On a monthly basis, I will be rounding up key news associated with the Data Science Platforms space for Amalgam Insights. Companies covered will include: Alteryx, Amazon, Anaconda, Cambridge Semantics, Cloudera, Databricks, Dataiku, DataRobot, Datawatch, Domino, Elastic, Google, H2O.ai, IBM, Immuta, Informatica, KNIME, MathWorks, Microsoft, Oracle, Paxata, RapidMiner, SAP, SAS, Tableau, Talend, Teradata, TIBCO, Trifacta, TROVE.
Alteryx Acquires ClearStory Data to Accelerate Innovation in Data Science and Analytics
Alteryx acquired ClearStory Data, an analytics solution for complex and unstructured data with a focus on automating Big Data profiling, discovery, and data modeling. This acquisition reflects Alteryx’s interest in expanding its native capabilities to include more in-house data visualization tools. ClearStory Data provides a visual focus on data prep, blending, and dashboarding with their Interactive Storyboards that partners with Alteryx’s ongoing augmentation of internal visualization capabilities throughout the workflow such as Visualytics.
Dataiku Announces the Release of Dataiku Lite Edition
Dataiku released two new versions of its machine learning platform, Dataiku Free and Dataiku Lite, targeted towards small and medium businesses. Dataiku Free will allow teams of up to three users to work together simultaneously; it is available both on-prem and on AWS and Azure. Dataiku Lite will provide support for Hadoop and job scheduling beyond the capabilities of Dataiku Free. Since Dataiku already partners with over 1000 small and medium businesses, creating versions of its existing platform more financially accessible to such organizations lowers a significant barrier to entry, and grooms smaller companies to grow their nascent data science practices within the Dataiku family.
DataRobot Celebrates One Billion Models Built on Its Cloud Platform
DataRobot announced that as of mid-April, its customers had built one billion models on its automatic machine learning program. Vice President of Product Management Phil Gurbacki noted that DataRobot customers build more than 2.5 million models per day. Given that the majority of models created are never successfully deployed – a common theme cited this month at both Enterprise Data World and at last week’s Open Data Science Conference – it seems likely that DataRobot customers don’t currently have one billion models operationalized. If the percentage of deployed models is significantly higher than the norm, though, this would certainly boost DataRobot in potential customers’ eyes, and serve to further legitimize AutoML software solutions as plausible options.
Microsoft, SAS, TIBCO Continue Investments in AI and Data Skills Training
- Microsoft and OpenClassrooms to train students to fill high-demand AI jobs
- SAS invests in humans, powered by AI and analytics education
- TIBCO and Singapore Polytechnic Enrich Collaboration to Advance Analytics and IoT Skills
Microsoft announced a new partnership with OpenClassrooms to train students for the AI job marketplace via online coursework and projects. Given an estimate that projects 30% of AI and data jobs will go unfilled by 2022, OpenClassrooms’ recruiting 1000 promising candidates seems like just the beginning of a much-needed effort to address the skills gap.
SAS provided more details on the AI education initiatives they announced last month. First, they launched SAS Viya for Learners, which will allow academic institutions to access SAS AI and machine learning tools for free. A new SAS machine learning course and two new Coursera courses will provide access to SAS Viya for Learners to those wanting to learn AI skills without being affiliated with a traditional academic institution. SAS also expanded on the new certifications they plan to offer: three SAS specialist certifications in machine learning, natural language and computer vision, and forecasting and optimization. Classroom and online options for pursuing both of these certifications will be available.
Meanwhile, TIBCO continued expanding its partnerships with educational institutions in Asia to broaden analytics knowledge in the region. Most recently, it has augmented its existing partnership with Singapore Polytechnic to train 1000 students in analytics and IoT skillsets by 2020. Other analytics education partnerships TIBCO has announced in the last year include Yuan Ze University in Taiwan, Asia Pacific University of Technology and Innovation in Malaysia, and BINUS University in Indonesia.
The big picture: existing data science degree programs and machine learning and AI bootcamps are not providing a large enough volume of highly-skilled job candidates quickly enough to fill many of these data-centric positions. Expect to hear more about additional educational efforts forthcoming from data science, machine learning, and AI vendors.
On April 9th and 10th, Amalgam Insights attended the fifth Cloudera’s Industry Analyst and Influencer Conference (which I’ll self-servingly refer to as the Analyst Conference since I attended as an industry analyst) in Santa Monica. Cloudera sought to make the case that it was evolving beyond the market offerings that it is currently best known for as a Hadoop distribution and commercial data lake in becoming a machine learning and analytics platform. In doing so, Cloudera was extremely self-aware of its need to progress beyond the role of multi-petabyte storage at scale to a machine learning solution.
