“Above the Trend Line” – Your Industry Rumor Central for 8/15/2016

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Above the Trend Line: machine learning industry rumor central, is a recurring feature of insideBIGDATA. In this column, we present a variety of short time-critical news items such as people movements, funding news, financial results, industry alignments, rumors and general scuttlebutt floating around the big data, data science and machine learning industries including behind-the-scenes anecdotes and curious buzz. Our intent is to provide our readers a one-stop source of late-breaking news to help keep you abreast of this fast-paced ecosystem. We’re working hard on your behalf with our extensive vendor network to give you all the latest happenings. Heard of something yourself? Tell us! Just e-mail me at: daniel@insidebigdata.com.  Be sure to Tweet Above the Trend Line articles using the hashtag: #abovethetrendline.

You’d think that the Big Data industry would slow down a tad during the long summer months, but that’s NOT what we’re seeing, not by a long shot. So much is happening with some important customer wins like – Qlik® (NASDAQ: QLIK), a leader in visual analytics, announcing that Ferring Pharmaceuticals, a global research-driven biopharmaceutical company, has deployed Qlik’s visual analytics platform. Working with Qlik Elite Partner ATK Consulting Group, Ferring Pharmaceuticals has not only significantly reduced the time required to create analytical reports by 80 percent, while enabling the global organization to aggregate the vast amount of data from multiple sources across their CRM-system into a single analytical interface. Ferring has also benefitted from their specially designed Qlik data visualization application, arming sales and marketing employees at all levels with the ability to create customized reports, track results and streamline sales … M-Files Corporation, a provider of solutions that dramatically improve how businesses manage documents and other information, announced that OMV Group, an integrated international oil and gas company, has selected M-Files to replace most of the company’s legacy enterprise content management (ECM) systems covering regulated documents.

The industry M&A scene is about as hot as a Phoenix manhole cover in the summer, starting with … Intel signing a definitive agreement to acquire Nervana Systems, a recognized leader in deep learning. Founded in 2014 and headquartered in San Diego, California, Nervana has a fully-optimized software and hardware stack for deep learning. Their IP and expertise in accelerating deep learning algorithms will expand Intel’s capabilities in the field of AI. Intel will apply Nervana’s software expertise to further optimize the Intel Math Kernel Library and its integration into industry standard frameworks. Nervana’s Engine and silicon expertise will advance Intel’s AI portfolio and enhance the deep learning performance and TCO of our Intel Xeon and Intel Xeon Phi processors … Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE: HPE) revealed that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire SGI (NASDAQ: SGI), a global leader in high-performance solutions for compute, data analytics and data management, for $7.75 per share in cash, a transaction valued at approximately $275 million, net of cash and debt. SGI products and services are used for high-performance computing (HPC) and big data analytics in the scientific, technical, business and government communities to solve challenging data-intensive computing, data management and virtualization problems. The company has approximately 1,100 employees worldwide, and had revenues of $533 million in fiscal 2016 …

High performance computing (HPC), Big Data, AI and the public cloud are major growth areas in datacenter infrastructure,” said industry analyst Patrick Moorhead. “Infrastructure in the enterprise has been flat but could see improvements driven by the private cloud. HPE plays in all these growth markets today. HPC workloads are making their way into the enterprise, and architecturally and technologically there are increasing similarities between HPC and Big Data. I believe this acquisition will make HPE more competitive in HPC and could do the same in Big Data.”

Some exciting funding news came this week with MapR Technologies, Inc., provider of the Converged Data Platform, unveilved an equity financing of $50 million. The additional funding accompanies yet another consecutive record quarter. The company continued to advance at a rapid pace in Q2, with more than a 100 percent increase in bookings over prior year. Licenses and support agreements for the MapR Converged Data Platform represented 90 percent of total bookings, reinforcing the proven value of the enterprise software business model. With multiple software license transactions of more than $5 million from new and existing customers, MapR continues to demonstrate the strong demand for enterprise-grade and real-time features of a converged data platform. Additionally, MapR reported an outstanding customer retention rate of 99 percent and a dollar-based net expansion rate of 143 percent. New and expanded customers in Q2 include American Express, Audi, Ericsson, JLL, Mizuho Bank, NTT, Philips, Qualcomm, and Rubicon Project.

There also were plenty of people movements announced starting with Pepperdata, experts in the performance of distributed systems at scale, announcing that Ashfaq Munshi has joined the company as chief executive officer. Munshi has held CEO roles at several successful startups, as well as numerous other technology executive positions including CTO at Yahoo, and brings over 30 years of experience to his role at Pepperdata. Cofounder and former CEO Sean Suchter will assume the position of CTO, working directly with customers to shape the next frontier of distributed computing performance … Persado, a leading cognitive content generation platform, announced that Ryan Deutsch has been appointed Senior Vice President of Global Customer Success, reporting to Greg Dale, Chief Operating Officer. In this role he will advance the adoption and growth of Persado’s cognitive content solution on an international scale, building, maintaining and growing strategic relationships with its customers, including Fortune 500 companies. Deutsch joins from Sears Holding Corporation, a Persado customer, where he led one of the largest and most sophisticated digital direct response programs in North America.

New product and services announcements were plentiful this week with – Boomtrain, a provider of marketing platforms powered by artificial intelligence (AI), unveiled “Boomtrain Messenger” for B2C brands. Boomtrain Messenger is the first to integrate intelligent messaging into the entire marketing platform, enabling personalized conversations through multiple channels with one master control. Boomtrain Messenger eliminates the need for marketers to depend on generic messages to engage prospects and customers. It captures a rich history of engagements and behaviors to provide a full, unified view of each user, and uses triggers to give conversations a meaningful starting point … Cloudian, Inc., a leader in software-defined smart data storage and a compatible Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) object storage provider, announced that its flagship software, HyperStore, is now available through Amazon Web Services Marketplace (AWS Marketplace). Customers can purchase Cloudian software directly from AWS Marketplace, deploy it in their infrastructure and centralize visibility of usage and billing through their AWS monthly invoice … Fugue, Inc. announced cloud-native technology that manages the full lifecycle of cloud infrastructure to enterprise IT standards. Fugue uniquely operates as the foundation layer for cloud-based enterprise application platforms, offering developers the ability to program and operate their entire cloud infrastructure across compute, storage, network, and data services. Following creation of the required cloud infrastructure, Fugue then automates the enforcement of corporate governance, compliance policies, and change controls … DigitalGenius announced it has launched its Human+AI™ Customer Service Application on the Salesforce AppExchange, empowering businesses to connect with their customers, partners and employees in entirely new ways. DigitalGenius brings a layer of practical artificial intelligence to customer service operations around the world. Its Human+AI™ approach enables companies to easily combine the best of human and machine intelligence to create outstanding customer experiences … Xperiel unveiled availability of its cloud-based Real World Web (RWW) platform. The RWW brings mixed reality experiences to consumers by unifying the physical and digital worlds. The Xperiel platform provides the tools for building and hosting the RWW. It makes it possible to connect everything to the IoT, build cloud-based applications and deliver mixed reality experiences across any OS or connected device.

And finally, our Vendor of the Week is Silk. Silk is a wonderful tool that lets anyone create interactive data visualizations, publish websites, and tell interactive stories. Sadly, the company just announced that the Silk team is joining Palantir and will no longer work on the Silk product. The Silk platform will continue to operate. Nothing will change to current Silks, and you can still create a new Silk for free. However, because of new roles at Palantir, Silk.co will operate “as is” and there no longer will be technical or customer support for new or existing Silk accounts, nor will there be any further development work or adding new features to the hosted Silk.co product. It was a nice run for Silk. Thank you!

 

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