Recently, the 8th Southern Information Conference was grandly held in Guangzhou. The conference was themed "AI Era・CIO's Opportunities and Challenges", bringing together numerous industry elites and technology pioneers to deeply explore the paths and breakthroughs for enterprise digital transformation under the AI wave. As a technological leader the future of Data&AI company, KeenData was invited to attend, comprehensively showcasing its technological achievements and rich industry practices in the AI infrastructure (AI Infra) field. At the conference, Yin Zhiguo, General Manager of KeenData's South China region, delivered a keynote speech, deeply analyzing how the Data&AI integrated system becomes the core engine for enterprise digital transformation in the AI era. KeenData was awarded the 2025 CIO Preferred Digital Service Provider.
AI Era: Enterprises Need Data&AI Integrated Foundation
In the digital economy era, data has become the fifth major production factor alongside land, labor, capital, and technology, with its amplifying, overlapping, and multiplying effects on traditional production factors becoming increasingly prominent.
At the national level, continuous emphasis is placed on data infrastructure construction: the 2021 "14th Five-Year Plan" explicitly proposed "activating data element potential"; the 2022 "14th Five-Year Digital Economy Development Plan" set goals for establishing a preliminary data element market system by 2025; in 2023, the National Data Administration was established to coordinate and promote data resource integration and development utilization. Under the dual drive of policy dividends and technological transformation, enterprise digital transformation has entered a new stage of "AI deep penetration".
Yin Zhiguo pointed out in his speech "Consolidating Data Foundation is the Prerequisite for Building Enterprise AI Applications - Building a New Generation Data&AI Integrated Intelligent Foundation System Based on KeenData Product Matrix", the rapid development of AI technology is reshaping enterprise data processing logic - from "data supporting business" to "AI activating data value". However, the large-scale implementation of AI applications cannot be separated from high-quality, scenario-based "data fuel", and the data foundation is precisely the core engine that provides this fuel. "If AI applications are compared to speeding cars, the data foundation is the stable chassis and efficient fuel supply system." He emphasized that the biggest challenge enterprises face today is how to handle more than 80% of unstructured data (such as audio-video, images, and other multimodal data) and achieve full-process integration from data collection and processing to AI model training and inference.
KeenData Lakehouse's "Three Unifications" and All-in-One Engineering
Looking back at the development history of data processing technology, enterprise data infrastructure has undergone three key upgrades:
Traditional IT Era: Primarily using relational databases like Oracle, focusing on structured data, adopting "single machine + silo architecture", only meeting GB-level batch processing needs;
Cloud Computing and Big Data Era: Semi-structured/unstructured data proportion increased to over 50%, Hadoop ecosystem and cloud-native architecture emerged, achieving PB-level distributed processing, but data storage and AI applications remained separated;
AI Era: Unstructured data proportion exceeds 80%, forcing technological architecture to evolve toward "LakeHouse", requiring support for unified storage of multimodal data, high-dimensional matrix computing, batch-stream integrated processing, and built-in AI native capabilities to achieve seamless integration of "data governance + model training-inference".
KeenData Lakehouse is precisely the Data&AI integrated intelligent foundation born to meet AI era demands. This system is centered on "Three Unifications": Unity Format achieves standardized storage of multimodal data, Unity Processing supports real-time computing and batch processing collaboration, Unity Catalog ensures full lifecycle management of data assets. By integrating full-chain capabilities including data integration, preprocessing, analysis exploration, machine learning, generative AI, and data governance, KeenData Lakehouse builds an "All-in-One" closed-loop system, transforming data from "scattered islands" to "intelligent assets".
Practice and Recognition: Industry Scenario Implementation & Authoritative Endorsement
Under the major background of data element marketization, enterprise digital transformation is no longer just a technical issue but requires building a collaborative and efficient ecosystem. Yin Zhiguo introduced that KeenData, based on national policies and industry development, with "construction, service, management, operation" as the overall approach, uses the basic platform as the carrier to build a data space management and operation system, promoting multi-party participation of data suppliers, users, and data development service providers. Under the premise of protecting data rights and interests of all parties, it promotes multi-source data fusion development and utilization, improves "data supply and usage" efficiency, promotes bilateral and multilateral consultation among participants, facilitates trusted circulation and compliant sharing of data elements, and drives the release of data element value.
"Construction": Clarify goals and technical routes, build basic platforms based on KeenData Lakehouse, integrate massive multi-source data;
"Service": Provide one-stop data services, establish business models and collaboration mechanisms, improve "data supply and usage" efficiency;
"Management": Unified standards and specifications, ensure data security and compliance, clarify rights, responsibilities, and data rights of all parties;
"Operation": Attract multi-subject participation, promote data supply-demand matching and trusted circulation, drive the release of data element value.
As a technological leader the future of Data&AI, KeenData's technical strength has gained widespread industry recognition. The platform breaks through the traditional architecture that separates data and AI, pioneering AI-in-Lakehouse technology to unify lakehouse engines, OLAP data governance, and AI technology, forming a streamlined and efficient All-in-One technical solution. The self-developed multimodal computing engine completes data cleaning to result analysis in a single pipeline, multiplying GPU inference throughput, combined with KMI inference acceleration, model quantization, and Unity Catalog to achieve cross-modal intelligent governance.
KeenData Lakehouse
Not only that, KeenData is a national-level specialized, refined, distinctive, and innovative key small giant enterprise, winning provincial and ministerial-level first prize for scientific and technological progress, and also receiving authoritative industry recognition - selected as a Gartner data foundation platform recommended vendor and IDC lakehouse technology recommended vendor; its products have passed the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology Fifth Research Institute's software product trusted excellence certification, and demonstrate deep technical strength with more than 170 Data&AI technology invention patents.
Three-Step Checklist for CIOs
Facing the core topic of "CIO's Opportunities and Challenges in the AI Era", Yin Zhiguo summarized: "The core task of CIOs is to transform fragmented data resources into systematic AI capabilities. KeenData Lakehouse platform is precisely designed to solve this problem - through a unified technical foundation, making data governance more efficient, AI applications more implementable, and business innovation more sustainable."
As of now, KeenData has provided Data&AI infrastructure construction for nearly 200 large domestic and international organizations across 20+ industries, including Fortune 500 companies such as Sinopec, China Unicom, China Telecom, CITIC Bank, AEON Group, FAW Group, and SANY Heavy Industry, all based on KeenData Lakehouse platform.
In the future, as the data element market continues to mature, KeenData will continue to deepen Data&AI basic software R&D, guided by the philosophy of "building data infrastructure for all industries and serving high-quality development of the digital economy", helping more enterprises seize opportunities in digital transformation in the AI era, achieving the leap from "data-driven" to "intelligence-led".
