Trusted Data for AI Agents: How to Trust Your Data From Source to Agent | Jessie Smith, Ataccama

My laptop stops working. I open a ticket. Then I spend the next hour explaining what device I have and everything I’ve already tried. Most of us have lived some version of that. It’s exactly where my conversation with Shawn DeWane, Sr. Solution Account Executive at Zendesk, started. I caught up with Shawn at Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo in Orlando on The Ravit Show.AI in IT is moving past answering questions. It’s starting to actually get the work done. We talked about what that shift looks like for IT teams day to day, and why it helps both the employee asking for help and the team on the other side.We also got into the part a lot of IT leaders worry about. Their teams are already stretched. So how do you start seeing value from AI without adding another layer of work?Then a question I think more teams need to ask. If ticket volume and response times were the scorecard for years, what should success look like once AI is handling a real share of the work?And to close, Shawn shared the biggest change he expects in IT and employee service over the next year, and how Zendesk is helping organizations get ready for it.My view: the laptop example says it all. When the system already knows who you are, what you’re using, and what’s been tried, the whole experience changes. Context is what makes AI useful here.Thank you Shawn and the Zendesk team. The full interview is live now on The Ravit Show.#data #ai #gartner #gartnersymposium #itsm #employeeexperience #zendesk #theravitshow

I’m at Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo in Orlando and I was super excited to chat with John Arnold, Head of Product Marketing at Creatio on The Ravit Show. They just put out The 2026 Enterprise Automation Trends report, and the message is clear. Enterprises are done experimenting with AI. Now they have to rebuild how work actually gets done.Here are my takeaways from our conversation:70% of organizations are already past experimentation. The next step is redesigning workflows so agents are part of day to day work, with clear KPIs and measurable impact. Leaders want results now.Only 9% expect AI agents to significantly cut headcount. 89% expect agents to augment people or create new roles. Agent supervisors, agent trainers and AI operations leads are already starting to show up in org charts.17% of organizations are AI Adoption Leaders. What sets them apart is how quickly they redesign the work around AI, with humans in the loop and decisions you can trace.Strong governance builds the confidence to scale. Audit trails, human approval checkpoints and clear visibility into what agents decide turn trust into part of everyday work.The report also points to CRM becoming the hub where sales, service and marketing agents hand work off to each other, and no-code with AI becoming the default way new apps get built.My take: every conversation I’ve had in Orlando this week comes back to the same question. How do we run the business with agents, and who is accountable when an agent makes a call? John’s answers were practical and grounded, which is exactly what leaders need right now.Thank you John for a great conversation. Full interview coming soon on The Ravit Show.Check out the report here in the comments.#data #ai #gartner #gartnersymposium #agenticai #automation #creatio #theravitshow

Everyone is talking about agents. Far fewer people are talking about what it takes to actually run them!!!! That’s what I wanted to dig into with Kevin Cochrane, CMO at Vultr, when we sat down at Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo in Orlando for The Ravit Show.We started with the basics. What do enterprises really need from their infrastructure to support agentic AI? And what does that mean for CTOs, CIOs, and CISOs who now have to scale it?Then we got into neoclouds. The cloud landscape is shifting fast, and more buyers are looking at alternative providers. Kevin shared what’s changing and what buyers should keep in mind before they make that move.We also talked about open source. Enterprise services from Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI are seeing huge adoption. So where do open models fit in the enterprise now?And we closed on data. Privacy and residency concerns keep growing. If you’re using internal data to power agentic experiences, there’s a lot to think through when picking a cloud provider.My view: the model gets most of the attention, but infrastructure and data decisions are what decide whether agents ever make it out of the pilot stage. Kevin made that very clear.Thank you Kevin and the Vultr team for a great conversation. The full interview is live now on The Ravit Show.#data #ai #gartner #gartnersymposium #agenticai #cloud #vultr #theravitshow

Agents are only as trustworthy as the data they can reach. At Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo in Orlando, I sat down with Erica Reuter, RVP of Solution Engineering, US Public Sector at Snowflake, for The Ravit Show. In the public sector, governed data is the job. So when agents start querying it, there is very little room for error.We started with the #1 mistake companies make when agents touch governed data. Then we went a step further: what actually happens if agents keep querying and the governance layer breaks down underneath them?We also talked about what joint Boomi and Snowflake customers are asking for as they move agents from pilots into production. This is where the integration layer and the data platform have to work as one.To close, Erica shared where she sees the next wave of strategic partnerships forming, as the agentic AI ecosystem consolidates in some places and fragments in others.Every conversation I had at Symposium came back to the same point. Governance has to sit between the agent and the data from day 1. Erica brought a grounded view of what that looks like when the stakes are high.Thank you Erica and the Snowflake team for a great conversation. The full interview is live now on The Ravit Show.#data #ai #gartner #gartnersymposium #boomiambassador #snowflake #boomi #theravitshow

I’m at Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo in Orlando and I was super excited to chat with Michael Bachman, Head of Emerging Technologies at Boomi. Every enterprise is deploying AI in many forms right now. Very few of them fully trust what that AI is actually doing. That gap is where our conversation started.Here is what we covered:-- Why trust in AI is lagging so far behind adoption, and what is really behind that gap-- The #1 mistake companies make when they give agents access to systems of record-- What is at stake for the business, and especially the CISO, when agents are not visible, governed, and attributable-- How CIOs should think about bringing their own model into an agent platform, and keeping control over where their data stays-- And my favorite part: what in agent governance is overhyped right now, and what is not getting enough attentionMy take: the agent conversation has moved fast this year. Building an agent is the easy part now. Knowing what it touched, who it acted for, and being able to prove it is what decides if it ever gets to production. Michael brought a very practical view on how to get there.Thank you Michael and the Boomi team for a great conversation.#data #ai #gartner #gartnersymposium #agentic #aigovernance #boomi #boomiambassador #theravitshow

Most AI conversations in regulated industries end at the same question. Where does my data go? At Masters Summit in Salt Lake City, I sat down with Matt Lowe, Chief Strategy Officer at MasterControl, and he had a clear answer. hashtag#ad hashtag#MasterControlPartnerHere’s what stood out:Customers were genuinely excited. The keynote announcements around Advanced Quality Management (AQM) got a strong reaction, and the open town-hall-style Q&A gave customers a direct line to leadership. You don’t see that at many vendor events.The Hackathon is real. Engineering teams work around the clock on ideas that come straight from customer feedback, and the winning features make it into released software within days. Not months. Days.AI stays inside the walls. Every AI workload, including open-source LLMs and custom machine learning models, runs inside MasterControl’s own system boundary. Customer data never leaves and is never used to train external models. In life sciences, that’s the difference between an AI pilot and AI in production.That foundation is also what lets them move fast. Because the AI is built in-house and secure from the start, MasterControl can adopt new AI developments quickly without compromising compliance or customer safety.I’ve spent the week talking to quality and manufacturing leaders here. Trust keeps coming up as the thing that decides whether AI gets used at all. This conversation explains how one company is earning it.Full conversation is live now. Watch it and tell me what you think.#MasterControl #MCMastersSummit #AllTogetherNow #ai #lifesciences #qualitymanagement #manufacturing #theravitshow

How do you take over a company that had the same CEO for 25 years? I asked Dave Edwards, CEO of MasterControl, on The Ravit Show, exactly that at Masters Summit in Salt Lake City. #ad #MasterControlPartnerSome context on why this conversation matters. MasterControl bootstrapped to $100M+ in ARR before it ever raised a Series A. It has since crossed $200M. That almost never happens in enterprise software.Dave is six months into the job. Here’s what we covered:- What changes, and what shouldn’t, when a long-time founder era ends and a new CEO steps in- What surprised him most in his first six months, and his priorities heading into 2027- What’s next for the company. IPO, another raise, acquisitions. I asked all of it- How AI is changing quality and manufacturing in life sciences, how customers are actually using MasterControl’s AI today, and how you make AI trustworthy when regulators are watching- What customers are telling him at this year’s Summit, and the meaning behind the “All Together Now” themeIt’s rare to get a CEO this early in the role, talking this openly about growth, AI and what comes next.Full conversation is live now. Watch it and tell me what stood out for you.#MasterControl #MCMastersSummit #AllTogetherNow #ai #lifesciences #qualitymanagement #manufacturing #theravitshow

Every life sciences company wants AI right now. Very few have figured out how to trust it.I sat down with Alex Kaplunov, CTO of MasterControl, on The Ravit Show, at Masters Summit in Salt Lake City to talk about exactly that. #ad #MasterControlPartnerHere’s what stood out:- AI in life sciences is moving fast, but the bar is higher here than anywhere else. When your product ends up in a patient’s hands, “good enough” isn’t good enough.- MasterControl is ISO/IEC 42001 certified. That’s the international standard for managing AI responsibly. For a regulated industry, it means the AI comes with governance and controls built in from day 1.- Alex walked through the AI already inside the MasterControl platform and what makes it different from generic AI tools. It’s built for quality and manufacturing teams who have to answer to auditors.- And his advice for life sciences leaders starting with AI is practical, grounded and worth a listen if you’re making that call this year.Full conversation is live now. Watch it and tell me what you think.#MasterControl #MCMastersSummit #AllTogetherNow #ai #lifesciences #qualitymanagement #manufacturing #theravitshow

Ever inherited a REXX script and nobody who wrote it is still around? That was one of the examples Matt Whitbourne, VP of Product Management & Design - IZOT at BMC on The Ravit Show, walked me through in New York while we got into the tech behind "Agentifying the Mainframe."A few of the workflows coming in BMC AMI Agentics for Ops and Data: 1. An agent that investigates CPU spikes 2. Plain-language explanations of existing REXX automation 3. Probable-cause insights for Db2 issues 4. An AI Reorg Advisor that explains its Db2 reorg recommendations 5. A SQL Workload Advisor that suggests tuning actionsThe pattern behind all of them is simple. Detect the issue, pull together the evidence, explain what matters, and recommend a next step that stays within governed limits.Matt also explained why bolting a general-purpose AI onto ops or database data falls short. The agent needs specialized knowledge, live operational context, and the shared BMC AMI Platform underneath it handling orchestration and governance.If you work hands-on with mainframe ops or Db2, this one is for you. Full interview below.#mainframe #agenticai #db2 #bmc #aiops #aiagents #devops #theravitshow

Everyone wants AI on the mainframe. Very few want to hand it the keys. I sat down with Tarun Chopra, SVP & GM at BMC Software, in New York on The Ravit Show, the next week BMC announced BMC AMI Agentics, a new product line as part of their vision for "Agentifying the Mainframe."What stayed with me:Trust comes before autonomy. BMC's 2026 Mainframe Survey found willingness to let AI complete actions in problem diagnosis dropped from 32% to 23% in a year. Preference for AI recommendations rose from 36% to 41%. Tarun sees that as teams being careful about where trust belongs. I agree with him.Generic AI pointed at mainframe data won't get you far. The agent needs decades of mainframe expertise, your team's own knowledge, and what's happening in the system right now.The real bottleneck is people. A lot of mainframe knowledge sits with a handful of experts. Agents that investigate, explain and recommend let the rest of the team use that knowledge.And customers are clear: the mainframe is staying. They want it to be part of their enterprise AI plans.Full conversation below. Where do you stand: recommendations first, or ready to let agents act?#mainframe #agenticai #ai #bmc #enterpriseai #aiagents #technology #theravitshow