Preparing Your Infrastructure for the Future of AI

AI and machine learning have always been on the CIO roadmap, but the release of ChatGPT in late 2022 accelerated the need to identify and implement advanced and generative AI capabilities at an enterprise level. How can IT leaders modernize their infrastructure at scale to realize business value?

At the upcoming Chicago CIO Executive Summit on December 12, Utpal Mangla, Vice President, Distributed, Edge, Sovereign Cloud & Partnerships at IBM, will lead an Executive Boardroom discussion on “Preparing Your Infrastructure for the Future of AI” with Evanta Governing Body Member Shawn Ellis, International CIO for TransUnion. During the intimate, closed-door discussion, CIOs will share strategies for modernizing systems and architectures, building data foundations for extending AI deep into the business and modernizing with resiliency, performance, security, sustainability, and compliance.

Ahead of the session, Utpal is sharing insight into the topic and why CIOs should modernize their data infrastructure today.

Utpal Mangla is an IBM Distinguished Industry Leader, responsible for Distributed, EDGE, Sovereign Clouds in IBM. He is an IBM Master Inventor and has over twenty patents with a focus on Cloud, Telco EDGE and 5G. Under his leadership, IBM recently achieved the company's mission of making "Watson AI touch 1.5 Billion Consumers.” With 20+ years of consulting, system integration, customer relationships, program delivery and industry experience, Utpal brings depth of expertise and knowledge on building, running and scaling businesses. 
 

What are some of the challenges CIOs face as they navigate the AI landscape today?

Trust, data sprawl, data security, siloed applications and skills are key challenges organizations face. How do you use the data securely to transform a company, whether it's sales data, customer support data, or HR data - how do you get value from that data, and how do you leverage AI for better business performance? 

All signs are pointing to a simple truth – it’s not a one-size-fits-all approach for AI Infrastructure. It’s key to align the right infrastructure to the right AI task at hand. 

Organizations are also starting to ask the tough question of “how do I build, train, fine-tune, and deploy AI systems in my enterprise?” Among the things to consider include the type of data, where it resides, compute capacity and security controls.
 

Why is it critical for Evanta’s CIO community members to have this conversation now?

Today, organizations are at an inflection point in how to best derive value from AI, but do it responsibly and with trust. At the same time, IT leaders want to get out of the business of IT and get into the business of their business. Their focus is on how they can drive outcomes with simpler experiences and without having to manage complex IT architectures.

They also don’t want to worry about skills and if they have the right skills in place to piece together the right IT environment. In addition, they want to be agile so they can ramp up quickly, and they want to pay as they go and as they consume. They want to focus on the outcomes – what are they trying to achieve? Rather than, how do I plug all these pieces together, how does it work and what architectural and workload decisions do I need to make?

This is where the value of hybrid cloud and AI come into play. When executing an AI strategy, your data is more important than ever. At the same time, data is growing exponentially, and it's everywhere – across multiple clouds with multiple vendors, on premises and at the edge. This hybrid approach to AI is similar to the hybrid approach to cloud.

Generative AI will be the killer app for hybrid IT. Organizations are going to want to be able to do generative AI everywhere, and therefore, they will have to be able to do hybrid everywhere, easily. A ‘hybrid cloud by design’ approach is a full stack approach to enable data sharing – again, this is where our data is more important than ever. As compared to a ‘hybrid cloud by default’ approach comes with risks, enterprises must avoid falling victim to the Frankencloud. 

Failure to holistically manage hybrid, multicloud environments can create blind spots that bad actors can attack. That is why data security and trust must be at the center of everything.

What are you most looking forward to about this Executive Boardroom session?

I look forward to joining my peers and the local community to connect on how generative AI has changed the way our businesses have evolved and discuss their approach with infrastructure to drive this massive force of change.

Join this conversation with Utpal Mangla of IBM at the Chicago CIO Executive Summit on December 12, or apply to join your local community to connect with like-minded CIOs on mission critical topics, such as generative AI.
 

Special thanks to IBM.

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