Cloudera CTO Sergio Gago Outlines the Enterprise AI Playbook

The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence has created a unique paradox in the corporate world: AI is highly valued and widely discussed, yet remains largely untapped. According to Cloudera’s 'State of Enterprise AI in 2025' survey of over 1,500 IT executives, only 21% of organizations have fully integrated AI into their core business processes. The primary obstacles are not the desire to scale, but fundamental infrastructure gaps, rising compute costs, and fragmented data ecosystems. In an exclusive interview, Cloudera’s Chief Technology Officer, Sergio Gago, revealed that the cost of accessing computing capacity for AI training has surged, with 42% of leaders now citing it as a major barrier compared to just 8% last year. Furthermore, AI models and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) techniques require seamless access to all organizational data across cloud, on-premise, and edge environments. Without unified and high-quality data, AI systems remain limited in accuracy and context, hindering trust and widespread adoption. To overcome these hurdles, Gago advocates for a structured enterprise playbook. Organizations must first establish clear, ROI-driven goals and clean their structured and unstructured data. From there, building a flexible, secure, and compliant infrastructure from day one is essential. Starting with high-impact, low-risk use cases—such as automated IT helpdesk agents and DevOps assistants—allows enterprises to secure early wins, demonstrate clear value, and build the momentum needed to safely scale AI.