Analytics is often where data problems become impossible to ignore. Dashboards go stale. Reports take too long to produce. Different systems refuse to line up.
Governance, meant to provide clarity, instead slows everything down. These issues don’t just frustrate business users. They undercut trust in analytics and block the path to AI.
Day 1 of CData Foundations 2025, focused on Data & Analytics is coming up September 17th. Presenters will show precisely how leading organizations are tackling stalled reporting cycles, scattered systems, and governance bottlenecks. Sessions highlight practical strategies to modernize analytics environments, unify access, and deliver reliable insights without starting from scratch.
The challenge with analytics today
Most enterprises still juggle a patchwork of legacy and modern platforms. Finance data lives in one place, customer data in another, and operational data somewhere else.
Teams spend hours reconciling results manually. Reports are delayed, leaders lose confidence in the numbers, and compliance is left to clean up afterward. The costs add up quickly.
The urgency has only grown as enterprises lean into AI. A recent MIT study found that 95% of generative AI pilots have failed to deliver measurable business impact, often because the underlying data isn’t reliable or accessible. The next wave of struggle won’t be in experimentation, but in proving real outcomes.
That’s why organizations are addressing analytics foundations now: to close reporting gaps, strengthen governance, and ensure their data can stand up to both executive scrutiny and new AI-driven workloads.
What you’ll learn
NCCO is moving a century-old business from paper and legacy ERP into cloud-ready analytics. Red Wing Shoes rebuilt its data architecture to support a major point-of-sale rollout across hundreds of retail stores.
You’ll also hear how data leaders are approaching governance and architectural choices in the age of AI. In “Talk, Build, Govern,” Argano’s Michael Docteroff and CData’s Field CTO Rahul Pahuja will share how enterprise teams are deciding between native pipeline tools, semantic layers, and fully managed platforms as they modernize their stacks.
And in “Powering True Data Democratization,” BearingPoint’s Sven Wilbert will explain how a semantic layer approach simplifies access, enforces governance, and enables distributed teams to work with confidence.
These sessions complement customer case studies by offering field-tested strategies for designing resilient architectures that can support both analytics and emerging AI use cases.
Partner perspectives: Two views from Databricks
Day 1 features two sessions that highlight Databricks’ perspective on modern analytics.
First, FinThrive and Databricks demonstrate how a semantic layer can serve daily reporting needs while preparing the same data for AI-driven workloads.
Later, Databricks’s ingestion expert expands on the theme, framing the “last mile” of data strategy and showing how enterprises can connect diverse data sets to deliver faster insights.
These sessions show how Databricks approaches the dual challenge of serving analysts who need trusted dashboards and enabling teams building toward new data experiences.
Real-world data stories
The heart of Day 1 comes from practitioners who are living these challenges.
A Senior Staff Product Manager, a Senior Director of Delivery for Data & Analytics, and a Senior Manager of Data Engineering will describe how their teams unified systems, rebuilt pipelines, and improved reporting at scale.
You’ll also hear how NCCO, best known for its GuestCheck pads, is now unifying ERP databases into Snowflake to support new digital products like cloud-based food labeling. Red Wing Shoes will share how it redesigned its data flows to keep a new point-of-sale system in sync across hundreds of stores, ensuring retail teams have timely and accurate reporting.
Each story highlights the same point: analytics has to work across complex environments if it’s going to deliver reliable insight.
Join us for the full picture
Analytics is where the foundation for AI takes shape. It begins with solving everyday problems that slow down insights and weaken trust.
Join us September 17 for CData Foundations: Data & Analytics Day and learn from peers, partners, and product leaders who are making analytics faster, more reliable, and ready for the future.
Register now
