WHITE PAPER

The Data Integration Advantage:

Building a Foundation for Scalable AI
Authored by
Girish Pancha, Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer
Arvind Prabhakar, Co-Founder, Chief Product Officer

www.streamsets.com
 The Data Integration Advantage: Building a Foundation for Scalable AI

Introduction
For the last decade or so, data has been the As AI initiatives become more ambitious and scale
business world’s darling. Curious why your across organizations, the demand for connected, 72% of technology executives say
customers are unhappy? Look at the data. quality, governed data increases in parallel. that should their companies fail to
Wondering what your next market should be? The Modern data integration is the critical backbone achieve their AI goals, data issues
data will tell you. Want to find out who your best- for successfully scaling AI. And with 72% of Fortune are more likely than not to be the
performing employees are? You know what to do. 500 business leaders planning to incorporate reason.t three years.
generative AI within the next three years1, it’s time
Now, there’s a (not so) new kid in town that’s
to get data integration right. CIO Vision 2025:
dominating the conversation: AI. Generative AI has
Bridging the Gap Between BI and AI,
ignited imaginations across the world. As the first In this piece, we’ll explore: MIT Technology Review Insights
widely available application that lets anyone talk
to an AI about anything — and get coherent, even • The state of AI in the enterprise
clever answers — AI has moved from the abstract
• Challenges of scaling AI
to an everyday reality.
• How modern data integration can
But while AI may be overtaking public discourse, remove AI scaling challenges
data is (of course) not going anywhere. That’s
because the success of AI projects is not simply a • Moving beyond data integration for
even better AI results
result of innovative algorithms or machine learning
models; it fundamentally relies on mass quantities Read on to learn about data integration’s vital role
of accessible, reliable data. AI, ML, and analytics
in the quest to scale AI.
output are meaningful only if the data they operate
on is valid and observable across the whole
lifecycle — sample data for exploration, test and
training data for experimentation, and production
data for evaluation.

1
Beyond Hypotheticals: Understanding the Real Possibilities of Generative AI, Insight

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 The Data Integration Advantage: Building a Foundation for Scalable AI

The State of AI Maturity of AI uses cases across industries

in the Enterprise Functional categories Consumer Energy

Financial
institutions
Health care
Industrial
goods
Insurance Public sector Tech Telco

Supply chain and network

42 39 40 41 39 38 39 36 37
For years, enterprises have been using AI in (e.g., inventory optimization)
pockets around the enterprise. It’s made great Enterprise (e.g., HR analytics) 43 38 37 41 40 38 39 36 36
strides in:
Manufacturing
(e.g., predictive maintenance)
40 37 38 37 39 37 36 37 42
• Improving customer experience
Marketing and customer
through chatbots and virtual assistants experience (e.g., personalization)
40 38 38 37 38 37 37 38 38

powered by natural language Products and offers

42 39 35 38 37 36 36 38 39
(e.g., pricing)
processing (NLP) that provide instant,
personalized customer service 24x7. Risk (e.g., fraud detection) 45 39 40 41 39 40 37 37 37

• Optimizing supply chain processes by Overall 42 37 38 38 39 37 36 37 37

predicting demand, optimizing delivery 0 100
routes, and identifying potential Source: BCG Digital Acceleration Index global study, 2022
disruptions.
found that only 11%
​​ of companies have realized
• Identifying when machinery is likely to significant value from AI initiatives, and most have
fail (predictive maintenance) to carry
78% of enterprise technology
failed to scale AI beyond pilots.2
out maintenance before a breakdown leaders said that scaling AI and
occurs. Their 2022 digital acceleration index — a survey of machine learning use cases to
2700 companies — paints a picture of AI initiatives create business value is the top
• Expediting research and development stuck in the early stages.3 priority of their enterprise data
processes, reducing the time to market strategy over the next three
for products and services. However, there were ‘leaders’ in scaling and
years 4xt three years.
generating AI value among this group. BCG
• Detecting fraud, evaluating credit found that one of the primary characteristics of
CIO Vision 2025:
risk, and anticipating market changes those leaders was making “data and technology
Bridging the Gap Between BI and AI,
with machine learning algorithms that accessible across the organization, avoiding siloed MIT Technology Review Insights
identify patterns in historical data. and incompatible tech stacks and standalone
databases that impede scaling.”
However, most enterprise AI usage is limited to 2
Artificial Intelligence, Ready to Ride the Wave?, BCG
3
very specific use cases and departments. BCG Scaling AI Pays Off, No Matter the Investment, BCG
4
CIO Vision 2025: Bridging the Gap Between BI and AI,
MIT Technology Review Insights

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 The Data Integration Advantage: Building a Foundation for Scalable AI

The Challenges
of Scaling AI
While there are many challenges in scaling AI — control, model updates, and performance
cost, lack of talent, trust and ethics — data quality tracking.
and availability are arguably the biggest hurdles.
In fact, 72% of technology executives surveyed in a Today, most organizations handle these processes
recent MIT study say that should their companies manually. They create manual workflows around
fail to achieve their AI goals, data issues are more retraining data, use new datasets, identify
likely than not to be the reason,5 and 61% of boundary conditions or fringe predictions that
respondents in an IBM survey said their data is not don’t match the norm, and then make the best
ready for AI.6 guess as to the right time to retrain the model.
Clearly, this is an imprecise science that can lead
AI models rely on a constant influx of high-quality to subpar outcomes.
data for training and inference. But, organizations
often grapple with data quality issues such as Given these challenges, a solid data foundation is
incomplete and inaccurate data. Another problem essential for AI/ML models to function properly
is integrating relevant data from different sources over the long term. The ability to easily access and
across the organization, such as mainframes, share high-quality data — real-time or batch —
customer relationship management (CRM) across the organization securely is essential for
systems, enterprise data warehouses and data building an AI-powered application that’s relevant,
lakes, business intelligence platforms, external accurate, and scalable
systems, third-party data, and more.

To make matters even more complex, AI/ML

models are not static; they require ongoing
monitoring and maintenance to ensure
performance and reliability. Monitoring for
concept drift, model decay, and performance
degradation is essential. Regular updates and
retraining may be necessary to adapt models
to evolving data patterns or changes in the 5
CIO Vision 2025: Bridging the Gap Between BI and AI,
operational environment. As such, organizations MIT Technology Review Insights
must establish processes to manage version 6
AI in the Enterprise, IBM

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 The Data Integration Advantage: Building a Foundation for Scalable AI

How Modern Data AI Scaling Challenge How Modern Data Integration Helps

Integration Solutions Data silos Data gets trapped in departmental silos,

legacy systems, and cloud apps in varying
A modern data integration solution will
provide connectors to gather data from
Can Remove AI Scaling formats. This data fragmentation makes
it hard to aggregate the large, diverse
various data stores and infrastructure,
including legacy systems like mainframes.
Challenges datasets needed to train accurate AI
models.
It can then transform disparate data
formats into a consistent, analysis-ready
format.

A recent PWC survey 7 found that the top tech-

Data quality and AI systems rely heavily on vast amounts With data integration, businesses
related challenge for AI is identifying, collecting, of high-quality and relevant data for can automate data cleansing tasks
availability
or aggregating data from across the company, training and making accurate predictions. like handling nulls, deduplication,
ensuring its completeness and accuracy in Data often has issues like missing fields, normalization, and validation. Cleaning the
preparation for use in AI. This was followed outliers, duplicates, inconsistencies, and data used for AI training and decision-
lack of context. Low-quality data leads to making reduces the risk of biased or
closely by making sure all data in AI systems
poor model performance. inaccurate models.
meets regulatory requirements for privacy and
data protection and integrating AI and analytics
Data security & privacy Training data may contain personal and Data integration tools can secure
systems to gain business insights. sensitive information requiring protections data movement with encryption and
like encryption, anonymization, and access anonymize data by masking fields. They
As you upgrade your technology and architecture, control. should be compatible with data access
they suggest focusing on two imperatives: and LDAP tools for extra security.
integration and data. “With technology tools that
help you overcome your data challenges, you Data context AI models rely on metadata like data A modern data integration platform
can achieve much faster (and much more cost- definitions, datatypes, hierarchical ingests and manages metadata to provide
relationships, etc., to function optimally. richer context and meaning to data for AI
effective) operationalizing of AI.”
Lack of context can lead to models.
misinterpretations.
Let’s look at how data integration technology can
help with challenges specific to scaling AI/ML.
Observability, Many AI models, such as deep neural Data integration tools can ensure that
Monitoring, and networks, are considered “black input data used for AI models is reliable,
Explainability boxes” because their decision-making accurate, and representative of real-
processes are difficult to interpret. Lack world scenarios. These tools also help
of interpretability can cause trust issues explainability by providing complete
and ethical questions, especially in highly visibility into where AI model data came
regulated industries or when making from and what changes happened before
critical decisions. Lack of transparency entering the model.
poses challenges for observing and
7
To operationalize AI, reorganize in these three ways, monitoring the behavior of AI models,
PWC which can lead to performance
degradation.

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 The Data Integration Advantage: Building a Foundation for Scalable AI

AI Scaling Challenge How Modern Data Integration Helps

Integration with Existing Infrastructure AI often needs to be integrated with existing systems to Data integration platforms provide tools to easily integrate
be effective. This can be complex and time-consuming, diverse data, allowing AI systems to securely access and
particularly for large enterprises with legacy systems. analyze the needed data while respecting existing IT policies
and systems.

Scalable Infrastructure Scaling AI models necessitates substantial compute Modern data integration platforms facilitate the uniform
resources, especially during the training and inference distribution of data across compute clusters and cloud
phases. The complexity and workload of AI models can vary, infrastructure. This ensures that AI models have the
requiring dynamic allocation and optimization of resources. necessary resources for training and inference. By optimizing
The challenge lies in optimizing the allocation based on data storage, processing, and transfer, data integration
the varying needs of different AI models and managing the solutions let organizations allocate resources more efficiently,
operational costs associated with it. manage costs, and improve the overall efficiency of AI
development.

Governance and Regulation The adoption of AI often raises legal and regulatory concerns, Modern data integration tools are governance-ready. They
particularly regarding privacy, security, and data protection. provide topologies that show organizations how systems are
Businesses must navigate a complex landscape of regulations connected and data flows across the enterprise. A centralized
such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) “mission control” console delivers deep visibility into pipelines,
and ensure compliance to avoid legal consequences and enabling organizations to consistently apply governance
reputational damage. and security controls to create, process, and distribute data
according to policy. They should also integrate with data
lineage, governance, access, and policy control systems.

Cost and ROI Scaling AI involves substantial data storage, processing, and Modern data integration solutions optimize data storage,
transfer costs. As the volume of data grows, organizations facilitate efficient data processing, and minimize data transfer
face the challenge of managing these escalating costs while costs. This allows organizations to focus on innovation and
ensuring the efficiency and effectiveness of AI models. The development rather than operational management. It can
costs are not just associated with hardware or cloud services also minimize data acquisition, storage, processing, and
but also with the operational management of data, such as maintenance costs.
ensuring data availability, reliability, and security.

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 The Data Integration Advantage: Building a Foundation for Scalable AI

Beyond Modern Data

Integration It’sIt’stime
time forfor away
a new new way
to think tointegration
about think about integration
Say hello
Say hello to thetoSuper
the Super
iPaaS iPaas

The right modern data integration solution

provides a solid foundation for scaling your AI
initiatives. It supplies the consistent, quality,
explainable data AI/ML models need for A Super iPaaS finally brings together
A Super iPaaS
application, data,finally brings
APIs, B2B, andtogether
events
reliable and trustworthy results. Other essential
application,
integrations in data, APIs,unified
the same B2B, and events
platform.
components include data governance and access
control solutions, which the right data integration integrations in the same unified platform.
——
solution will support.
It is powerful enough for integration
It is powerful enough for integration
But you can take your foundation to the next level specialists,
specialists, butbut easy
easy enough
enough forfor citizen
citizen
with an enterprise integration platform, which
integrators.
integrators.
adds application, API, B2B, and event integration
—
to data integration. We call this the super iPaaS — It is built for the future of business.
and it ensures that all the data in an organization
is clean, correct, and accessible for AI/ML models. It is built for the future of business.
It establishes a common data structure so AI
systems can use diverse data types and sources.
This super iPaaS will also improve visibility
into how data flows into various AI models and 18 © 2023 Software AG. All rights reserved.

should have:

• Develop anywhere, deploy anywhere • Closed loop app and data integration so • Composable business architecture with APIs
capabilities so teams can work how they organizations can capitalize on past, present, and events that gives your team a flexible set
like and eliminate duplicate efforts and future data with connectivity from apps to of building blocks to deliver faster
analytics
• Central control with distributed execution • Generative AI throughout the integration
for faster time-to-market, simpler compliance, • A unified experience across all iPaaS lifecycle to make the most common integration
and better control of your integration components to simplify learning, managing, activities 10x faster, from creation to
landscape and collaboration across APIs, apps, data, operation
B2B, and events

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 The Data Integration Advantage: Building a Foundation for Scalable AI

Data Integration + AI =
Enterprise-wide Success
As artificial intelligence and machine learning Getting Started
become more pervasive across industries,
If you’re ready to build your foundation for
organizations must build a solid foundation to
scalable AI, the StreamSets platform provides
support enterprise-wide initiatives. Ensuring that
an easy on-ramp. Data-driven organizations
AI leads to results you can trust requires ensuring
like Humana, IBM, GSK, and many more use the
the integrity and consistency of data coming into
StreamSets data integration and transformation
your AI infrastructure.
platform to rapidly deliver high-quality data for
The right modern data integration solution analytics, reporting, and data science.
provides critical functionality to overcome these
Learn more at www.streamsets.com.
hurdles and enable AI success at scale. With a
focus on agility, automation, and observability,
data integration streamlines and optimizes data
flows to deliver high-quality, trustworthy data to AI
models. With the right data foundation,
AI models can deliver continuous value across the
business through accurate predictions, automated
decision-making, and data-driven optimization.

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About StreamSets
StreamSets, a Software AG company, eliminates data integration friction in complex hybrid and
multi-cloud environments to keep pace with need-it-now business data demands. Our platform lets
data teams unlock data—without ceding control—to enable a data-driven enterprise. Resilient and
repeatable pipelines deliver analytics-ready data that improve real-time decision-making and reduce
the costs and risks associated with data flow across an organization. That’s why the largest companies
in the world trust StreamSets to power millions of data pipelines for modern analytics, smart
applications, and hybrid integration.

To learn more, visit www.streamsets.com and follow us on LinkedIn.

StreamSets and the StreamSets logo are the registered trademarks of StreamSets, Inc. All other marks reference are the property of their respective owners.