Breaking Down Silos: The Power of Integrated, Open AI Platforms

AI’s nearly limitless potential is offering increasing opportunities for businesses, but it’s also presenting some unprecedented challenges. With the advent of AI, companies are producing and collecting more data than they know how to handle. Without a strategy in place, companies quickly start to struggle with data silos. 

About 48% of business leaders implementing AI in their organizations have raised concerns about data silos and integration difficulties. Here’s how integrated, open AI platforms can help solve data silos and offer you other business benefits in the process.

AI data silos: A common (and solvable) problem

While AI implementation offers many advantages, many companies are facing challenges with siloed AI data. Businesses are pulling in data from all sorts of sources, and these sources are usually separate, leading to data staying in silos. There’s value in the data, but because a company’s AI systems are fragmented and not integrated together well, the data doesn’t get used across an AI system. 

AI data silos are inefficient and cause issues throughout your organization. Without integrated data, employees are limited in the data they can easily access, which reduces collaboration and hinders decision-making. If your AI is training models, the data silo could give your model biased or incomplete results. 

Data silos are unfortunately common with closed AI enterprise solutions. Although companies invest in closed AI solutions for compliance reasons, they end up with siloed AI data because of the limited interoperability and heavy proprietary restrictions. Closed AI solutions also limit innovation and lock enterprises into rigid ecosystems.

To break down silos and get the most out of your AI data, your company needs ownership, control and flexibility in your enterprise AI.

How open, integrated AI platforms give you a competitive advantage

Modern enterprises demand future-proof, extensive AI solutions to stay competitive. To get the most out of their data, companies need an open AI platform that integrates seamlessly with their existing infrastructure. Not only does this help to decrease implementation costs, but an integrated AI platform also can be  customizable to fit your unique business needs. 

An open AI ecosystem comes with several other advantages, too. Companies can rest easy with enterprise-grade security and observability — without sacrificing any flexibility. An open AI system also improves interoperability and data sharing, speeding up time to market.

Open, modular AI stacks: The key to flexibility and scalability

A cookie-cutter AI solution likely won’t meet your business needs. Instead, opt for an open, modular AI stack that can give you AI data that’s as unique as your business. With an open AI stack, the choices and customization options are endless. You can swap out curated, pre-built components with upstream alternatives. You can then seamlessly integrate third-party tools for enhanced AI capabilities.

If you want to go a step further, build your entire IT strategy around composable AI architecture and tailor it to your enterprise-specific needs. You’ll avoid vendor lock-in, and the modularity of composable AI architecture offers flexibility and scalability for future business growth. A modular AI stack gives you the freedom of choice of components, while also giving you high-level visibility to break down data silos and coordinate your data.

Security, compliance and governance in an open AI world

Adopting AI  is a delicate balancing act. On one hand, you want the generative AI’s benefits, like collaboration and accelerated work. However, you also need control and security to protect proprietary assets. It’s vital to keep your sensitive information out of competitors’ hands. A fragmented AI strategy hinders the oversight needed to maintain data security and compliance.

Companies can strike the right balance between accelerated work and security by using an enterprise-grade security solution built specifically for open AI platforms. These solutions can help ensure data integrity, regulatory compliance and observability in integrated AI environments. You can balance transparency with safety with techniques and tools such as:

• Access control 
• Identity management
• Careful AI modeling and logging
• API-based model access
• Synthetic data sharing to enable collaboration while protecting real proprietary data

Integrate AI for a future-proof, scalable future

Investing in an integrated, open AI platform is good for your business, now and down the road. Enterprise-level, open, extensible platforms enable continuous innovation and adaptation. The flexibility of integrated AI platforms helps companies avoid vendor lock-in and create their own technology roadmap. With freedom of choice, your AI platform ensures long-term AI agility. Enterprises can adopt open AI platforms to drive secure, compliant innovation that offers ROI quickly as well as brings long-term value.

Using SUSE AI for confident, secure AI integration

Successful AI integration starts by breaking down AI data silos. Start treating your data like the asset it is by making sure itis integrated into your workflows, is well protected and is being shared and used across teams. 

Organizations can use their data to innovate confidently and securely with AI platform integration. AI platforms, such as SUSE AI, give you the ability to use curated, validated open source components and tools If needed you can enrich the stack with third-party components and install and run third-party components to offer exchangeable solutions. SUSE AI  is a secure, enterprise grade and trusted platform that meets your specific needs and preferences. Best of all, you’ll start breaking down data silos to unlock the full potential of all the AI data you’re generating. 

To learn more about key AI trends, opportunities and strategies for staying ahead in 2025, read Forrester’s AI Predictions for 2025.