The numbers are nearly unanimous: Almost 9 in 10 executives understand the merits and potential of artificial intelligence, according to an IDC survey sponsored by Teradata Corp. The rapid boom in AI poses countless opportunities, but it poses challenges too — including when it comes to a growing skills gap.

Just 30% of those surveyed said they’re extremely prepared or ready to leverage generative AI today. Of those surveyed, 86% said they thought more governance was needed to ensure that generative AI insights can be trusted.

In recent years, Teradata has been using its decades-long experience in creating robust systems and applying them to data lakes and data warehouses, with the goal of bridging gaps between commercial products and open-source solutions. That could significantly impact how data professionals work and collaborate together, according to theCUBE industry analyst Rob Strechay.

“A lot of what Teradata is aimed at is really bringing that knowledge that they have for making bulletproof systems for 30 years at this point,” he said.

So, what’s the latest with Teradata and its AI initiatives? And how has the company changed amid this new era? Let’s dive in. (* Disclosure below.)

The gen AI urgency

The urgency executives are feeling around gen AI seems poised to increase in the coming years. Gartner Inc. has forecasted that while gen AI has not yet had a material impact on AI spending, those impacts will start to be felt in 2025.

“Organizations are continuing to invest in AI and automation to increase operational efficiency and bridge IT talent gaps,” said John-David Lovelock, distinguished VP analyst at Gartner. “The hype around gen AI is supporting this trend, as CIOs recognize that today’s AI projects will be instrumental in developing an AI strategy and story before gen AI becomes part of their IT budgets starting in 2025.”

Prior to the kickoff of the Teradata Possible event last October, a key question was how the Teradata ecosystem was looking to build data-driven solutions. And, how did the company see the future of AI playing out?

“What they’re doing with data lakes, what they’re doing with data lakehouse and data warehouse, all under one real platform,” Strechay said. “I think that we’re going to get a really big exposure to what people thought of Teradata, which was not where they are today.”

A common sentiment on the floors of technology events these days is that when it comes to AI, every day feels like a year in terms of innovation and the pace of change. Steve McMillan, president and chief executive officer of Teradata, said one of the reasons he joined the company three years ago was because the data and analytics marketplace is so exciting.

“Certainly, since the launch of ChatGPT in November of 2022, that has acted as a real accelerant in terms of putting a real focus,” McMillan said. “I don’t think there’s a board in the world that isn’t challenging a leadership team about, ‘What are you doing with gen AI? What are you doing with ChatGPT?’”

While there are many ways gen AI can impact a company, what’s important is to view the technology through three tiers, according to McMillan. The first tier is how one can transform sales teams, while level two involves integrating gen AI into products and technologies.

The third level, and perhaps the most important, involves gen AI having the potential to revolutionize entire industries, which can be exemplified by Adobe Inc.’s use case. The company could have been overwhelmed by AI but instead chose to embrace it with its gen AI solution, Firefly.

“I think every industry has the opportunity to transform. Some of the industries that we are really thinking about … are healthcare,” McMillan said. “We love the opportunity to work with healthcare organizations, to really transform how data impacts people on a day-to-day basis.”

There is one word that represents the core of the challenge, according to McMillan, and that is “data.” In order for solutions to work and be effective, organizations must utilize a data structure that can be relied upon and trusted.

“We’ve done a number of studies across a lot of different areas. Less than 25% of organizations think they’ve got the right data culture, think they’ve got the right data capabilities,” McMillan said. “I think it’s around 21% that don’t think they’ve got the right structure in place to ensure the ethical and responsible use of data within their organization.”

That’s where Teradata tries to help all the time, according to McMillan. The goal is to unpack some of those challenges to tie together the right solutions.

AI use cases are a clear focus

Of course, it isn’t all optimism when it comes to the changes AI promises to bring with it. Security, privacy and governance are big concerns and something that Teradata is taking seriously, according to Billy Spears, chief information security officer of Teradata.

“Our goal with security at Teradata is to do two things. The first is we want to continue to build trust with our customers. We want to grow that trust so they’ll continue to expand their use of our platform and get all the goodness as a result,” Spears said. “The second thing we want to do is we want to think about resiliency right from the start.”

When it comes to its products, the past year has been all about Teradata looking to become a key player in AI development by leveraging its strengths on the data management side. Recent developments like the launch of the company’s AI discovery and exploration tools on AWS cloud are all about helping organizations unlock new value through AI, according to Teradata Chief Product Officer Hillary Ashton.

“[It is] another step forward in supporting our customers’ AI initiatives, giving them the ability to cost-effectively and securely explore, experiment and operationalize new AI use cases,” she said.

Recently, Teradata launched ask.ai, putting the powers of large language models into the hands of its customers.

“It helps unlock the capabilities that you have in Teradata today in a way that doesn’t require re-documentation or watching a video, just a conversation of, ‘How do I use this function? How do I do this thing?’” Ashton told theCUBE. “It automatically creates some code for you, and then off to the races you go.”

Teradata AI Unlimited provides a way for data scientists and other SQL-savvy users to access Teradata’s backend. In addition, it provides ClearScape analytics capabilities in support of machine learning and data analysis at scale, according to Doug Henschen of Constellation Research Inc.

“ClearScape is expressed in SQL and SQL-like expressions, but you can also use Python in the offering’s notebook interface,” he said. “Teradata’s ambition is to see adoption beyond existing Teradata customers, as an alternative to Spark and other engines, but to me, the strongest appeal would be to folks who already know ClearScape.”

The company has, in previous months, often discussed its VantageCloud Lake, which is a cloud-focused version of the company’s software. It originally debuted last August with support for Amazon Web Services, and the company made it available in July on Microsoft Corp.’s Azure cloud computing platform.

The months to come

The past year has seen revenue continue to grow for Teradata, with its third-quarter total revenue of $438 million, an increase of 5% as reported and 6% in constant currency from the prior year period. McMillan attributed those results to the company’s cloud analytics and data platform for AI.

“We are pleased with our financial results, execution across the organization, and with the innovations we’ve been able to deliver,” he said.

Prior to the kickoff of Teradata Possible in October, there were big questions about how the company would respond to those working in enterprises who see the value in utilizing gen AI but who have a long way to go when it comes to trust and execution. But Teradata has presented an interesting view of the future, according to Strechay.

“Teradata has been putting their software really focused in a server so that it’s easy to scale out … for years and years or decades, for that matter, before you get to cloud … being able to use cloud resources extremely efficiently is key because we all know those models,” he said.

The company has been focused in recent years on issues, such as data security, privacy and the cost of AI implementation. But there are various innovations at play that could make life easier for organizations, according to Strechay.

“When we started talking about that organization, the data organization and how they’re building data products, and I think leaning into that, that treating data as a product … that’s a really neat place for them to be,” he said.

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Possible 2023. Teradata Corp. and other sponsors of theCUBE’s event coverage do not have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

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