This Week in Data Preparation (July 20, 2020)
15 links in this week’s post: 3 articles (on democratizing AI, automating data preparation with knowledge graphs, and breaking data silos), 9 company announcements (by SAS, Altair, Acxiom, Pyramid, Itential, Stradigi, BigID, HP, and Alation), 2 partnerships (by Yellowbrick and MANTA, Genedata and Thermo Fisher Scientific), and 1 capital raise (by Abacus).
Democratizing AI: How to Gain Actionable Insights through Open Source. In this special guest feature, Ion Stoica, Co-founder of Anyscale, details the state of machine learning application creation in the enterprise today, the case for democratizing AI, and what this means for the future of work.
How Knowledge Graphs Automate Data Preparation. At Data Summit Connect 2020, Thomas Cook, director of sales, Cambridge Semantics, explained the basics of knowledge graphs and how they leverage natural-language processing to automate the often-cumbersome process of data preparation.
Breaking Silos to Enable Breakthroughs. For most big pharma and other global enterprises, decades of growth have resulted in siloed operations, even as they seek breakthrough medicines, particularly in the wake of the current pandemic. Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS)’s Informatics and Predictive Sciences Business Partner, Daniel Huston, believes that BMS may be sitting on the next breakthrough biomarker or blockbuster treatment, but the issues with data findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability make it a challenge to unlock the insights that would lead to such discoveries.
New services from SAS aim to help brands adapt to marketing disruption. “Reimagining marketing doesn’t require ripping out your marketing technology stack and replacing it with a host of disparate, shiny new tools,” says SAS global director of customer intelligence, Wilson Raj. “Rather, marketers should be able to integrate technologies and techniques that can make your existing systems more resilient, smarter and faster”.
Altair Releases New Version of Knowledge Studio Machine Learning and Predictive Analytics Solution. “As a powerful solution that can be used by data scientists and business analysts alike, Knowledge Studio continues to lead the data science and machine learning market,” said Sam Mahalingam, Altair chief technology officer.
Acxiom Announces ConneCXions Portfolio of Digital Transformation Solutions. “Companies are now seriously considering how they gather, integrate, and activate enterprise insights and are increasingly seeking more integrated solutions,” said Chad Engelgau, Acxiom’s CEO. “If your insights aren’t connected across martech and adtech, you can’t possibly derive the greatest value from your investments,” said Arun Kumar, Chief Data and Marketing Technology Officer at IPG.
Pyramid Analytics Announces Latest Release: Pyramid v2020.10. “An undeniable gap exists in today’s data and analytics market. Tools are either meant for a skilled professional to perform complex machine learning projects, or for business users to consume and interact with dashboards,” said Avi Perez, Pyramid Analytics co-founder and CTO.
Itential Introduces Data Transformation Capabilities, Further Simplifying and Accelerating Multi-Domain Network Automation. “Today’s networks are becoming inherently more complex, with a different combination of tools, devices, and orchestrators for each application domain. In order to scale network automation, organizations need a way to manage the data from these various systems that is simple, predictable, and repeatable,” said Chris Wade, CTO Itential.
Kepler AutoML Targets Next-Gen Business Analysts. The “sweet spot” for data science automation are mid-size enterprises seeking to reap the rewards of digital transformation, said Per Nyberg, Stradigi’s chief commercial officer. Hence, Kepler automates data science steps to quickly move business analysts up the machine learning curve. The strategy involves helping domain experts identify high-value use cases like predicting customer intent and “just get them going,” added Nyberg, former vice president of AI at Cray Inc.
BigID Appoints CMO To Expand Global Presence and Accelerate Demand Gen. BigID, the leading data discovery and intelligence platform for privacy, protection, and perspective, announced Scott Mersy as its new Chief Marketing Officer. “BigID is entering a new phase of expansion as we scale out our direct and indirect sales organizations,” said Dimitri Sirota, Co-founder and CEO of BigID.
HP Rebuilds Partner Program to Be Data-Driven, CX-Focused. Previously, the HP partner program was defined by two pillars — performance and capability. There’s a third pillar going forward: collaboration and data. “In more digital engagement with customers, those two [pillars] are really important, but there’s one thing missing; that is the ability to collaborate. The ability to bring a segment of one, single customer value propositions to life,” said Christoph Schell, chief commercial officer at HP.
Alation Partner Network Launches for SIs, Resellers and More. Kiran Narsu is Alation‘s vice president of business development. He said the company created Alation Partner Network to establish closer relationships with existing partners “while also expanding the number of partners that work with our data catalog technology.”. “We saw a significant percentage of our client bookings either sourced through partners or involved a partner in one way. Partners are core to our growth strategy,” he said.
Yellowbrick and MANTA Partner to Deliver Wide Range of Enterprise Data Solutions. “MANTA’s unified lineage platform is an ideal match for our hybrid cloud data warehouse,” said Allen Holmes, vice president of business development at Yellowbrick Data. “Yellowbrick has proven the value of their data warehouse at some of the world’s most demanding enterprises,” said Tomas Kratky, CEO at MANTA.
Genedata Automates Biopharma R&D with Seamless Integration of Lab Equipment. Genedata, the leading provider of enterprise software solutions for biopharmaceutical R&D, announced a collaboration with Thermo Fisher Scientific, a leading international pharmaceutical and laboratory equipment supplier, to integrate the two platforms to provide seamless automation of biopharma R&D operations. “Our collaboration with Genedata will enable biopharma companies to fully integrate R&D automation platforms for the direct capture, processing, and analysis of the large amount of data being produced by today’s high-throughput robotic systems,” said Hansjoerg Haas, Senior Director, Lab Automation, Thermo Fisher Scientific. “We are pleased to welcome Thermo Fisher as our latest lab automation Ready-to-Run™ partner,” said Othmar Pfannes, Ph.D., CEO of Genedata.
AI startup Abacus goes live with commercial deep learning service, takes $13M Series A financing. “This is a crowded space and very few AI/ML services actually manage to get customers to production and actually realize a positive ROI,” said Bindu Reddy, co-founder and chief executive officer at Abacus.
Thank you for taking the time to read our weekly post with news items from the data preparation market.
