Why Enterprises Aren’t Ready for AI—And How to Fix It
Webinar Speaker: Fern Halper, TDWI VP Research, Senior Research Director for Advanced Analytics
Date: Thursday, September 18, 2025
Time: 9:00 a.m. PT / 12:00 p.m. ET
New research from TDWI reveals a tough truth: while AI investments are accelerating, most organizations are struggling to deliver value. Fragmented data environments, brittle pipelines, and governance gaps are blocking the path to generative AI, agentic AI, and real-time intelligence. Only 8% of respondents in a recent TDWI survey stated that they were “completely ready” for AI and are scaling multiple AI applications on their current architecture.
Join TDWI VP of Research Fern Halper as she unpacks the findings from TDWI’s June 2025 report The Data Foundation for AI, followed by a candid fireside chat with leaders from Microsoft and Fivetran. Together, they’ll explore what it really takes to modernize your architecture, automate data movement, and scale AI across the enterprise without compromising trust or speed. Topics include:
- Important components for a successful AI data foundation
- Results from the latest TDWI research on data foundations for AI
- Best practices for bridging the readiness gap and accelerating AI success
Guest Speakers
Kelly Kohlleffel
Senior Global Director, Partner Sales Engineering
Fivetran
Kelly leads Global Partner Sales Engineering at Fivetran, working with technology and consulting partners to solve real-world data integration challenges using the modern data stack. He’s spent his career at the intersection of data infrastructure and go-to-market strategy, previously leading the GTM team at Hashmap (acquired by NTT DATA), and earlier supporting data platform adoption at Hortonworks and Oracle. A recognized voice in the data community, Kelly hosts the Fivetran Data Drip podcast, where he talks with engineers and leaders about how they build and scale modern data systems.
Josh Caplan
Partner Director of Product for Microsoft OneLake in Fabric
Microsoft
Josh Caplan is the partner director of product for Microsoft OneLake in Fabric. His team focuses of defining and delivering a single SaaS data lake as a service for the entire organization. Prior to his role at OneLake, Josh played a pivotal role in shaping Power BI, leading the development of developer experiences, Power BI Premium, SQL Server Analysis Services, and Azure Analysis Services. Josh also spent several years on the Bing team, where he leveraged his expertise in business intelligence to drive insights from Bing's massive data.
Date: September 18, 2025
Time: 9:00 am PT
Fern Halper, Ph.D.