As organisations move from experimenting with generative AI to deploying agentic systems that can reason, act and interact with core business processes, the quality of the data and architecture beneath them is becoming a critical factor in whether AI creates meaningful business value or simply introduces another layer of complexity.
This is according to Ali AbiRaad, MD: Middle East Africa and India at InterSystems, speaking at the company’s Ready 2026 South Africa conference in Johannesburg.
“AI is becoming pervasive, but the model itself is only one part of the equation,” he says. “In the agentic era, organisations need good data, interoperability and governance if they want AI to operate with the context, reliability and control the business expects. That is why the digital backbone matters. It connects the information AI needs, makes that information usable across systems, and gives organisations a stronger foundation on which to build.”
AI needs more than a model
Across the event, speakers returned to a common challenge: organisations are under pressure to move quickly on AI while still dealing with fragmented data, disconnected applications and integration environments that were never designed for autonomous systems.
InterSystems argued that these issues become more important as AI shifts from generating content towards acting. Agentic systems need access to reliable, contextual information across the organisation, but they also need controls that determine what information can be accessed, what actions can be taken, and where human oversight remains necessary.
The company’s technology roadmap reflected this shift, with AI-ready data, agentic interoperability, trust and governance, and organisational context positioned as core requirements for operating in what InterSystems described as the agentic economy. Its roadmap also places human control alongside orchestration and agent networks, rather than treating autonomy as an end in itself.
That same theme was reinforced by Jonathan Tullett, associate research director at IDC sub-Saharan Africa, whose keynote examined how organisations can extract greater value from technology investment as AI becomes embedded across the enterprise.
Tullett emphasised the importance of strong data foundations, integration and governance, while also challenging organisations to be clearer about the business problem an AI project is intended to solve and the outcomes against which its success will be measured.
“AI projects cannot exist simply because the technology is available,” said Henry Adams, country manager: South Africa at InterSystems. “There has to be a strong business use case behind them and a clear understanding of the value the organisation expects to create. At the same time, governance cannot be separated from the data and architecture supporting those projects. As AI begins to take on more responsibility, knowing what it is doing, what information it is using and where accountability sits becomes fundamental.”
Building for the agentic era
Healthcare, InterSystems’ strongest market in Africa, provided one of the clearest examples of those requirements during the symposium.
Dr Rami Riman, director of clinical and business improvements at InterSystems, examined why healthcare AI depends on connected, trusted data and interoperability, particularly as AI moves closer to clinical and operational workflows.
Later sessions demonstrated how those principles can be applied in practice, including an ambient voice technology use case built around InterSystems IRIS for Health. The architecture showed how AI-generated clinical content can connect to existing healthcare workflows while retaining records of provenance, processing activity, and the models involved in producing an output.
InterSystems also outlined continued investment across its broader data and AI portfolio, including InterSystems IRIS AI Hub, Data Studio AI Assistant, HealthShare AI Assistant and new capabilities designed to bring interoperability to AI applications and agents.
The company said this investment builds on continued momentum in South Africa across healthcare, financial services and other sectors, as organisations look for ways to modernise while retaining the reliability and interoperability required by mission-critical environments.
“For us, the digital backbone is not about telling an organisation to replace everything it already has,” Adams added. “It is about making the systems and data it already depends on work together more effectively, while creating the foundation for what comes next. If organisations can get the data right, connect it properly, govern it and stay focused on the business outcome, they are in a far stronger position to turn AI from an interesting experiment into something that delivers lasting value.”