Databricks Data and AI World Tour London

Databricks returned to Excel yesterday for its Data and AI World Tour. For me, it’s 6 years since I proudly presented Co-ops Databricks journey in the keynote. Databricks Co-founder Arsalan Tavakoli-Shiraji today talked about 3 key challenges for data and AI.

1. Everybody Wants AI

“85% of models are not in production.”

People spend a lot of time experimenting with data and AI without necessarily generating production workloads. Our opinion is that being responsible with AI means that you are purposeful in embarking on projects that will be implementable and valuable. Considering Responsible AI at the beginning of the process means that you will be able to generate more value. Arreoblue are working on a template to help people with this, watch this space!

2. Security and Privacy are under pressure

“Governance of the entire data estate is hard.”

Databricks are pushing Unity Catalogue as a way of managing all of your data, and rightly so. Unity Catalogue is a powerful tool and allows you to manage access, document data and identify personal information that you need to protect. Arreoblue are helping some of the UK’s largest companies deploy Unity Catalogue in a way that is both sustainable and expandable.

3. Data estate is fragmented

“Use cases are delivered when data is unified on a single platform.”

At Arreoblue, our engineering team spend a lot of their time helping our customers quickly move data to their new data platform. Whether thats by data driven ingestion, modernising existing data pipelines or migrating from legacy databases into the cloud, those projects are about removing technology blockers and allowing our customers to get more value from their data.

Six years on from my first Databricks Data and AI Summit in Excel, I’m thrilled to be part of Arreoblue’s journey and our work to help our customers responsibly generate value from their data.