In this regular column, we’ll bring you all the latest industry news centered around our main topics of focus: big data, data science, machine learning, AI, and deep learning. Our industry is constantly accelerating with new products and services being announced everyday. Fortunately, we’re in close touch with vendors from this vast ecosystem, so we’re in a unique position to inform you about all that’s new and exciting. Our massive industry database is growing all the time so stay tuned for the latest news items describing technology that may make you and your organization more competitive.
Akridata Launches World’s First Edge Data Platform for Data-Centric AI
Akridata, a category-maker and pioneer in Data-Centric AI, announced the launch of the Akridata Edge Data Platform, which creates and manages smart data pipelines and AI workflows spanning Edge-Core-Cloud resources – an industry first. The Akridata software solves the problems that emerge when streams of rich data from physically scattered Edge devices create an avalanche of data that is impossible to organize, filter, access, and process. It is now common for organizations to collect tens of Terabytes of data per day from a single autonomous device.
With the first AI infrastructure platform in the Data-Centric AI category, Akridata provides a decentralized structure and scalable process to deliver curated, consistent, and relevant AI data sets. Akridata was formed in 2018 to solve AI’s data problem, a requirement to move AI out of experimentation and into production in the real-world. From automotive and transportation, to retail and healthcare, this need is a major obstacle that prevents AI-enabled products from making it to the marketplace.
The Akridata solution is optimized for advanced AI workloads, providing built-in capabilities for AI-oriented data organization, transformation, and filtering tasks. It allows tracing and tracking of data from inception to inference, it enables traceable AI and broadly complements industry efforts towards explainable AI (XAI). This makes it possible to track the evolution of AI models and link the behavior of AI models in the field to the data sets that contributed to the specific model used by a specific device or service.
“Akridata is making the autonomous world possible by providing the last piece of the puzzle: an integrated Edge-Core-Cloud Data Platform that solves the data problem at the heart of all real-world AI systems,” said Kumar Ganapathy, co-founder and CEO of Akridata. “The future of AI is all about data, and our focus on AI data since inception gives Akridata a first-mover advantage. We are pleased to launch the first product in the Data-Centric AI Category, and to be working with a range of customers including industry leaders like Toyota Motor Company North America.”
TigerGraph Delivers Latest Large-Scale, Enterprise-Grade Graph Solution to Meet Ever-Growing Customer and Market Demand
TigerGraph announced its next major product release, TigerGraph 3.2 — a release that includes more than 40 critical enterprise features and positions TigerGraph as a leading large-scale enterprise-grade graph database product. TigerGraph 3.2 includes new availability, scalability, manageability, and security functionalities to ensure mission-critical graph applications work flawlessly in both private and public clouds. This latest enterprise version of TigerGraph will meet ever-increasing demand from the world’s top companies, boost developer adoption and address key data science requirements.
TIBCO Delivers a Comprehensive, Connected Platform for the Adaptable Digital Business
TIBCO Software Inc., a global leader in enterprise data, empowers its customers to connect, unify, and confidently predict business outcomes, solving the world’s most complex data-driven challenges. TIBCO announced significant updates to its Connect portfolio and an evolution of TIBCO Cloud™, packed with enhanced features that provide digital leaders a unified, self-service, modern digital platform to run and adapt how the business operates. Innovative updates to integration, API management, and messaging offerings further empower users to connect, compose, and deliver any application, data source, and device. This positions the company’s suite of solutions and services as one of the most comprehensive in the industry.
“A connected digital business requires accelerated development and connectivity to reach its full potential,” said Randy Menon, senior vice president and general manager, Connect and Cloud, TIBCO. “We’re raising the bar by accelerating digitally native business priorities and giving anyone in an organization the power to do so. We offer a single, cohesive platform that supports the adaptability required by digital businesses, helping organizations capitalize on data and insights to make predictions in real time.”
StreamSets Launches Cloud-Native Summer ‘21 Release
StreamSets, Inc., a leader in data integration for modern analytics announced StreamSets DataOps Platform Summer ‘21. The Summer ‘21 release is the next generation of the StreamSets DataOps Platform, an end-to-end data integration platform to build, run, monitor and manage smart data pipelines to deliver continuous data. Summer ‘21 lets any data engineer build and deploy streaming, batch or CDC pipelines to any platform in just minutes via an easy-to-use cloud service.
“Today, data engineers are the lynchpin for delivering the data needed to drive business transformation. While grabbing data quickly can be simple, building pipelines that can operate reliably in a complex, dynamic environment is far more difficult” said Judy Ko, CPO of StreamSets. “StreamSets Summer ‘21 gives data engineers the ability to build and deploy new pipelines 10x faster, while eliminating 90% of the downtime and data corruption caused by breakages in pipelines not designed to withstand the operational rigors of today’s enterprises.”
Artificial Paintings Has Sold Over 95% of the New AI Artworks on the Binance NFT Platform
Artificial Paintings is a well-known and respected company that combines the best from the worlds of art and technology. To produce mind-boggling digital masterpieces, the company’s team has trained an AI model to create unique works of art that mix different styles and artistic techniques. This year, Artificial Paintings has taken the production of masterpieces to the next level by launching three exclusive NFT collections. From now on, art enthusiasts can easily buy their favorite AI-generated artworks as NFT tokens.
Indico Data Launches Industry’s First Platform to Transform Unstructured Data into Actionable Business Insights
Indico Data, the company transforming unstructured data into actionable business insights, announced the general availability of the Indico Unstructured Data Platform, the industry’s first solution to automate, analyze, and apply previously unreachable unstructured data into mission critical enterprise workflows. Delivered as a service in the private cloud, or hosted by Indico, the platform is easy to deploy, and delivers business value in days, not weeks or months.
“Extracting value from unstructured data is a significant business challenge, because traditional automation and analytics solutions cannot access it without thousands of hours of human time to code, structure, classify, and analyze,” said Tom Wilde, CEO of Indico Data. “In a time when digital transformation needs to happen at warp speed, our platform ensures customers can keep pace and capitalize on the value trapped in unstructured data –– and we help them do it in just a few days.”
Rockset Enhances Real-Time Analytics Database With Enterprise-Grade Security And Compliance
Rockset, the real-time analytics company, unveiled a significant release that delivers best-in-class enterprise-grade security and compliance capabilities to its cloud native, real-time analytics database. With this launch, Rockset is proud to announce it has successfully completed SOC 2 Type II certification, the most thorough and widely valued of the three SOC reports. Customers entrust Rockset with their data, and now they have rigorous, independent assurance that Rockset protects it by following security best practices. To help further improve customer compliance efforts, Rockset also introduced Audit Logs, which will allow customers to request a detailed report for all activities within their Rockset environment including queries and API calls, account logins, and more.
“Because Rockset is a core piece of the modern cloud data stack, we take security and compliance very seriously,” said Venkat Venkataramani, CEO and co-founder of Rockset. “As an enterprise grade solution, security must be baked in and deliver tight control, access, and compliance. We are seeing significant demand from enterprise customers that expect solutions with a comprehensive approach to security, so that they can stay focused on meeting the day-to-day needs of their business.”
Qlik Introduces Qlik Application Automation to Drive Dynamic Actions That Deliver the Last Mile in Active Intelligence
Qlik® announced the debut of Qlik Application Automation, a no-code solution designed to drive action from context-aware insights through streamlined and optimized workflows between SaaS applications and Qlik Cloud. The automated workflows now possible with Qlik Application Automation can trigger alerts, invoke downstream processes, and enhance collaboration that shortens time to value. Based on the Blendr.io acquisition, Qlik Application Automation helps deliver the last mile in Qlik’s vision of Active Intelligence, where technology and processes trigger immediate action from real-time, up-to-date and trusted data to accelerate business value across the entire data and analytics supply chain.
“The SaaS app and related data explosion has dramatically increased manual integration burdens, which limits analytics and IT teams’ ability to respond to data events with real-time insights and undercuts efforts to achieve Active Intelligence,” said James Fisher, Chief Product Officer of Qlik. “With Qlik Application Automation’s no-code, drag and drop approach to automating tasks and data workflows between Qlik Cloud and hundreds of SaaS apps, teams can more easily create the scalable connections and data flows that compel action and shorten time to value from data throughout their entire organization.”
Hazelcast Platform Hits General Availability Milestone
Hazelcast, the real-time intelligent applications platform, announced that the Hazelcast Platform is generally available and marks a milestone for real-time applications and analytics. With the Hazelcast Platform, enterprises can utilize a single platform for transactional, operational and analytical workloads. The Hazelcast Platform combines the capabilities of a real-time stream processing engine with in-memory computing to deliver a simplified architecture that is highly performant, scalable and reliable.
“The reception from customers and industry experts since we announced the Hazelcast Platform has been nothing short of fantastic and highlights the desire for a simplified platform that enables enterprises to seamlessly merge different data workloads,” said Kelly Herrell, CEO of Hazelcast. “We’ve already seen how the Hazelcast Platform can positively impact an enterprise’s ability to capture the value in real-time that they would have otherwise missed.”
Innodata Introduces New High-Tech Podcast: Absolute AI
Innodata Inc. (NASDAQ:INOD), a leading data engineering company, announced the launch of its new podcast, Absolute AI, Conversations With the Humans Behind Artificial Intelligence (AI). As AI is rapidly becoming interwoven into the fabric of our society through the way we communicate, work, and problem solve, Absolute AI seeks to amplify the voices of the creators, researchers, and innovators taking AI from prototype to production.
“AI has the power to revolutionize every aspect of our world, but we can’t fully capitalize on its benefits if we don’t consciously focus on demystification,” said Rahul Singhal, Chief Product Officer at Innodata. “We wanted to provide a resource where leaders explore the intricacies of successful AI, whether that’s overcoming roadblocks, expanding into new use cases, or leveraging cutting-edge technologies. We’ve created something where, no matter your industry, the conversations on Absolute AI will lead you directly to the forefront of emerging trends.”
Cloudastructure Unveils New Enterprise Solutions
Cloudastructure, the cloud-native AI surveillance company, announced that it will be adding a new enterprise-grade solution to its suite of offerings to meet the growing needs of its larger customers. The new solution will include robust administration and security features as well as powerful AI analytics. The new enterprise-grade offering will include different levels of administrative and user roles through its Permission System as well as a complete audit trail of user interaction with unlimited storage. The solution already includes two-factor authentication and single-sign on (SSO) which integrates with active-directory/cloud-based identity and access management systems like OneLogin, OKTA and others. As with all Cloudastructure offerings, the enterprise solution has System Health Monitoring which provides alerts if the on-premises Cloud Video Recorder (CVR) is down or when cameras are offline.
“These powerful AI features will allow enterprises to be much more proactive and intelligent in their security response.” says Rick Bentley, Founder and CEO of Cloudastructure, Inc. “The strong response from our customers and prospects suggests that these features are going to provide companies with the ability to reduce incidents, increase customer service, with VIP alerts for example, and improve the centralized management and control of the overall security solution.”
Vertica Announces General Availability of Vertica Accelerator
Vertica announced the general availability of its new unified software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering, Vertica Accelerator. Running on AWS, Vertica Accelerator delivers the high-performance and scalable analytics as well as end-to-end, in-database machine learning to organizations that require the right level of resourcing, management, and control for each analytical use case – all built on the new Vertica 11 Unified Analytics Platform.
“In a race to becoming more data-driven, companies are adopting cloud-based managed services to run their analytics, but they are shocked by the lack of control and skyrocketing bills,” says Colin Mahony, GM and SVP of Vertica, Micro Focus. “Vertica Accelerator delivers the fastest analytics as a service to organizations with complete control- customers leverage their own negotiated pricing with AWS and get to determine their performance levels based on their needs while also leveraging Vertica’s built-in auto-scaling to avoid bill shock.”
Syniti Announces Investment Strategy to Support Data Management for Intelligent Enterprises
Syniti, a global leader in enterprise data management, announced a wide-ranging investment strategy to provide advanced resources to enable organizations transform into intelligent enterprises including support for SAP S/4HANA®, SAP® Ariba®, SAP® SuccessFactors® and other SAP solutions. SAP Advanced Data Migration by Syniti complements the RISE with SAP offering and is a solution of choice for effective data migration.
“The great challenge for organizations moving to SAP S/4HANA Cloud right now is their data,” said Kevin Campbell, CEO of Syniti. “As global leaders in data management, we are determined to help enterprises solve their data challenges and move forward quickly with their transformation to become intelligent enterprises and accelerate their journey to next-generation ERP with speed, accuracy, and cost savings. With the investments we’ve made, we’re confident we’ll see more organizations adopting SAP S/4HANA Cloud with Syniti’s help.”
Aunalytics Unveils Secure Managed Services with Integrated Security
Aunalytics, a leading data platform company delivering Insights-as-a-Service for enterprise businesses, today announced the company’s Secure Managed Services offering. The new service stack combines mission critical IT services leveraging zero trust end-to-end security to ensure people and data are protected regardless of location.
“We have made the paradigm shift from trying to operationalize a collection of IT and security tools to a holistic view of stability and security that adapts as ever-changing threats evolve,” said Kerry Vickers, Chief Information Security Officer, Aunalytics.
BriefCam Introduces Video Analytics Enabled on Deep Learning Cameras from Axis Communications
BriefCam, a leading provider of Video Content Analytics and VIDEO SYNOPSIS® solutions, announced availability for BriefCam Video Content Analytics on Axis deep learning cameras in December 2021. Edge video processing on Axis deep learning cameras is a new hybrid deployment option for the BriefCam platform that reduces the total cost of ownership of a real-time video analytics deployment, enables operation in low-bandwidth environments, and makes for faster real-time alerting.
“The ability to process BriefCam video analytics at the edge is a game changer for organizations striving to extract valuable data insights from video,” said Gili Rom, VP Strategy and Alliances, BriefCam. “Greater flexibility in deployment architectures and the introduction of a hybrid deployment model through BriefCam enabled on Axis deep learning cameras further extends advanced real time analytics for safety, security and operational efficiency – a technology partnership that has significant benefits for the end user.”
AtScale Expands Semantic Layer Solution for Microsoft Excel
AtScale, a leading provider of semantic layer solutions for modern business intelligence and data science teams, announced deeper integration with Microsoft Excel’s advanced analytic functions. AtScale makes it possible to connect Excel workbooks to live cloud data platforms, including Snowflake, AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Databricks. Excel users can work with billions of rows of data without the need of extraction or moving data. Leveraging native MDX integration, the AtScale semantic layer is fully accessible with Excel PivotTables, Slicers, and Cell Definitions. New support includes the ability to work with cell-level CUBE functions for embedding dimensional queries directly in cell formulas.
“Microsoft Excel is the de facto analytics tool for analysts globally,” said David Mariani, CTO and Founder of AtScale. “Our strategy at AtScale has always been to let analysts interact with governed enterprise data through a semantic layer, using data visualization and analysis tools of their choice. More than half of our customers leverage Excel in addition to traditional BI or AI/ML platforms in their analytics and data science programs.”
AWS Announces General Availability of Amazon QuickSight Q
Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. company (NASDAQ: AMZN), announced the general availability of Amazon QuickSight Q, a new capability in Amazon QuickSight that gives anyone in an organization the ability to ask business questions using natural language and receive accurate answers with relevant visualizations that help them gain insights from the data. Amazon QuickSight Q does not depend on prebuilt dashboards or reports to deliver visualizations, which removes the need for business intelligence (BI) analysts to update a dashboard every time a new business question arises, so anyone can ask their questions and receive visual answers in seconds. Customers can easily refine the way Amazon QuickSight Q understands questions (and thus produces answers) with an easy-to-use editor, which removes the need for complex data preparation before users can ask questions of data in natural language. Amazon QuickSight Q uses machine learning to interpret the intent of a question and analyze the correct data to provide accurate answers to business questions quickly. Amazon QuickSight Q also provides auto-complete suggestions for key phrases and business terms, and automatically performs spell checking and acronym/synonym matching, so users do not have to worry about typos or remembering the exact business terms for their data. There are no upfront commitments to use Amazon QuickSight Q, and customers only pay for the number of users or queries.
“Customers love that Amazon QuickSight makes it easy for them to perform advanced analytics without prior data science experience, and they’re using it in ways that are surprising and delightful,” says Matt Wood, VP of Business Analytics, AWS. “Now, with Amazon QuickSight Q, anyone within an organization has the ability to ask natural language questions and receive highly relevant answers and visualizations. For the first time, anyone can tap into the full power of data to make quick, reliable, data-driven decisions to plan more efficiently and be more responsive to their end users.”
EDJX and Cubic Corporation Partner to Launch the Internet of Military Things Edge Platform
EDJX, a pioneer in distributed computing services at the edge, and Cubic Corporation, a market leader in networked Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) technology, announced a strategic partnership to launch the world’s first Internet of Military ThingsTM Edge Platform.
The Internet of Military Things (IoMT) Edge Platform is a converged infrastructure solution consisting of EDJX EdjOS with Cubic Corporation’s edge compute and networking hardware. Blueforce Development, a leading innovator in sensor fusion, sensor cueing, and Artificial and Predictive Intelligence software at the edge, will become the first certified application developer on the IoMT Platform. The Internet of Military Things Edge Platform, which has significant implications for IoT and advanced AI solutions at the far edge of the network, is the first major solution to be built on the Autonomy Institute GRID that includes Public Infrastructure Network Node (PINN), announced earlier this year. The Autonomy Institute is the conduit for these technologies combining to form a transformational end-to-end IoT solution from base to battlefield, solving immediate challenges for the military and civilian first responders.
“Launching the IoMT Edge Platform in partnership with Cubic ushers in the era of Industry 4.0 by bringing all of the key ingredients missing in the pursuit of mobile, intelligent, and autonomous systems development,” said John Cowan, EDJX co-founder and CEO. “Innovation will be at the heart of this project and we are excited to work with leading innovators like Blueforce and the Autonomy Institute in the effort to create the future.”
MicroAI™ to Bring AI Training to Renesas MCUs
MicroAI™, a pioneer in edge-native artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) products, announced that it has integrated its MicroAI AtomML™ technology with the Renesas RA Microcontroller (MCU) product line. The collaboration with Renesas, a global leader in microcontrollers, brings machine learning to MCUs and, with MicroAI, the ability to train machine learning models directly in the embedded environment.
MicroAI is a sophisticated patented machine learning algorithm that lives directly on a machine or IoT device, providing asset owners and manufacturers with deep insight into the behavior, health and performance of their equipment/devices. For example, robotic welding arms across the automotive assembly lines or greenhouse gas efficiency in agriculture. Asset owners and manufacturers often face unexpected downtime and static maintenance schedules, which create unnecessary costs and avoidable service hours. Lack of visibility into asset performance means they can react only when a problem occurs.
“Companies around the globe have been asking for predictive insight into how their assets are performing, behaving and being utilized to increase the productivity of the equipment they deploy,” said MicroAI chief executive officer Yasser Khan. “Working with Renesas, MicroAI is delivering that capability by utilizing our technology to bring machine learning to MCUs, providing the ability to train machine learning models directly in the embedded environment.”
Knoa Software Releases Tools for Quantifying ROI in the Context of Digital Transformation
Knoa® Software, a leading provider of user experience management (UEM) software that helps businesses maximize ROI for major software deployments, announced the availability of two ROI tools to help prospects and customers with quantifying the business impact of user experience initiatives. The new Knoa ROI Calculator and the financial impact analytics included in the Knoa Analytics application enable organizations to quantify the ROI of their own user experience initiatives, in the context of their digital transformation projects.
“Organizations that leverage Knoa’s UEM software can be confident that their usage of their enterprise applications (SAP, Oracle, etc.) is truly optimized,” said Brian Berns, CEO, Knoa Software. “Knoa UEM drives improvements across all business execution areas, resulting in increased user adoption, high productivity, seamless process execution and, ultimately, improved business results.”
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