Exclusive: Denodo on why real-time data is key to AI success

When it comes to data, speed is no longer a luxury - it's the battleground. That's the view of Ravi Shankar, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Denodo, who believes organisations must rethink their data strategy to stay relevant in an AI-driven world.

"Real-time access is pivotal," he explained, during a recent interview. "Nobody is willing to wait for the data nowadays."

Shankar, a tech veteran with stints at Oracle and Informatica, said Denodo is helping organisations tackle three core challenges: accessing data fast, provisioning it securely for AI and enabling cross-functional teams to self-serve insights.

"We need data fast enough to react much more quickly," he explained.

"But the way most companies go about it - physically moving data into a central place - doesn't work anymore. It's slow, costly, and ultimately a barrier."

Instead, Denodo promotes what it calls "logical data management." Rather than shifting data around, the platform provides a unified view of information directly from its source. "We advocate leaving the data wherever it is and accessing it virtually," Shankar said. "It's faster, the data is fresher, and it uses fewer resources."

The need for immediacy isn't just about dashboards. Shankar described real-world applications where milliseconds matter.

"Let's say a flight is delayed," he said. "The crew, ground staff, food catering teams - they all need to be notified. With Denodo, an airline can connect all its systems and deliver that information instantly, in real time."

He recounted his own experience flying with a major Japanese airline that uses Denodo's platform.

"Each crew member had an iPad. I asked about my vegan meal, and they were able to check in real time whether it was loaded. That's the power of a unified view."

Shankar was keen to stress that modern data users - particularly business leaders - don't care where the data lives. "As a CMO, I want to know which campaigns are working. I don't care if that data comes from Salesforce, my account-based marketing tool or somewhere else. I just need it to be trustworthy and fast."

It's that attitude that Denodo hopes to empower. The platform acts as an abstraction layer, allowing IT teams to modernise infrastructure behind the scenes without disrupting business users. "We give business users the speed and data they need, while IT gets the flexibility to evolve," he said.

And as AI continues to reshape enterprise priorities, Shankar sees Denodo playing a central role.

"We've just announced our DeepQuery capability," he said.

"Traditional systems would respond to a query and stop there. Now we apply reasoning - if the answer doesn't fully meet the question, the system refines the query and digs deeper."

He likens it to ChatGPT creating a holiday itinerary from public data, but going a step further: "If I ask about a campaign I ran last week, ChatGPT wouldn't know. But with our approach - retrieval augmented generation - we can combine internal data with language models to provide meaningful responses."

AI isn't just layered onto Denodo's platform - it's baked into it. Shankar said Denodo uses AI internally to automate tagging, suggest security rules and generate metadata descriptions.

He's also clear that performance must never come at the cost of governance. "One customer told us they had 50 teams asking for AI data access," he said. "They couldn't just hand it over. Denodo enforces fine-grained security - so if you're accessing data from Japan, you only see Japan's data."

That extends to row- and column-level controls, with real-time dynamic data masking. "You might be able to see customer names and addresses, but not their date of birth or national ID," Shankar explained.

This approach is resonating across sectors. Denodo is seeing rapid uptake in financial services, manufacturing, government, and healthcare, with customer growth in regions from Asia to Europe.

While he declined to name most customers, he shared that large mining firms in Australia and major banks globally are among those using the platform. "The data ecosystems they deal with are incredibly complex," he said. "We provide one interface for all their data - structured, unstructured, fast or slow."

When asked what sets Denodo apart from traditional data integration players, he was clear: "We don't try to monopolise the data. The traditional vendors want to bring it all into their own technology - like playing to the centre of a chessboard. But that just creates bottlenecks."

Instead, he said Denodo's philosophy is built on agility. "If you ask our customers for one word to describe us, it would be flexibility or agility. That's how we enable self-service and empower fast action."

To illustrate, he drew a vivid analogy: "Imagine someone's having a heart attack, and you need medicine. Do you cycle one mile to the pharmacy, or drive a car? Denodo is the car."

Looking ahead, Shankar sees the future of data management defined by what he called "data anti-gravity" - the principle that data belongs at its source, not in some artificial central repository.

"The rate at which data is generated in source systems is faster than our ability to centralise it," he said.

"It's like throwing a ball into the air. It's going to come down."

With AI evolving rapidly, that kind of real-time, distributed data access will be critical. "AI can't succeed without quality data delivered fast," he said. "The companies that run fast, win fast."

Asked what Denodo means, Shankar revealed its roots lie in Galicia, Spain: "It means 'brave' - to be fabulous in the face of whatever comes."