Master data management (MDM) has always been important and quite frankly, we’re all sick of hearing about it after three decades. Before, you could do a kind of quasi master data management around one or two projects and not think about it holistically.”Through 2026, Gartner expects organizations to abandon 60% of AI projects unsupported by AI-ready data. “Organizations that fail to realize the vast differences between AI-ready data requirements and traditional data management will endanger the success of their AI efforts.”This puts the importance of data governance and MDM front and center. “I see two challenges going forward to put in a master data management strategy and structure because the very nature of [AI] systems is supposed to be autonomous. Instead, they’re having AI agents react to the data they have without that rigorous data governance.