Enterprise AI and Data Security: Navigating the Unprecedented Pace of IT Innovation

May 19th, 2026 | Jason Lopez | 3:16

Omdia’s Scott Sinclair discusses how Enterprise AI is driving infrastructure modernization, the critical role of Data Security, and the unprecedented pace of IT innovation.

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Podcast transcript:

Scott Sinclair: I mean, it’s hard to talk about any trend without talking about artificial intelligence, right? So that’s something that’s been pervasive across all organizations. Seen, of course, tons of interest and excitement. We saw a lot of investment from the neo clouds. Now enterprises are getting involved. So what does that mean? We saw this massive uptick in GPUs and excitement around compute several years ago. That’s continuing, but now we’re seeing the focus turn to data, which we all expect it to happen, but now enterprises are saying, wait a minute, we not only need to get our data under control, but we also need to make sure we store it correctly as well as move it. So there’s thoughts around what does this mean for data storage? What does it mean for networking and what does it mean for infrastructure overall? At the same time related to just artificial intelligence, organizations as they become better, they start to better understand their data.

They realize, hey, data sovereignty, data locality matters. So what does this mean? It means, okay, now we’re starting to think, okay, should we invest more on premises? Think about data center investments and start to take more of a hybrid cloud strategy, as we think about where data is and where it’s stored and where it moves. And particularly as it relates to not just new applications, but also saying, okay, well, if we’re taking a more hybrid cloud strategy to this new innovation around AI, what does that mean for existing workloads? And then that also turns back to a lot of things around, okay, what does it mean for my hypervisor, my VMs, and then how does that help me accelerate containers? So all of these modernization initiatives, it kind of spurred a little bit from artificial intelligence, but it’s really permeating all aspects of IT and not just new apps, but also looking back to existing applications.

But the big challenge that every CIO and every CEO cares about is around cybersecurity, right? That’s job one that has to be secured. And one of the fascinating things, particularly as it gets back to data and artificial intelligence, now you’re talking about not just great new potential for business, but also new potential for not only bad actors, but potential for new areas of exposure, for how you’re leaking sensitive data or your most important or your vital data out into the world.

The challenge for IT decision makers or CIOs is how do I help my business accelerate its adoption of new innovations, such as artificial intelligence, but do it in a way that is secure and doesn’t add additional risk to our own operations. You have your known, and then you have the unknown, and I think that’s really what it’s about. As you start to adopt new technologies or integrate new initiatives, it’s all about, okay, how do we take this unknown and turn it into a known, so we can ensure that we are putting the right level of security and controls on top of it and doing the right things we can to best protect our business.

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