Interview with Jim Liddle, Chief Innovation Officer of Data Intelligence and AI at Nasuni, on their Unified File Data Platform

In the rapidly evolving world of technology, organizations are being encouraged to modernize their storage strategies, with a particular focus on consolidating unstructured data to make it more accessible and AI-ready. This shift is expected to unlock the true potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in 2025 when widespread enterprise adoption of Multimodal AI is anticipated.

Nasuni, a leading enterprise storage solutions provider, has been at the forefront of this transformation. The company has recently initiated Research & Development (R&D) projects to integrate agentic and multimodal AI capabilities into their platform. This enhancement aims to boost automation, data management, and user interaction, positioning Nasuni as a key player in the AI-driven future.

Jim Liddle, Chief Innovation Officer, Data Intelligence and AI at Nasuni, is at the helm of this transition. With a background in tech industry, including coding, development, and founding Storage Made Easy, Liddle brings a wealth of experience to Nasuni's product team. His role focuses on data intelligence and AI, working alongside the SVP Product to help lead the development and execution of the company's data intelligence and AI strategies.

The first step in making data AI-ready is to assess the state and spread of an organization's data. Nasuni has addressed this challenge with the launch of Nasuni IQ, an innovation designed to unlock data silos for AI services. This tool provides data intelligence capabilities to help enterprises manage, assess, and prepare their unstructured data environment for AI.

As up to 80% of a company's data is unstructured, making it more difficult to organize, analyze, and integrate into AI workflows compared to structured data, this focus on unstructured data is crucial. To overcome the challenge of legacy, hardware-based storage systems that create fragmented silos of data, organizations should consolidate their unstructured data to make it more accessible.

Recent months have seen Nasuni expand its integration with Microsoft 365 Copilot, enabling Nasuni managed data to be fully accessible and operational with Microsoft Search and Microsoft 365 Copilot. This significant expansion of data access for Microsoft's AI services is a testament to Nasuni's commitment to AI readiness.

As we enter the new year, a robust data management strategy will be essential as AI continues to advance into unstructured data. Companies that strategically curate and manage their data assets will be the most successful with AI. Data scientists remain essential for tasks like normalizing data sets, validating AI outputs, tackling sophisticated statistical modeling, and addressing AI bias and edge cases within unique business contexts.

However, it's worth noting that the specifics of preparing data for successful AI model training and deployment are yet to be fully understood. What is clear, though, is that a robust data management strategy, focused on making data AI-ready, will be key to unlocking the full potential of AI for enterprises.

A survey conducted by Nasuni found that half of firms will prioritize AI investments over the next 18 months. Agentic AI, with its focus on specific tasks that leverage organizational data autonomously, is expected to have a huge impact on the enterprise in 2025. To ensure these investments yield the desired results, it's crucial for organizations to prioritize a robust data management strategy, starting with consolidating their unstructured data. The final step in making data AI-ready is to strengthen and tighten its security.

In conclusion, as AI continues to evolve, a data-centric approach will be essential for enterprises to leverage the benefits of AI. Nasuni's focus on AI readiness, through initiatives like Nasuni IQ and its integration with Microsoft 365 Copilot, positions the company as a leader in this space. As organizations look to the future, a robust data management strategy will be vital to unlock the true potential of AI.