Starburst Honors Leaders Driving the AI-Ready Enterprise

The News

At AI & Datanova 2025, Starburst announced the winners of its 2025 Data Visionary Awards, celebrating customers and partners advancing the intersection of data and AI. Honorees include S&P Global Market Intelligence, Annalect, Asurion, Arity, OCBC, and PSEG Long Island, along with partners such as AWS, Dell Technologies, Alteryx, and Kubrick. Read the full announcement here.

Analysis

Data as a Catalyst for the AI-Ready Enterprise

The 2025 Data Visionary Awards highlight a market-wide shift toward data-driven AI architectures. Data governance and interoperability are now crucial pillars as businesses grow their AI workloads. theCUBE Research and Efficiently Connected’s Day 0 and Day 1 studies reveal that 70.4% of organizations plan to increase AI/ML spending, and 65.9% are investing heavily in cloud infrastructure modernization.

These data points support engineering executives’ increasing emphasis on operationalizing AI on top of adaptable, federated data architectures. Additionally, according to our Day 2 poll, 59.4% of firms are implementing automation or AIOps to speed up processes, while 61.3% of organizations want to increase their investments in observability. All of this suggests a tendency where the dependability, governance, and visibility of underlying data systems are more important for AI success than model competence.

Federated and Governed Data Define the Next Frontier

The recognized organizations exemplify the convergence of governance, scalability, and AI readiness.

S&P Global Market Intelligence demonstrated how federated access to enterprise data accelerates innovation and responsible AI deployment.
Asurion’s Iceberg-based lakehouse architecture shows how enterprises can build scalable AI foundations without compromising governance.
Arity’s use of mobility data illustrates how applied AI can drive measurable impact in real-world environments like transportation safety.

This reflects a broader market transition from centralized data lakes to distributed data fabrics, all architectures that enable AI to act “where the data lives.” Developers are increasingly favoring open, governed systems that decrease replication and simplify compliance.

Enterprise Challenges and Insights

While the winners embody progress, the broader market continues to face several persistent challenges:

Data fragmentation remains a top barrier, with enterprises operating across multiple clouds (over 60% hybrid or multi-cloud) which complicates AI model access and governance.
Skill gaps persist, with 27.5% of organizations citing this as their primary challenge in cloud-native adoption. Developers often struggle to operationalize federated data pipelines without consistent tooling.
Security and compliance concerns continue to rise as organizations scale AI. 50.7% cite limited security tools and 48.3% note compliance requirements as key barriers to infrastructure protection.
Tool sprawl also threatens visibility; 29% of organizations now use between 16 and 20 observability tools, leading to increased operational overhead and reduced data coherence.

The market insight is clear: enterprises see AI readiness not as a single technology shift but as an ecosystem alignment problem, one that spans people, processes, and data infrastructure.

Developers and the Future of Federated AI Pipelines

More and more developers are working in intricate ecosystems that require observability by design, policy enforcement, and interoperability. With 89.6% of businesses using AI-based development tools and 76.8% of businesses already implementing GitOps, developer processes are changing to become more automated and policy-driven.

This move toward open ecosystem alignment is highlighted by Starburst’s partnership with AWS and Dell Technologies, which aims to give developers the ability to create AI processes across hybrid systems with uniform governance. In this situation, developers bridge the gap between code, policy, and performance to become not only data consumers but also orchestrators of distributed AI pipelines.

Looking Ahead

The 2025 Data Visionary Awards highlight a larger trend in the industry: federated, open, and compliant data foundations will be the foundation of AI-driven businesses. Data platforms like Starburst are transforming from analytics engines into full-scale orchestration layers for AI-native applications as developers continue to integrate automation, governance, and observability.

Anticipate increased ecosystem interoperability (particularly around Iceberg and Trino), stronger cooperation between data engineering and AI operations, and new measures linking data reliability to AI performance in the future. This year’s honored developers and partners are establishing the standard for future developments in AI-ready, controlled, and developer-driven innovation at scale.

Starburst Honors Leaders Who Are Altering the AI-Ready Enterprise

Paul Nashawaty

Paul Nashawaty, Practice Leader and Lead Principal Analyst, specializes in application modernization across build, release and operations. With a wealth of expertise in digital transformation initiatives spanning front-end and back-end systems, he also possesses comprehensive knowledge of the underlying infrastructure ecosystem crucial for supporting modernization endeavors. With over 25 years of experience, Paul has a proven track record in implementing effective go-to-market strategies, including the identification of new market channels, the growth and cultivation of partner ecosystems, and the successful execution of strategic plans resulting in positive business outcomes for his clients.

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