Conversational AI: Start by enlisting the big vendors

It's time to develop a conversational AI strategy, according to Gartner analyst Svetlana Sicular. Her advice: Stay focused on the business case and lean on the AI platform vendors. Look who's talking now. According to Gartner analyst Svetlana Sicular, the next wave of artificial intelligence will focus heavily on voice-enabled analytics -- or to use her words, "making analytics talk." "We're witnessing a new way of communicating with data and information," Sicular said to a crowd of data and analytics leaders at the recent Gartner Data & Analytics Summit. "Things will be changing for developers, for data management people, for designers, for management and for leaders." Being able to converse with our devices for the purposes of learning and imparting information we can use in real time is especially important since phone apps will become "more or less obsolete," according to Sicular. Indeed, Gartner predicts that by 2021, more than 50% of enterprises will be spending more each year on bots and chatbot creation than on traditional mobile app development.