. Organizations are gathering data from more and increasingly varied sources than ever with a result that the complexity of governing, storing and analyzing that data centrally is also increasing.

On a positive note, databases and repositories are exponentially more powerful and thanks to the cloud, they have effectively limitless processing and data storage capabilities.

For decades, data management products – database, message bus, middleware, data analytics and statistical packages – have been sold as licensed software and typically ran on in-house, on-premises systems.

In the hybrid multicloud era this approach had some drawbacks: it’s difficult to move software and data across platforms and integration between systems is complex. While legacy technology architectures can obstruct a data driven organisation, access and consumption of supporting technology is at hand.

IBM Cloud Pak for Data

IBM Cloud Pak for Data (CP4D) is a new kind of data and analytics platform with built-in governance.

As a fully integrated data and AI platform, it modernizes how businesses collect, organize, and analyze data. It connects previously isolated people, processes, and technology and enables them to work together, unlocking enterprise efficiencies that are not achievable with a group of independent point solutions.

The IBM solution delivers a data fabric to connect and access siloed data on-premises or across multiple clouds without moving it, resulting in a unified experience, automation of manual tasks, and enforced governance and security.

IBM Cloud Pak for Data can help you unlock the value of your data and create an information architecture for AI. The AI Ladder has been developed by IBM to provide organizations with an understanding of where they are in their AI journey as well as a framework for helping them determine where they need to focus.

It is a guiding principle for transforming business through considering how they collect data, organize data, analyze data, and then ultimately infuse AI into their organization.

Containerized Microservices

IBM Cloud Pak for Data comprises pre-configured microservices that run on a multi-node Kubernetes cluster, using Red Hat OpenShift. The environment can run on-premises or in SaaS offerings on public clouds such as IBM Cloud, AWS or Azure. A preconfigured CP4D System is also available providing a governed and secure environment which allows clients to achieve benefits significantly faster than building one themselves.

A Cloud Pak licence can include many established IBM software products – Db2, Informix, DataStage, Cognos, SPSS – and for existing clients, a dual entitlement licence (aka “Cartridge”) allows them to continue with their existing on-premises/hosted environment, but also to start to experiment with additional CP4D services running on Red Hat OpenShift without compromising their existing operations.

Cloud Pak for Data Use Cases

1. Simplify and automate your journey to cloud modernisation

Effective digital transformation means integrating processes across organizational boundaries and legacy systems. CP4D optimizes data with seamless automation for provisioning, monitoring and managing containers at scale.

2. Ensure trust and compliance across all data, AI and open source assets

Data is often relocated for warehousing, reporting, analytics, storage, testing, and application use; therefore data or AI models could potentially be copied multiple times over, resulting in misuse of sensitive data. CP4D helps clients deliver data ops at scale and confidently use data with IBM Watson Knowledge Catalog.

3. Unify the tools, processes and talent required for enterprise data and AI

Duplicate or overlapping point solutions obstructs a fully integrated experience across critical data. CP4D delivers seamless integration across tools and a unified experience across the platform, accelerating time to value and minimizing talent silos to enhance collaboration and efficiency.

4. Digitally reinvent and future proof data and AI strategy

CP4D delivers a full suite of leading data and AI capabilities within a fully integrated platform and experience. It optimizes a client’s investment in existing infrastructure with a growing catalog of fully containerized services. Clients have access to expertise and experience to build a solid data and AI strategy for the future.

“Data is a precious thing and will last longer than the systems themselves.”

~ Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web.

To overcome the challenges of data complexity, help is at hand with Cloud Pak for Data, an agile and resilient cloud-native platform that enables organizations to predict and automate outcomes with trusted data and AI.

For help in your data and AI journey, get in touch.

*source: PWC’s Global AI Study