US-based data cloud company Snowflake said that any artificial intelligence (AI) strategy is ineffective without a strong data foundation. As a result, many organisations are now focusing on refining their data estates, according to a senior Snowflake executive.
“Without well-organised and reliable data, AI cannot deliver meaningful outcomes,” Snowflake’s India Managing Director Vijayant Rai told Moneycontrol. “Therefore, many organisations are currently working on fixing their data estates.”
These comments are significant as companies rush to implement AI across their organisations. However, many face challenges due to data that is often unstructured, unorganised, or even missing.
Recent data also highlights the growing importance companies are placing on data structuring. An August report by Deloitte revealed that around 45 percent of companies have a “high-level” of preparedness in areas such as data management, strategy, and tech infrastructure. Additionally, about 50 percent of organisation have emerged as “relatively” stronger in these areas.
“One of the key challenges with AI is that it operates on data, and the quality of the results depends on the quality of the data,” Rai further said.
Once the data is structured, the next step is ensuring it is trustworthy, secure, and well-governed. For this, the company recently introduced an enterprise-grade open large language model (LLM) called Cortex.
This was done to ensure that Snowflake’s customer data are stored on its platform securely.
Currently, the company has a framework that supports both open-source LLMs and its proprietary Arctic LLM. The rationale is that different use cases of AI requires different LLMs, Rai explained.
To manage high compute costs, Snowflake has designed its platform so that customers pay only for the compute they actually use.
All these increased activity requires foot on the ground, which is why Rai said the plan is to increase employee count in the critical go-to-market (GTM) vertical. The GTM team includes personnel from sales, pre-sales, solution engineering, and other related aspects.
The company currently has close to 600 employees in the country, including in the Pune Centre of Excellence.
Also read: Indian IT cos struggle with Gen AI rollout delays amid rising compute, cloud cost
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