Across The Tech Pond Exclusive: CTERA’s Data Intelligence Platform Tackles Enterprise AI’s Biggest Challenge

The promise of artificial intelligence in the enterprise has hit a sobering roadblock: 95% of generative AI pilots never make it to production. But according to CTERA CEO Oded Nagel, the problem isn’t the AI technology itself-it’s the quality of the data being fed into it.

In an exclusive Across The Tech Pond interview with hosts David Marshall (VMblog), Antony Savvas (IT Europa), and Neil Hughes (Cyber News/Tech Talks Daily), Nagel revealed how organizations are pointing AI tools at file systems riddled with duplicate data, outdated versions, and sensitive information that should never be processed. The result? Garbage in, garbage out-and millions of dollars in failed AI investments.

The Three Waves of Data Intelligence

CTERA, an established global file system leader serving enterprises and government agencies across North America and Europe, has identified three critical waves that organizations must navigate to unlock AI’s true potential:

Wave 1: Unified Data Access – Gaining global control over data distributed across on-premises infrastructure, edge locations, remote workers, and multiple cloud environments. “This is really a big mess right now for these enterprises when they want to manage their data,” Nagel explained.

Wave 2: Data Security and Control – Once unified, data requires granular permission management, protection mechanisms, versioning, and metadata management-especially challenging when dealing with petabytes of data and billions of files.

Wave 3: Data Intelligence – The newest frontier where CTERA is leading transformation. “Once the data is actually unified and secure, organizations can unlock its value,” Nagel emphasized. “One of the main assets of the organization is what they have actually in their data.”

Introducing the CTERA Data Intelligence Platform

At the heart of CTERA’s latest innovation is its Data Intelligence Platform, developed in-house over the past 18-24 months. The platform addresses the critical challenges enterprises face when implementing AI:

• Scalability and Performance – Moving beyond the “AI is magic” misconception to handle real-world data volumes
• Cost Management – Efficient data processing that doesn’t break the budget
• Security and Permissions – Ensuring file system permissions apply to AI-generated answers, with full encryption and access controls
• Data Consolidation – Pulling data from disparate sources including SharePoint, OneDrive, legacy NAS systems, and more

“We don’t develop LLMs-we connect to LLMs,” Nagel clarified. “But all the platform itself, the brain of the system, is fully developed at CTERA using our code.”

The platform leverages CTERA’s proven global file system technology, which has been managing real-time data changes and complex permissions for years, and applies those same capabilities to AI workloads.

Strategic Rollout and Market Expansion

CTERA is taking a phased approach to market introduction. The Data Intelligence Platform is first being offered to existing customers-hundreds of large global enterprises with hundreds of locations and petabytes of data-as an extension to their current deployments. However, the platform also supports other data sources and isn’t limited to CTERA’s core offering.

“Later on we’ll see how the market evolves, and then we will definitely be thinking to also offer it as a standalone,” Nagel noted, adding that the company wants everyone to eventually leverage CTERA’s global file system technology.

Impressive Growth Trajectory

The numbers tell a compelling story of CTERA’s market momentum:

• 35% year-over-year growth for the past three years
• 80% growth in Asia-Pacific markets including Australia and Singapore
• 60% growth in the government sector in North America alone
• $80 million Series B funding from PSG, one of the leading VCs in the US, raised 18 months ago

The company has doubled its headcount over the past 2-3 years, making key executive hires across marketing, North American operations, and European leadership. CTERA also recently announced strategic partnerships with Cloudian and continues to work with major players including Hitachi, HPE, IBM, Microsoft Azure, and AWS.

Government Sector Leading AI Adoption

In a surprising revelation, Nagel shared that the government sector is moving fastest in AI adoption. “We are in discussion at least with probably five to 10 departments inside the government and we already started like a few POCs there,” he said.

The driver? Government agencies are recognizing they need to move to hybrid cloud environments without compromising security-exactly what CTERA’s platform enables. “Ten years ago they said ‘no I need to have a closed garden, I can’t move data to object storage,’” Nagel recalled. “Now they understand the world is changing on a daily basis. They need to be more open and innovative but not compromise on their security.”

CTERA expects to see more government agencies deploying these types of solutions throughout 2025.

Managed Services and Marketplace Availability

Beyond on-premises deployments, CTERA offers a managed service already being used by large enterprise customers. The company recently launched its offerings through Azure Marketplace and Amazon Marketplace (within the past two weeks of the interview), and has already closed significant deals through Azure Marketplace.

Additionally, CTERA offers CTERA Insight, a SaaS analytics service that allows customers to send audit logs and file system logs for analysis, presenting dashboards that help organizations understand what’s happening in their networks.

The Path Forward: Data Fabric for AI

When asked about the company’s future, including potential IPO plans, Nagel remained focused on execution. “My focus is to make sure that the company is growing, we innovate, and we provide the best solution to our customers,” he said, noting his management team has been working together for an average of more than 10 years.

CTERA’s vision centers on what they call “the data fabric for AI”-providing the ability to move data from disparate locations quickly and securely to data lakes, where it can be analyzed using CTERA’s platform or third-party solutions.

Key Takeaways for Enterprises

Nagel left the audience with a critical insight: “Ten years ago when we talked to a company, they said, ‘Oh, we have a lot of data. We have 100 terabyte. We have 500 terabyte.’ Guess what? Now 100 or 500 terabyte is not really big, right? We’re dealing with petabytes of data.”

As unstructured data volumes explode, organizations face mounting challenges around security, scale, performance, accessibility, collaboration, and workforce productivity. CTERA’s platform allows enterprises to modernize without disrupting existing workflows-keeping familiar permissions, network shares, and daily operations intact while adopting new technologies that enable faster growth, improved efficiency, and reduced costs.

For organizations struggling with failed AI pilots and wondering why their AI initiatives aren’t delivering results, the answer may not be better algorithms-it might be better data management.

Watch the full Across The Tech Pond interview with CTERA CEO Oded Nagel to learn more about how enterprises can overcome the data quality crisis holding back AI adoption.