By Cathy Rose A. Garcia, Editor-in-Chief
GOVERNANCE is key for enterprises looking to incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) in their operations, according to US-based integration and automation company Boomi.
David Irecki, Boomi chief technology officer for Asia-Pacific and Japan, said more businesses are adopting AI and AI agents, which brings challenges for security and compliance.
“AI governance will be forming a much bigger part of the AI conversation with businesses,” he said in an interview with BusinessWorld last week.
Mr. Irecki noted that last year, many organizations have been laying the groundwork and putting in frameworks around how AI should be useful for their businesses, implementing data management strategies to understand the data quality across their organizations.
“Research analysts tend to say between 60% and 70% of an organization’s data is dark. It’s siloed. So, if you’re thinking for AI, it needs access to data, but it also needs data liquidity. Because of these silos, how can you use a technology like Boomi to connect all these systems together and to get AI the right data at the time?” Mr. Irecki said.
“I see 2025 as companies being able to now really use AI and challenge it, and see what outcomes they get, and hopefully if they do really well with it, the next challenge will be AI governance, which we’re getting ready for,” he added.
Mr. Irecki said a governance framework allows enterprises to essentially register their AI agents and observe them.
“(First, you) register all the agents within your organization and understand what do you have, what is operating,” Mr. Irecki said.
“(It will) provide observability… What data are they (AI agents) accessing? What are the results because as a business the last thing you want is for one of your employees to upload data that they shouldn’t or for the AI to provide data that it shouldn’t.”
Boomi has already deployed over 25,000 AI agents for its customers. It recently launched AI Studio that provides organizations with a secure and vendor-agnostic way to design, govern, and orchestrate AI agents.
It also provides full AI agent lifecycle management in order to ensure integration, governance and control.
Meanwhile, Boomi is seeing increasing interest from enterprises in the retail, insurance and hospitality sectors in the Philippines.
“For us, the year’s been very fruitful in the Philippines, especially if I pick out three sectors. Retail, insurance and hospitality have been areas we’ve been getting customers in,” Mr. Irecki said.
He said enterprises want to get a better understanding of their customers to eventually drive more revenue.
For instance, retail enterprises that use Boomi can have a chatbot that can be augmented with AI.
“The AI is able to provide better recommendations and better support. And the reason being because if an organization has used a technology like Boomi to provide that foundation, the AI is now able to be connected to your systems, so it understands the customer,” Mr. Irecki said.
Asked what the main challenges to greater AI adoption for enterprises in the Philippines are, Mr. Irecki said it all comes back to data.
“For here in the Philippines specifically, it’s those legacy systems, the data silos, it’s the skills, and it’s just general infrastructure and internet connectivity,” he said.
For enterprises embarking on an AI-driven digital transformation, Mr. Irecki said putting in an ethical framework first is key.
“Understanding your data, proving its quality and its liquidity, is key because those two things set the foundation for AI. But equally, you don’t necessarily have to do a ‘big bang’ approach,” he said.
Enterprises should also consider if the cost of running AI solutions is worth the efficiency gains.
