A successful AI strategy is dependent on a robust data strategy: Pure Storage CIO Krithika Bhat

Artificial intelligence (AI) is now the top priority for enterprises across the world as they are starting to see its benefits. Added to this is GenerativeAI (GenAI), which has just accelerated the process.

This has also changed the way enterprises are approaching AI as it requires a holistic vision on how this technology is going to bring in the changes, not just technologically, but also the business outcomes. It also requires active participation from human resources whose roles may actually get impacted.

Krithika Bhat, Chief Information Officer at Pure Storage, a data storage technology company, says enterprises can effectively bring the change through AI by adopting a human-centered approach. 

Founded in 2009 and headquartered in California, Pure Storage has global presence with over 12,500 customers worldwide which include the likes of Meta, Comcast, ServiceNow to name a few.

“True transformation (through AI) wouldn’t be possible without involving humans who are likely to be impacted in this process,” she said in an email interview with EnterpriseStory.

Edited excerpts from the interview:

EnterpriseStory (ES): How has AI fundamentally changed the way enterprises engage with digital platforms?

Krithika Bhat (KB): From the way we work to how brands and users interact with one another, AI is revolutionising almost every aspect of how enterprises interact and leverage technology. We’ve seen this taking place over several years. In Martech (marketing tech), for example, AI has been used by advertisers on social media platforms for a while now, feeding content to targeted audiences in milliseconds. AI-powered chatbots have also been around for a few years and will only get better as the models improve the more data they analyse. 

Companies like Pure Storage have also been using AIOps technology. Pure1 Meta, for example, is an AI-driven engine that allows our management platform to better inform our customers and predict events in the future.

The emergence of Gen AI is turbocharging all these applications. Organisations are no longer questioning whether or not to use AI but how to leverage its evolving capabilities. According to a recent McKinsey survey, 60 percent of organisations are already using Gen AI, while IDC says 75 percent of respondents plan to digitally transform their operations by 2025. Any company that is not thinking AI runs the risk of being left behind. 

ES: What are some of the early benefits that enterprises are deriving from the deployment of AI?

KB: AI is helping various industries in many ways. In banking and fintech, AI is making fraud detection and prevention faster, more reliable, and more efficient. AI is becoming a critical tool in healthcare by helping to improve medical diagnosis, patient experience, pharmaceutical research, and overall outcomes.

After the first few months of deploying Pure1 Meta, we were able to avoid over 500 critical issues by fixing them even before our customers were aware of them. We call this self-driving storage, and one of the reasons our customers love us. We will continue to find new ways for AI to improve our business operations.

ES: What suggestions would you give CIOs on how they can adapt to the rapid changes of AI?

KB: As with any technology, AI continues to evolve at an unprecedented pace, and CIOs play a pivotal role in steering their organisations toward success. Amidst this rapid evolution, CIOs and their boards must maintain an ongoing, not ad-hoc engagement. The starting point is to develop a shared vision of AI that focuses on business outcomes, not just technology implementation. 

Fostering continuous learning and innovation is crucial, and hackathons are a great way to achieve this. They spark creativity and encourage collaborative problem-solving by bringing together diverse perspectives and skills. Our upcoming global employee hackathon at Pure Storage is exclusively focused on the GenAI theme. Investing in talent development ensures that your team has the skills to leverage AI effectively. Additionally, adopting a human-centered approach to change is critical for successful transformation. True transformation wouldn’t be possible without involving humans that will be impacted into the process at each step in the journey.

ES: How can enterprises be AI-ready given the backdrop of legacy technology infrastructure?

KB: A successful AI strategy is dependent on a robust data strategy that begins at the data source and involves various steps across the end-to-end AI pipeline. These steps include data curation to prepare training datasets, making data accessible to the training and inference infrastructure, and integrating new AI tools and applications. This entire process must be cost-effective and highly automated while ensuring the right levels of security, governance, availability, and portability. Enterprises face challenges with inefficiencies, complexity, data growth, and integrating a growing array of AI tools and applications as they build their AI infrastructure.

To achieve a fast turnaround in data curation, training, and inference, enterprises need a storage solution that optimises the data strategy for their entire AI process. With Pure, organisations get the most efficient storage system to power every step of the AI process--irrespective of whether the job requires the highest levels of performance or capacity-optimised economics.

Without a unified data storage platform, deploying multiple data silos at scale can take weeks or months, and managing the cobbled system demands significant effort. 

The Pure Data storage platform simplifies integration across these stacks in hours, offering a consistent storage experience powered by the Purity operating system. As AI infrastructure demands evolve, driven by new models, powerful GPUs, and data growth, organisations need a future-proof storage platform. Pure’s Evergreen technology and services ensure our products never become obsolete, eliminating the need for disruptive upgrades and replacements, thus safeguarding AI investments for years to come.

ES: How is Pure Storage engaging with AI to meet the expectations of the customers?

KB: With Pure1 Meta, Pure Storage continues to advance in its vision of delivering self-driving storage. Internally, we’re ramping up our use of AI throughout our organisation in HR, finance, supply chain, and product development.

Product-wise, we were the first company to announce an AI-ready infrastructure, AIRI, which we jointly developed with NVIDIA. AIRI is a full-stack AI solution which our customers can quickly deploy to kickstart their AI initiatives. 

An important area that Pure Storage is helping its customers is in sustainability. A survey commissioned by Pure Storage in the US and Europe found that 73 percent of IT buyers were not prepared for the energy requirements of AI. Pure Storage’s arrays are proven to be up to 85 percent more energy efficient than competing flash solutions. So, you can imagine how much more energy efficient we are against legacy hard disk solutions.