Skip to content
VirtualOnlinePast event

Below the Waterline: The Hidden Engineering That Decides Agentic AI ROI

Event artwork for Below the Waterline: The Hidden Engineering That Decides Agentic AI ROI

This event has ended

This listing is kept as an archive. Explore upcoming events to find your next one.

See upcoming events
About this event

What to expect

Agentic AI demonstrations are captivating, but achieving measurable enterprise ROI remains elusive for most organizations. This virtual talk by Nikki Rouda, Senior Director of Product Marketing at DataRobot, cuts through the hype to examine the critical engineering challenges that determine whether your agentic AI initiatives deliver real business value or remain impressive demos.

The ROI Gap Nobody Talks About

The session addresses a fundamental problem facing enterprise AI teams: the gap between agentic AI's promise and its practical implementation isn't about choosing the right model or framework. Instead, it's the hidden infrastructure work — the engineering "below the waterline" — that makes or breaks production deployments. Rouda will dissect three foundational problems that every team must solve before production ROI becomes possible.

Critical Engineering Challenges

The talk explores the unglamorous but essential work that gates successful agentic AI outcomes:

  • Developer Experience: Making agents enterprise-ready requires robust tooling and workflows that most teams underestimate
  • Agent Identity & Authorization: Managing non-human actors in enterprise systems presents unique security and governance challenges
  • Token Economics: Controlling costs while maximizing utilization determines whether your AI agents remain economically viable at scale

None of these capabilities creates direct business value by itself, yet each is a gating condition for the outcomes leadership actually requested. Understanding this distinction is crucial for teams navigating the gap between proof-of-concept and production.

Who Should Attend

This session is essential for AI engineers, platform architects, and technical leaders responsible for operationalizing agentic AI systems. Product managers and engineering leaders evaluating agentic AI investments will gain critical insights into the real engineering effort required beyond the initial model selection.

The virtual format makes this accessible to the global AI community, with free access available through ODSC's Ai+ Training platform. Register for this event to join the conversation about building agentic AI systems that deliver sustainable enterprise ROI.

Running an AI event?

List it here, free.

Meetups, workshops and conferences go in front of thousands of builders after a quick review.

List your event