The Open Data Institute (ODI) is partnering with SAP to deliver and govern IDEA, a programme of research, community building, and peer learning designed to help enterprises of all sizes make their data infrastructure AI-ready, laying the foundations for trustworthy AI adoption at scale.
As organisations across every sector race to harness the transformative power of AI, a critical challenge has emerged: most enterprise data was created for human use, such as for transactions, compliance, and reporting, but not for AI. Pointing AI systems at unprepared data leads to frequent failures, compliance risks, and unreliable outcomes. IDEA, an interchange for data and enterprise AI, will address this gap directly, convening enterprise stakeholders, industry partners, and academic experts to co-design interoperable standards and actionable frameworks that will empower organisations to build data foundations fit for the AI era.
The ODI and SAP will work across three core workstreams:
- The first will establish a robust, independent governance model for the programme, drawing on the ODI’s 14-year track record of stewarding multi-stakeholder initiatives across public and private sectors.
- The second will produce rigorous research to guide Chief Information Officers (CIOs) and Chief Data Officers (CDOs) on how to make enterprise data AI-ready – examining the intersection of classic machine learning, generative AI, and agentic AI with distinct data management approaches such as data lakes, data mesh, data fabric, and data products.
- The third will build and activate a diverse community of SAP customers, partners, policymakers, and academics to share best practice, shape research priorities, and collectively advance open standards for AI-ready enterprise data.
AI will define enterprise competitiveness for the next decade, but competitive advantage doesn’t come from AI models alone. It comes from the quality, governance, and autonomy of the data beneath them. Most organisations are sitting on data that simply isn’t ready for AI, and the consequences of getting this wrong, from biased outputs to regulatory non-compliance, are significant. Through this partnership, the ODI and SAP are bringing together the expertise, research, and community needed to give organisations the blueprint they need. Our goal is to make AI-ready data infrastructure accessible to enterprises of all shapes and sizes, built on open standards that no single vendor controls.
Chief Executive Officer, the ODI
As companies scale AI in 2026, the real gap is data trust, not technology—organizations with governed, integrated data are far more likely to outperform and deliver measurable results. A critical next step for companies is to establish a business data fabric, which can ensure AI agents have the context they require to understand the business and impact.
Chief Product Officer for Data & Analytics, SAP
Across the duration of the project, the ODI and SAP will establish the IDEA steering committee to govern and steer research priorities, publish research, and convene events with industry and academic experts to share initial insights.
The partnership is actively seeking involvement and funding from industry and wider sector stakeholders, in order to work together to co-design an open, interoperable blueprint for AI-ready enterprise data. Find out more about how to get involved.
