Cloudera is bringing Private AI to data centres
Author: Joe Peck
Cloudera, a hybrid platform for data, analytics, and AI, today announced the latest release of Cloudera Data Services, bringing Private AI on premises and aiming to give enterprises secure, GPU-accelerated generative AI capabilities behind their firewall.
With built-in governance and hybrid portability, Cloudera says organisations can now build and scale their own sovereign data cloud in their own data centre, “eliminating security concerns.”
The company claims it is the only vendor that delivers the full data lifecycle with the same cloud-native services on premises and in the public cloud.
Concerns about keeping sensitive data and intellectual property secure is a key factor in what holds back AI adoption for enterprises across industries.
According to Accenture, 77% of organisations lack the foundational data and AI security practices needed to safeguard critical models, data pipelines, and cloud infrastructure.
Cloudera argues that it directly addresses the biggest security and intellectual property risks of enterprise AI, allowing customers to “accelerate their journey from prototype to production from months to weeks.”
Through this release, the company claims users could reduce infrastructure costs and streamline data lifecycles, boosting data team productivity, as well as accelerating workload deployment, enhancing security by automating complex tasks, and achieving faster time-to-value for AI deployment.
As part of this release, both Cloudera AI Inference Service and AI Studios are now available in data centres. Both of these tools are designed to tackle the barriers to enterprise AI adoption and have previously been available in cloud only.
Details of the products
• Cloudera AI Inference services, accelerated by NVIDIA:
The company says this is one of the industry’s first AI inference services to provide embedded NVIDIA NIM microservice capabilities and it is streamlining the deployment and management of large-scale AI models to data centres.
It continues to suggest the engine helps deploy and manage the AI production lifecycle, right in the data centre, where data already securely resides.
• Cloudera AI Studios:
The company claims this offering democratises the entire AI application lifecycle, offering “low-code templates that empower teams to build and deploy GenAI applications and agents.”
Data and comments
According to an independent Total Economic Impact (TEI) study – conducted by Forrester Consulting and commissioned by Cloudera – a composite organisation representative of interviewed customers who adopted Cloudera Data Services on premises saw:
• An 80% faster time-to-value for workload deployment
• A 20% increase in productivity for data practitioners and platform teams
• Overall savings of 35% from the modern cloud-native architecture
The study also highlighted operational efficiency gains, with some organisations improving hardware utilisation from 30% to 70% and reporting they needed between 25% to 50% less capacity after modernising.
“Historically, enterprises have been forced to cobble together complex, fragile DIY solutions to run their AI on premises,” comments Sanjeev Mohan, an industry analyst.
“Today, the urgency to adopt AI is undeniable, but so are the concerns around data security. What enterprises need are solutions that streamline AI adoption, boost productivity, and do so without compromising on security.”
Leo Brunnick, Cloudera’s Chief Product Officer, claims, “Cloudera Data Services On-Premises delivers a true cloud-native experience, providing agility and efficiency without sacrificing security or control.
“This release is a significant step forward in data modernisation, moving from monolithic clusters to a suite of agile, containerised applications.”
Toto Prasetio, Chief Information Officer of BNI, states, “BNI is proud to be an early adopter of Cloudera’s AI Inference service.
“This technology provides the essential infrastructure to securely and efficiently expand our generative AI initiatives, all while adhering to Indonesia’s dynamic regulatory environment.
“It marks a significant advancement in our mission to offer smarter, quicker, and more dependable digital banking solutions to the people of Indonesia.”
This product is being demonstrated at Cloudera’s annual series of data and AI conferences, EVOLVE25, starting this week in Singapore.
