Moving beyond speculation to data. This keynote presents analysis and insights from our comprehensive Q1 2025 market study spanning 200+ organizations. We'll examine how companies are actually implementing modern enterprise data architectures to support analytics and AI initiatives, revealing current adoption rates, investment patterns, and expected outcomes. Building on our 2023 study's foundation, which tracked early investments in modern data architectures, we'll survey the evolution of data platforms by adding vector databases, knowledge graphs, and semantic layers. The session will cut through market hype to present evidence-based results and insights on which architectural patterns—from data fabric to data lakehouse—deliver measurable value and how organizations successfully balance AI innovation with enterprise data management and governance requirements.

Speaker: John O'Brien

John O’Brien is the Principal Advisor and Founder of Radiant Advisors. He has a unique perspective on enterprise data and analytics strategies and architecture gained from over 35 years of experience as a practitioner, vendor CTO, and industry analyst. As a recognized thought leader in data strategy and analytics, John has been publishing articles and presenting at conferences in North America and Europe for 20 years. His knowledge in designing, building, and evolving modern data platforms and teams brings real-world insights to each role and phase within a data program. Today, John provides advisory services and mentoring for CIOs/CDOs and data architects to guide their companies in meeting the demands of next-generation information management, architecture, and emerging technologies.