Teradata executives predict AI transformation by 2025
Senior executives from Teradata have shared their insights on the future growth and optimisation of artificial intelligence (AI) in business environments.
Steve McMillan, Chief Executive Officer of Teradata, outlined three primary horizons for organisations to focus on with their AI solutions by 2025. First, companies are encouraged to use AI to enhance internal efficiency and effectiveness by relying on tools built around trusted data to improve the capabilities of their knowledge professionals. Second, companies can embed AI into their product offerings, such as financial firms using AI to offer dynamic mortgage solutions that adapt to market and client changes. The third horizon involves envisaging how AI will transform various industries; McMillan expects consumer-packaged goods (CPG) industries to employ AI agents for price negotiations, akin to high-frequency trading's impact on the financial services sector.
According to McMillan, the evolution of IT systems will see a shift from traditional monolithic IT stacks to more interconnected services. By 2025, he anticipates customers will seek the best combined cloud and on-premises solutions for their data and analytics needs. "Enterprises need platforms and engines that do that in the most effective, efficient way, backed by great, patented capabilities," McMillan stated. "As organisations look for the best possible services to create specific outcomes, more and more of them will set their sights on solutions that deliver data analytics and AI services to help them achieve outputs they can trust."
Dr. Meeta Vouk, Vice President of Product Management for Analytics and AI/ML at Teradata, noted a forthcoming shift in AI project focus. While recent attention has been on AI agents, the actual deployment of projects, particularly those involving self-built agentic architectures, is anticipated to face more challenges than anticipated, potentially leading to costly delays and failures. Vouk expects a transition in AI projects from focusing on the technology's capabilities to delivering tangible value, refocusing agentic AI projects on supporting internal personnel. "More broadly, the focus will move beyond striving for bigger or faster AI, and instead concentrate on meaningful, value-driven AI applications, with defined values relevant for their business," she said. She also emphasised the importance of this process as a learning and experimentation exercise.
Dr. Vouk further highlighted the increasing prevalence of smaller and domain-specific AI models, which will necessitate a foundation of trust around AI environments by 2025. The creation of AI solutions that perform consistently and reliably across specific tasks will be crucial. "Explainable AI and Trusted AI will be table stakes," Vouk stated, indicating that the rise of small to medium, domain-specific AI models will become increasingly significant. This rise will also introduce necessary certification processes to evaluate the models' viability, with an emphasis on AI governance becoming integral to vendors' offerings.
