AI and Data in the Real World: Key Lessons from the Mid-Year Enterprise Tech Conference Circuit
So far in 2025, a key theme has emerged consistently across the most influential data and cloud events, including AWS in Sydney, Hamburg, DC and NYC, DTW Ignite, UN Open Source Week and Gartner Sydney: AI implementation is adaptable to a range of use cases and organizational needs. Whether your use case requires a specific type of AI, a human touch, or has real-world impact, this year’s major tech events reinforced how to take advantage of AI’s versatility, allowing your organization to unlock the full potential of its data.
Here’s what you missed if you couldn’t attend these events.
The Many Forms of AI: From Traditional to Agentic
Whether it’s improving customer experiences, accelerating operational efficiency or transforming humanitarian aid and public health, the message is clear: organizations that understand how to harness and scale AI effectively and responsibly will be the ones to lead.
That process starts with understanding the right type of AI for your use case. Wim Stoop, Director of Product Marketing at Cloudera, emphasized this point at DTW Ignite. Different types of AI have varying uses, and knowing how to leverage each type will drive real value for businesses and customers.
Stoop differentiated between four categories of AI:
- Traditional AI focuses on performing specific, predefined tasks. Using algorithms and pre-programmed rules, traditional AI is great for internal efficiencies, such as network optimization and anomaly detection.
- Generative AI creates new content based on the data it’s trained on. This often has stronger customer-facing use cases, including generating personalized offers and chatbot responses.
- Multimodal AI processes information from multiple data types simultaneously, enabling smarter in-house support for use cases including anomaly and fraud detection using multiple data streams.
- Agentic AI operates autonomously. It can learn from data and execute complex tasks independently, enabling use cases like autonomous ticket resolution or resource reallocation.
A key emerging theme from this year’s events is that smart AI use is a focus for organizations in 2025—effective AI implementation starts with usability and choosing the right type of AI for your case.
Bringing a Human Touch to AI
How do we ensure that AI produces the most accurate, useful results possible? During DTW Ignite’s “AI at Scale for Business: From Data Chaos to Intelligent Action” panel, Stoop highlighted that AI is only as effective as the data that fuels it. AI integrations must be scalable, built with strong data fundamentals and consolidated across the organization. To make that happen, AI requires a human touch—as people and professionals, we must ensure data integrity, handle governance, and combat bias within AI platforms.
The “Data to Decisions: How Cloudera AI Powers Agile Crisis-Response at Scale” talk at Gartner Sydney, led by Domenic Brasacchio, Senior Account Director at Cloudera, took this point further. He emphasized that humans have the responsibility to maintain data quality as the baseline for trustworthy AI outcomes. Fostering AI literacy across teams and creating a culture and infrastructure that supports and supervises AI will work towards achieving this.
How AI is Already Making a Difference in the Real World
At AWS Hamburg, Jaidev Karthickeyan, Global Head, Value Advisory at Cloudera, discussed AI's real-world application. Using Mercy Corps as an illustrative example, he showed how AI can be a tool for impact, resilience, and saving lives—empowering their humanitarian and public health missions.
At the event, Karthickeyan showcased Mercy Corps’ AI-powered response system, which improved field intelligence and decision-making under resource-constrained conditions. By centralizing what was once fragmented research data and optimizing compute capacity while facing spotty connections out in the field, AI met their urgent need for contextualized, applicable and action-ready intelligence.
Examples like this highlight how AI can be a tool for impact, resilience and as applicable, lifesaving efficiency. Further, the lessons learned here can be applied to any use case—the ability to creatively apply AI to strained processes will allow enterprises to more easily reach goals. As such, AI is quickly becoming an invaluable tool for any business looking to overcome a history of roadblocks that slow down growth or efficiency.
Cloudera’s Role in Democratizing AI
Cloudera’s presence at major enterprise tech events this year has reinforced our position as a trusted thought leader in AI and data innovation. From event stages to collaborative sessions, our teams have demonstrated how Cloudera’s hybrid, open data platforms continue to meet the evolving needs of enterprises and mission-driven organizations alike. Sergio Gago, CTO at Cloudera, reinforced the significance of this message at UN Open Source Week: Cloudera leads in helping organizations manage and make the best use of their data.
Whether enabling global scalability, ensuring end-to-end governance, or transforming data into real-time, actionable insights, Cloudera remains focused on helping organizations unlock the full potential of their data. As the conversation around AI deepens, Cloudera stands ready—shaping the future with solutions that are open, secure and built for impact.
Continue the Conversation: Join us at an Upcoming Event
Interested in joining the conversation and learning more about how to effectively utilize AI and data in the real world? Click here to see where we’ll be and how to join us at any of these upcoming events:
- AWS Summit Mexico City: Aug. 6
- Big Data London: Sept. 24-25
- Big Data Paris: Oct. 1-2
- Gitex 2025: Oct. 13-17
- AWS re:Invent: Dec. 1-5
Or join us at an EVOLVE25 event near you to connect with industry visionaries, data and AI experts and your peers to explore the impact of accessible data and AI across industries.