Last week Colt was a sponsor, exhibitor and speaker at the 2023 Garter Symposium in Barcelona, Europe’s biggest gathering of CIOs and senior IT and tech leaders. The theme of the week was artificial intelligence (AI), reaching from the opening keynote, Colt’s own conference session and almost everything in between.
It felt like every session or stand had some link to the potential of AI, rather than focusing on real-world proven deployments. Wherever you land on the topic, it’s clear that the use cases are almost limitless. The general messaging across the week was that AI is here to supplement and extend human potential, enhancing what we are capable of rather than replacing us.
The topic of our session was how to build an agile digital infrastructure that will enable AI, whatever the end use case ends up looking like for your business. We covered some of the different approaches and architectures, along with which security risks to consider.
At the end of the session, we left attendees with some key takeaways to consider in the short term.
Security
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Do the security basics and do them now
A large percentage of security breaches come from issues that could have been patched months or even years ago, so look across your estate and do the basics. At the same time, embrace zero-trust as this will be key for securely managing any AI use case.
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Horizon scanning for regulatory and threat landscape change
The threat landscape is changing rapidly, closely followed by the regulatory world. Keep a close eye on both of these areas as they will need to be a key part of your planning.
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Have a roadmap and keep an open dialogue with your staff
Set out where you want to get to with AI and be open and honest with your people about it. At the same time, expect that they’ll already be using public AI tools so set policies and training in place to manage it, rather than look to block access.
Infrastructure
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Adopt a private, secure, low-latency network underlay to connect your data ecosystem
Whatever the ‘winning’ use case ends up being, we know that it’ll have a significant impact on bandwidth. So build an infrastructure foundation that will give you the agility you need today and in the future.
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Without the network and CISO team on your AI journey, you can’t guarantee the outcome
On stage, we had people from innovation, security and network planning. These are the three teams that will need to work in close partnership in your business to make a success of any AI rollouts.
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Public vs private
Imagine waiting on an AI chatbot but being repeatedly faced with the ‘three dots’ of a pending response. For any applications that require a slick and responsive user experience, carefully plan the network requirements as public internet may not be able to offer the standards your customers expect.
If you’d like to find out more about our session at Gartner, or our advice on building infrastructure ready for AI, just get in touch.
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