OpenText World: 8 Takeaways from Mark Barrenechea's Keynote
No business or human will be spared from this new AI ontology.
![Key takeaways from OpenText World Key takeaways from OpenText World](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt10e444bce2d36aa8/blta2cd4261ab7bb35f/6537c30eb0835f3c40b6e730/Takeaways.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
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First and foremost, OpenText Cloud is a data cloud, said OpenText’s Mark Barrenechea.
“We we’ve spent 30 years focusing, continuously innovating through all these data types into the OpenText Cloud,” he said. “We ingest documents, video, voice, images, collaboration records, archives, assets, cases, contracts, service desk, configuration management items, FTP and IoT. The OpenText Cloud is a data cloud and I wanted to highlight some of our customers’ largest data sets that we’re managing today in the OpenText Cloud.
“Vertica, a customer with multiple nodes, is running 96 trillion rows in our cloud. With Legaltech, we have a single case that is over a billion pages managed to secure document review, analytic analysis, correlation analysis, finding all the intricacies of this email to this email, to this keyword, finding that proverbial needle in the haystack.”
When it comes to AI, ChatGPT 3.5 is a “breakthrough moment” on the consumer side, Barrenechea said. Enough computing power and data have resulted in “the child speaks.”
“And our view is let a thousand models bloom,” he said. “I think the quote is, ‘Let a thousand tulips bloom, but let a thousand models bloom.’ We believe that language models, and their trainings and their embeddings, and the prompt engineering on top of them, will be diverse. There will be a model for leukemia. There will be a model for auto manufacturing. There will be a model for certain therapeutics. There will be a model for ocean climate. Let a thousand models bloom.”
OpenText has spent 35 years working on automation, Barrenechea said.
“We created large and trusted data sets together, and now we need to bring in learning models and algorithms,” he said. “Automation and a data platform are prerequisite bits for an AI strategy. No automation? No AI. No data? No AI. The two work together, and in some cases you’ll find you’re not AI-ready because you need to do some more consolidation on automation. You may find you’re not ready for the right parts of AI because you need to do some data cleanup. Automation and data platforms are prerequisites for an AI disruption. This shift is massive, and the froms and tos, the automation to AI are deeply clear. This is an internet of clouds. It’s no longer just the internet; it’s a fabric. We’re going from data to learning models. We’re going from coding to prompts, and clicks to conversations. And this is the new vernacular.”
OpenText Aviator, announced during OpenText World, is based on more than 10 years of innovation, Barrenechea said. Aviator allows organizations to act on their data, make decisions and evolve with intelligent tools that learn over time.
“We publish today our decade-plus history of innovation in AI,” he said. “We do not arrive at this breakthrough moment where the child speaks by just showing up. We’ve been here for a decade-plus working on facial recognition, auto classification, adaptive classification, capture, machine learning (ML), etc. We have over 371 patents in the AI area and our patent portfolio overall for 3,400 key innovations that authorities have recognized as distinctive thoughts and innovations. We’ve been working on this platform and these ideas for over a decade, and we’ve arrived where the child speaks, and now that child is going to learn.”
In addition, numerous customers are using OpenText’s AI technologies, such as Citrix, which is using its AI technologies against information threats.
For OpenText, generative AI isn’t its destination, but a “waypoint along the way,” Barrenechea said.
“Our destination is artificial general intelligence (AGI).” he said. “We are an AI company. I’ll be so bold to say we’re the Nvidia of software on the road map that we’re going down at present. We intend to deliver AGI. That’s metadata vectorization, IoT and robotics, natural language processing (NLP), learning models, data trust and security, things that are generative, things that are predictive, and focusing on orchestration of algorithms and agents. And the destination is AGI … will actually make the choice for you. I think that’s what makes our species as humans a little uncomfortable. We’ll trust the computer to do the calculation, we’ll trust the machine to help guide the decision, we might even trust that machine to make the decision. But we still have our choice. AGI will bridge that gap to choice. So we’re committed to all these capabilities to get to AGI, and that’s the destination. This is a decade-long journey. “
The enterprise AI opportunity is “simply massive,” Barrenechea said.
“Some economists report that over the next 10 years, 25% of productivity will be raised, roughly $5 trillion in cost of productivity,” he said. “Some economists predict this will generate $4 trillion plus in new growth added to gross domestic product (GDP). The impacts to society, to governments, to innovation, to way of life, and climate and education, is profound.”
During his keynote, Barrenechea unveiled OpenText Aviator Flight School.
“You give us a million documents, and we’ll hand you back a URL in two weeks ready for AI,” he said. “We’ll upload a million documents into our private cloud. We’ll turn on a Content Cloud 24.1 with Content Aviator and Search Aviator, and we will turn it into metadata. We’ll create embeddings. We’ll vectorize it for you. We’ll give you back a full language model vertex … ready for your prompt tuning. So you want to start your AI journey? We’ll get you up and running guaranteed in two weeks with Content Cloud, Content Aviator and Content Search. We are ready to help you start your journey.”
OpenText is the first signatory of the Canadian Code of AI and is introducing the AI Bill of Obligations, Barrenechea said.
“We’re going to make obligations,” he said. “Transparency builds trust. There’s no difference between AI and ethical AI. They’re the same thing. Software design starts with value-based design. Your first click, your first prompt, your first line of code, you have to think of your values because as soon as you include something, you’ve excluded something. We are deep in learning and being a shining light on the hill around starting with our values when we write software. It’s your data; it’s not our product. Respect intellectual property, images and likeness. Security is essential. We are dedicated to accurate, verifiable AI results through our labs, and having the automation and information right next to the answer for those verifiable results. And just an appeal to be a good citizen and promote the common good.”
OpenText is the first signatory of the Canadian Code of AI and is introducing the AI Bill of Obligations, Barrenechea said.
“We’re going to make obligations,” he said. “Transparency builds trust. There’s no difference between AI and ethical AI. They’re the same thing. Software design starts with value-based design. Your first click, your first prompt, your first line of code, you have to think of your values because as soon as you include something, you’ve excluded something. We are deep in learning and being a shining light on the hill around starting with our values when we write software. It’s your data; it’s not our product. Respect intellectual property, images and likeness. Security is essential. We are dedicated to accurate, verifiable AI results through our labs, and having the automation and information right next to the answer for those verifiable results. And just an appeal to be a good citizen and promote the common good.”
Artificial intelligence (AI) is more of an ontology than a technology, and OpenText is focused on helping companies realize and maximize what AI can offer them to improve business outcomes.
That’s according to Mark Barrenechea, OpenText CEO and CTO. He gave the opening keynote at this week’s OpenText World in Las Vegas. The conference is titled “Welcome to the AI Revolution.”
OpenText’s Mark Barrenechea
“I think AI is much beyond a technology; it’s an ontology,” he said. “It’s an ontology for new creativity, for new uses of data, new forms of trust. And it’s not rhetoric. Every role, every organization, every industry, everything will change. No business or human will be spared from this new ontology. And if we think of it just as the technology versus an ontology, we will lose this expressive power. I love this quote from CS Lewis written many, many decades ago: ‘It’s not like teaching a horse to jump higher and higher, and better and better; let’s turn this creature into a winged creature.’ And I think this is what the AI revolution can do for us. It will change everything. Let’s change into winged creatures from this new ontology.”
OpenText World: Big Year with Micro Focus Acquisition
It’s been a big year for OpenText. It has “massively” expanded its information management vision with its acquisition of Micro Focus, Barrenechea said. Micro Focus is an enterprise software provider that helps customers accelerate their digital transformations.
“We’ve massively expanded our information management vision, from modern work, business fabrics, experience, the developer security and information, infrastructure and apps automation, with the OpenText Cloud in the center and information management as our North Star,” he said at OpenText World. “We are going to work really hard to integrate all this automation to bring you an information management integrated cloud. This is where we’re focused. We spent time and deep thought of what we think the definition of information management is. And we’ve spent the last 35 years automating in these domains, our business clouds and creating some very large data sets along the way.”
It’s been a big year for OpenText in terms of innovation, Barrenechea said.
“I wanted to go into the engineering bucket and pick out just 20 of the big innovations,” he said. “[Those include] core content and SaaS, a SaaS version of enterprise content management, deep integration to Google Workspace, and [AWS] Control Tower in the business fabrics. We’ve expanded our business network to include the midmarket to now bring in NetSuite and Microsoft Dynamics. On the experience side, we’ve moved it to a cloud platform and opened it up for you to build applications on top of that VR API services. For the developer, no-code testing, and soon you will see a no-code developer as well.”
See our slideshow above for eight key takeaways from Barrenechea’s OpenText World keynote.
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