Today’s digital environment is noisier than ever. For brands to stand out, they need to be hyper-relevant to their customers. That’s where the power of data comes in. In this episode of The AI Forecast, we’re joined by marketing expert Zontee Hou. Not only does Zontee have 20 years of experience in the marketing industry, she’s also the author of Data-Driven Personalization, the founder of Media Volery, the managing director of consultancy Convince & Convert, and the host of the Data-Driven Decisions podcast. To put it lightly, she is pretty busy!

The Confluent Q1 ’25 Launch includes Freight clusters and Tableflow, the features needed to make streaming data cheaper and feeding your data lake easier. We’re also introducing AI tools for Apache Flink, VS Code Extension, a new premium Oracle CDC Connector, and more! Our quarterly launches provide a single resource to learn about the accelerating number of new features we’re bringing to Confluent Cloud, our cloud-native data streaming platform.

Tableflow represents Kafka topics and associate schemas as open-table formats such as Apache Iceberg(Generally Available) or Delta Lake (Early Access) in a few clicks to feed any data lake, warehouse, or analytics engine. It removes the need for complex, costly and error-prone data pipelines that are currently being used to feed streaming data to data lakes while delivering strong read performance and automated data maintenance. Customers can also bring their own storage ensuring flexibility, cost savings, and security.

Aligning technical operations with financial objectives is crucial yet challenging. Join us for this session in our Weekly Walkthrough drop-in series, "Controlling Cloud Costs," where we'll explore how to unite data teams and finance for Databricks success. You will gain the knowledge and tools to create a FinOps framework that aligns your Databricks operations with your organization's financial goals. With Unravel's Data Actionability Platform, you can see deep insights into your cloud spending and make informed decisions that balance innovation with cost-efficiency.

Chris Kapp of Henry Schein One shares how his team is securing HIPAA data through a smart naming strategy, internal governance, and tight control over tagging and access.