Persistent Systems provides insight on new AI innovations – Business
There’s no doubt that the technology industry is currently at the front end of a massive wave with generative AI. This next level of gen AI will have a massive technology change, but business value is also a big conversation.
It’s been intoxicating to see the excitement level, according to theCUBE Research executive analyst John Furrier. However, some common sentiments rise to the surface when it comes to business value.
“Show me the proof, show me the results, just a little bit of a win. Maybe, just some short win, or a big win,” Furrier said. “At the same time, it’s accelerating and changing digital transformation, which we’ve talked a lot about with Persistent.”
Last year, Persistent Systems Ltd. partnered with Google Cloud to launch a suite of cloud-powered generative AI solutions. At Google Cloud Next, Persistent Systems outlined what comes next, unveiling new AI partnerships and expanding AI-driven innovations.
Analysts for theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, spoke with Persistent Systems’ executives and partners about those partnerships and innovations during a special breakout event, titled “Accelerating Innovation With Persistent.” They explored how Persistent Systems is driving AI innovation and machine learning advancements throughout the Google Cloud ecosystem. (* Disclosure below.)
Here are three key insights you may have missed from the Accelerating Innovation With Persistent event:
1. Business transformation driven by AI is accelerating.
When it comes to business value, companies are recognizing that there is a need to leverage AI for gaining deeper insights and driving strategic direction, according to Caroline Yap (pictured, left), managing director of the global AI business and applied engineering at Google LLC. That insight emerged out of conversations with around 1,000 customers from around the globe, and usually starts with a question as to what one’s business strategy is over the next two to five years, Yap noted.
“Then [I ask], ‘Do you have to say something to your shareholders because everybody wants you to use AI?’” she added. “Or, can you actually just say, ‘Here are all the analytics, automation, machine learning things we’ve already done, which now we can accelerate results for, because generative AI is easier for us to actually query all our datasets, to get that business value drivers that you might need.’”
The conversation around digital transformation journeys can be carved into two eras: before and after gen AI. What once perhaps felt like fiction is now becoming a reality, according to Ayon Banerjee (pictured, right), chief strategy and growth officer of Persistent.
“I think, from our vantage point, and even if I speak on behalf of our entire industry, digital transformation was really about looking at a whole bunch of projects to digitalize internal operations or spawn up digital native businesses,” Banerjee said. “It was almost like a long laundry list of things.”
As AI becomes ubiquitous, it’s also becoming practical. It’s no longer left to just data scientists, he added.
“If you talk about the customer conversations we are having today, it’s all about saying that, ‘Look, I’m a retailer, and I want to drive an uptick in my revenue, or I want to drive a completely different paradigm from a customer experience standpoint. What’s the solution?’” Banerjee said.
It isn’t, on the other hand, asking whether one can go and get a stack in and go work on modernizing a particular bit of the cloud. The narrative is now starting to be more top-down, rather than bottom-up, according to Banerjee.
“I think that’s one stark difference that we are seeing,” he said.
It’s also important to consider data accessibility and design considerations. Relevant data sources must be identified and one must craft strategies to leverage structured, unstructured and synthetic data effectively.
“It’s not just about available data that’s available to the enterprise or data that’s available in a public large language model,” Banerjee said. “That’s going to happen all on the back of the structured/unstructured data and synthetic data … data is everywhere and that’s really where the future is.”
Here’s the complete video interview with Yap and Banerjee:
2. A deliberate data strategy is being viewed as critical.
As organizations plot a route forward, strategic partnerships, robust data strategies and a holistic approach to technology integration are critical elements. Every company is running out of data, and that poses a crucial question, according to Ray Wang, founder and chairman of Constellation Research Inc.
“Do you have enough data to achieve a level of precision that your stakeholders are going to trust? We often use this example, like 85% accuracy in customer experience. We’re super excited,” Wang said. “We’re like, great, this is going to be amazing, [but] 85% accuracy in supply chain means you don’t have a manufacturing operation.”
Similarly, for instance, 85% accuracy in finance means someone goes to jail, Wang noted. For that reason, companies must be precise.
“It’s really important to make sure you have small language models, very small language models to complete that level of precision and data,” he said. “But start with the data you have, and then partner for all the other sources.”
When it comes to IT services, Constellation provides different kinds of advice. There are IT service providers that have a full breadth of services, Wang noted.
“Then there’s Persistent, which is focused on innovation, product development, engineering,” Wang said. “I don’t see them as the IT services that you’re just hiring people for time and materials. I see them as people you go to for an innovation partner. That’s kind of how we advise our customers.”
Moving forward, as clients have to think about their business almost as a system software layer with a bunch of new gear, it’s changed the game. But while the world may have been talking about gen AI for the last 15 months, Persistent views it as a tool in the toolkit, according to Banerjee.
“If you really think about the stack, the system is bigger than AI,” he said. “AI is bigger than generative AI. You have to look at it from a system standpoint to be able to really leverage the full potential of this entire movement that’s happening right now.”
Here’s the complete video interview with Wang and Banerjee:
3. Comprehensive ecosystem integration can drive AI efficiency.
Amid all the excitement around AI, it’s often important to take a reality check and map out one’s strategies for unlocking business value and scaling innovation. Right now, there’s lots of potential to move pilots and proofs of concept to production, but there’s work to do to get there, according to Lilly McNealus, director of outbound product management, cloud artificial intelligence, at Google LLC.
“The organizations who are going to be successful with that are those who have spent the time to identify the right use cases from the get-go,” McNealus said. “Organizations who have just deployed agents or models without really thinking through where do they have the opportunity to generate value for the business, they are never going to see that ROI.”
For companies like DeepHealth Inc., AI-fueled technology is being viewed as the answer to solve demands tied to radiology. The company’s operating system is an ecosystem on which it can build all of the workspaces to drive radiologist efficiency, clinical outcomes for radiologists, efficiency for technologists and more, according to Madhu Jahagirdar, vice president of cloud, technology and product at DeepHealth.
“Ideally, this becomes a one-stop shop for [the] entire radiology business,” Jahagirdar said.
The company has a partnership with Persistent and Google Cloud, which is important given the need to keep healthcare data secure. Such partnerships are of value in spaces like healthcare, especially given ongoing security breaches in the field, according to Kamal Puri, senior vice president at Persistent.
“We want to expand [security] to all the clouds that we are operating in, take the best of breed, whether it is a model from working on Azure or Google Cloud or on-prem on a data center,” Puri said. “We want to have the same security posture across the board.”
Here’s the complete video interview with McNealus and Rajesh Abhyankar, senior vice president at Persistent:
To watch more of the coverage of SiliconANGLE’s of the Accelerating Innovation With Persistent event, here’s our complete event video playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=videoseries
(* Disclosure: the special event with Persistent Systems at Google Cloud Next. Neither Persistent Systems Ltd. nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)