Data fatigue meets AI frenzy: Gartner Analysts urge trust, not tech, as the North Star

At the 2025 Gartner D&A Summit in Mumbai, analysts Ehtisham Zaidi and Aura Popa called for a radical rethink of how enterprises approach AI — shifting focus from speed and hype to trust, governance, and human-centric transformation.

They peeled back the layers of AI hype to reveal what’s really happening inside organisations: fatigue, fear, and a desperate need for clarity. “We are trapped in endless cycles of data preparation and crazy expectations. This relentless era of technological transformation is draining morale even faster than it’s draining resources,” said Zaidi. 

With generative AI (GenAI) now ubiquitous and CEOs betting big on its potential, data leaders are being tasked with delivering AI-ready infrastructures, trust-rich ecosystems, and real-world business value — often without roadmaps, and sometimes while battling organisational inertia.

The Big Idea: AI isn’t a race — it’s a transformation

Drawing a powerful metaphor, the keynote likened the AI revolution not to a sprint, but to the moon landing — a journey that didn’t just put a man on the moon, but transformed life on Earth with breakthroughs like GPS, microelectronics, and yes, memory foam.

The message was clear: AI will do the same to the enterprise. But to get there, businesses must rewire not just their tech stacks, but also their people, processes, and philosophies.

Trust is the new data currency

One core message repeated throughout: Trust is no longer a luxury — it’s a prerequisite.

Popa cautioned against “AI-washing” — vendors slapping AI labels on products without real intelligence, and emphasized that misplaced trust in bad data is more dangerous than the data itself.

To combat this, Zaidi and Popa championed “trust models” — frameworks that assign trust ratings to data based on lineage, risk, and value. These models help organisations align governance with context, rather than chase the impossible goal of perfect data.

“You may be exhausted. You may be scared. But this is the best time to be in data and analytics,” asserted Zaidi. 

From governance to ‘freedom in a box’

Governance, often seen as a brake on innovation, was reframed as a speed enabler, if done right. The duo spotlighted Toyota’s “freedom in a box” approach, where business teams are empowered to build data products within guardrails on value, compliance, and security.

This kind of trust-based governance doesn’t stifle innovation — it accelerates it, they argued.

Storytelling as a strategic muscle

No data initiative succeeds unless its value is understood. That’s why Zaidi underscored the need for storytelling as a business function. Whether it’s a museum executive using foot traffic data to curate exhibits or city officials reducing emergency response time by 85% using analytics — math, narrative, and salesmanship must converge.

The trust stack: From tech stack to OPS-tacles

The keynote outlined a strategic shift from tech-stack thinking to a “trust stack” that infuses governance into FinOps, DataOps, and PlatformOps. Here, active metadata plays a critical role — enabling data observability, governance automation, and cost management.

Gartner’s analysts urged organisations to prioritise data readiness over data quality, and reusability over one-off use cases, building ecosystems rich in modular data products.

Behavioural change: The final frontier

Tech alone won’t bring transformation. The hardest, and the most necessary journey, is behavioural change.

Referring to cultural inertia as the No.1 roadblock to AI success, Popa and Zaidi encouraged leaders to stop blaming organisational culture and start reshaping it through habitual value measurement, tailored data literacy, and role redesign.

“If your principle is to show value, make it a habit to measure impact. Don’t wait for an invitation to the table. Bring a folding chair,” said Zaidi. 

The evolving role of the CDAO and AI-readiness

A major highlight of the keynote was the candid acknowledgment of the growing complexity, and importance, of the Chief Data & Analytics Officer (CDAO) role in an AI-driven world.

According to Gartner’s survey, 54% of CDAOs are the first in their organisation to hold the role. That brings both opportunity and tension, especially as AI becomes a strategic prize eyed by other C-suite leaders. Zaidi urged CDAOs to step up and claim their stake in the AI conversation.

“Your role may be relatively new, but you are essential to the success of AI in your organisation. It’s time to put the ‘I’ in CDAO,” Zaidi pointed out. 

AI-readiness, meanwhile, was framed not as a static benchmark but a dynamic journey. From data foundations to adaptive data ecosystems, organisations must invest in modular, open architectures and measure success by data reuse, governance maturity, and trust models.

“It won’t be the companies with the flashiest tools that win,” Popa emphasized, adding, “It will be the ones who build sustainable, trusted ecosystems — and help their people change with it.”

The call to action: Shift from anticipating AI to executing It

In closing, the keynote brought the message full circle. The future isn’t something to wait for — it’s something to build, starting now.

“It’s not the organisation with the most dashboards that wins. It’s the one that runs on trust — and knows how to tell the story of why that matters,” they concluded.