Datacom launches secure Enterprise AI Assistant tool

Datacom has launched its Enterprise AI Assistant, a tool designed to enable companies to harness AI while keeping their organisational data secure.

With increasing demand from businesses wanting to utilise artificial intelligence (AI) whilst maintaining control over their data, Datacom has introduced the Enterprise AI Assistant. This tool allows organisations to select their preferred large language model (LLM), determine the platform for hosting, and decide whether to manage the solution internally or through a subscription service offered by Datacom.

Lou Compagnone, Director of AI at Datacom, commented on the market needs addressed by the new assistant. "While there has been a proliferation of AI tools over the past couple of years, there is a significant number of companies that do not want to use mainstream tools that sit outside their organisation or process their data offshore," he stated.

He elaborated further on the development of the assistant by saying, "Our Enterprise AI Assistant has been developed in answer to what we are hearing from customers. Our customers have told us they are keen to leverage and use AI, but they are concerned about their data and where it is going. They also tell us they want flexibility, local 'on the ground' support and the ability to adopt a sovereign solution."

The AI Assistant is designed to utilise an organisation's internal knowledge and structured data, aggregating it into a central knowledge base. This setup supports an ecosystem of AI agents tasked with assisting in various business functions, catering to different departmental needs within larger organisations. Among its capabilities, the assistant can perform functions such as automating tasks, event reporting, policy compliance checks, and redaction of sensitive data.

Compagnone highlighted the versatility of the tool, stating, "In most organisations but especially larger organisations, you will have departments or service areas with different needs. For example, the finance team wants support with different business functions than the sales team. The scalability and 'agent agnostic' nature of our tool means you can have what our team calls a 'mesh' of agents performing different functions from executing automated tasks, to reporting on events to policy compliance checks and redacting sensitive information in documents, to name a few."

The push for adoption is also backed by research outcomes. "Our latest AI research showed that 80% of organisations using AI had seen an improvement in productivity. We hope this tool will help more businesses capitalise on the benefits that AI can bring, and that it will address any concerns about security, data privacy and adopting AI in a way that works for their team," Compagnone added.

The Enterprise AI Assistant, developed by Datacom in collaboration with its consulting, cloud, and security teams, is presently available in Australia with sovereign processing capabilities. In New Zealand, while the tool is available, it currently lacks the sovereign option due to the absence of an open-source LLM within the country.