Above the Trend Line: your industry rumor central is a recurring feature of insideBIGDATA. In this column, we present a variety of short time-critical news items grouped by category such as M&A activity, people movements, funding news, financial results, industry alignments, customer wins, 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 you a one-stop source of late-breaking news to help you keep 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
Welcome to another installment of our Rumor Central: Above the Trend Line, where all the latest scuttlebutt bubbles up to the surface for our readers to digest. I’ve been busy this last week tending to the large data pipeline that drives our IMPACT 50 algorithm, lot’s of data munging and cleansing. But now that this arduous task is done, it’s time to turn attention to our industry rumor mill.
Let’s start with some new partnerships, alignments and collaborations … Stage Intelligence, a leading provider of Bike Share Scheme management solutions, has partnered with Moventia, a widely recognized urban transport operator, and CityBike Finland OY, the Bike Share operator for Helsinki, to deploy its BICO Artificial Intelligence (AI) platform in Helsinki’s Bike Share Scheme. Helsinki CityBike has gone live with Stage’s AI management platform and is supporting over 600,000 residents with their new season of Bike Sharing. The BICO solution is actively collecting citywide data and optimizing Bike Share operations in Helsinki. The partnership with Stage Intelligence enables CityBike to use its BICO AI platform to drive usability of its more than 2,000 bikes and increase ridership for the new season of Bike Sharing as the CityBike scheme continues to expand into the city of Espoo. Stage specializes in developing, training and deploying AI technology to optimize the management and operations of Bike Share Schemes globally. Its flagship BICO solution has been helping multiple Bike Share operators around the world deliver a better optimized scheme while reducing operational costs … DataRobot, the founder of automated machine learning, announced it is working with Tableau, a leading analytics platform, to deliver machine learning driven insights into the Tableau platform. The combined solution will deliver AI-driven insights to Tableau users fueled by DataRobot automated machine learning, providing next-generation visual analysis. DataRobot empowers business analysts and data scientists of all skill levels to very quickly build and deploy highly accurate machine learning models without writing a single line of code. Once a model has been built in DataRobot, Tableau users can create visual analysis with the results from DataRobot machine learning models, providing valuable insights to better inform decision-making. These enhanced insights will help enterprises of all sizes spot patterns, identify correlations, and make better predictions with confidence … Agorai, an integrated marketplace for Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools and the data assets that fuel them, and Ocean Protocol, a decentralized, blockchain data exchange protocol to unlock data for analytics and AI, announced a strategic technology partnership. Under the agreement, Agorai will leverage Ocean Protocol’s innovative technology to enable fully transparent, completely decentralized and securely validated data services for Agorai’s AI and Data Marketplace. As a result, Agorai will be able to streamline data transfer and collection for individuals and companies using its Marketplace, giving its participants a secure and trusted way to share and sell data assets … Commvault (NASDAQ: CVLT), a leader in enterprise backup, recovery, archive and the cloud, announced a new technology partnership with Lucidworks, the leader in AI-powered search and discovery. Through this agreement, the two companies will begin working together to bring new innovations in artificial intelligence (AI) to the rapidly evolving data backup and protection market. The convergence of AI technology with powerful backup and data protection capabilities will enable organizations to accelerate their discovery of valuable data throughout their data assets, resulting in smart data experiences that leverage insights for gains in productivity, information governance, risk mitigation and increased business agility … Adaptive Computing Enterprises, a leader in dynamically optimizing large-scale HPC computing environments, announced its partnership with Google Cloud, offering dynamic Cloud Bursting to the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) with its Moab/NODUS Cloud Bursting Solution. This is a highly flexible and extendable solution that allows HPC systems to “burst” workloads to the Google Cloud Platform on demand. Adaptive Computing’s Cloud Bursting Solution will allow supercomputing customers to complete workloads on time by leveraging GCP resources. Moab/NODUS can be customized to satisfy multiple use cases and scenarios. It can run workloads in an on-premise data center and/or in GCP, on bare metal, VMs and Containers, etc … Informatica®, the enterprise cloud data management leader, announced it has partnered with Google Cloud’s Apigee product group, in a best-of-breed alliance to provide enterprises with a unified API management and integration solution. The partnership between these two companies will allow organizations to quickly leverage data and applications that are deployed in hybrid and multi-cloud environments, creating a continuously connected business that drives enterprise-wide agility through innovations in AI-driven integrations and APIs.
In the new funding category we heard … Noodle.ai, a leading provider of enterprise AI applications, announced it has raised $35 million in a Series B funding round, bringing its fundraising total to $51 million. The funds will be used to expand the company’s suite of applications, which help key industries predict the future and make better business decisions. Dell Technologies Capital led the round and was joined by previous investor TPG Growth, the middle market and growth equity investment platform of TPG, which incubated Noodle.ai with Stephen Pratt in 2016 … BigID Inc., a leader in enterprise data protection and privacy, announced that it has raised $30 million in Series B funding, less than five months after completing its $14 million Series A round. Led by new investor Scale Venture Partners with participation from previous investors ClearSky Security, Comcast Ventures, BOLDstart Ventures, Information Venture Partners and the SAP.iO Fund, the oversubscribed round brings BigID’s total funding to date to $46.1 million. BigID will use the funding to scale go-to-market and accelerate product introductions as its platform emerges as a standard for data-driven enterprise privacy management and personal data protection.
In M&A activity we heard … DataDirect Networks (DDN®) announced its acquisition of Intel’s Lustre File System business and related assets for undisclosed terms. This important acquisition reinforces DDN’s presence as the global market leader for data at scale, while providing Lustre customers with enhanced field support and a well-funded technology roadmap. The acquisition also enables DDN to expand Lustre’s leading position from high performance computing (HPC) and Exascale into high growth markets such as analytics, AI and hybrid cloud … DDN also announced that it has entered into a non-binding letter of intent agreement with Tintri, Inc. to acquire substantially all the assets of Tintri … Magnitude Software, Inc., a leader in delivering unified application data management to global organizations across industries, announced the acquisition of Every Angle Software Solutions, a provider that enables users of SAP-run organizations to optimize their operational performance by empowering insightful and flexible business analytics. Every Angle’s self-service solution works on any SAP system (ECC and HANA) and hides the complexity of SAP’s data structure, allowing end users to quickly identify and resolve key business issues. This third acquisition in the past eight months, and seventh in total, immediately expands Magnitude’s leadership presence in the SAP ecosystem alongside providing a mature base of operations in Europe … Accenture (NYSE: ACN) has acquired Kogentix, a company providing big data and AI services and solutions that help enterprises make better decisions with their data. Kogentix, headquartered in Schaumburg, Ill., will strengthen Accenture Applied Intelligence’s growing data engineering business, particularly in North America, as companies are increasingly looking to harness open source big data and advanced analytics technologies to identify revenue growth and cost reduction opportunities across the enterprise.
In new people movement news we learned … DriveScale, a leader in delivering Software Composable Infrastructure (SCI) for modern workloads announced the appointment of Laura Lilyquist as Vice President of Marketing. With more than 20 years experience in developing and executing all facets of marketing at both large, established companies and disruptive startups, Lilyquist joins the DriveScale team with deep expertise in product, technology and customer acquisition marketing … Kinetica, provider of the insight engine for the Extreme Data Economy, announced it has appointed Gary West as vice president of sales, EMEA. West will report to Chief Revenue Officer Bobby DeMartino and help grow business and expand partnerships in Europe as enterprises are grappling with increasing data complexity and the shift to being a data-powered business in order to thrive in the post-big data era … Moogsoft, a leader of artificial intelligence for IT operations (AIOps), announced that Will Cappelli, former research vice president at Gartner, has joined the company as Chief Technology Officer EMEA and Global VP of Product Strategy. Recognized for being the first to define the AIOps category, Cappelli brings more than 34 years of industry expertise. In his role, Cappelli will help accelerate Moogsoft’s market leadership in helping companies optimize their IT operations through the application of patented AI and workflow automation. During his tenure at Gartner, Cappelli specialized in research focused on IT innovation, providing insights that shaped market trends, and counseling companies around the world on subjects such as the application of machine learning and other types of AI to IT operations and application management … D-Wave Systems Inc., the leader in quantum computing systems and software, announced that Jennifer Houston has joined the company as Senior Vice President, Marketing. Houston’s strong marketing leadership at technology companies and deep communications expertise made her the ideal candidate for this new role as D-Wave expands the breadth of its product offerings and its base of customers … Unravel Data, the application performance management (APM) platform designed for big data applications, announced the appointment of Steven Wastie as its chief marketing officer (CMO). With more than 20 years of global marketing, product management and business development experience, Wastie assumes responsibility for building and scaling the marketing organization to support the strategic growth of the company. Wastie previously served as CMO at AppDynamics during its hyper-growth phase and most recently as CMO at Origami Logic, a big data analytics company. He brings a strong background in building brand awareness and the keen ability to leverage marketing technology and data analytics to drive sustainable revenue results, build dynamic teams and lead organizations as they scale … AtScale, a industry leader in data federation and cloud transformation, announced the appointment of Christopher Lynch as Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Lynch has a proven track record of innovation and market disruption, having previously galvanized markets around technologies from Web Switching to Virtualization, Security and more recently Big Data Analytics. As the Chairman and CEO at Vertica Systems, he was responsible for record growth and customer adoption, establishing new market segmentation and ultimately setting the standard for high-performance analytic database management systems (Vertica was acquired by Hewlett-Packard in 2011). Prior to Vertica, he was the CEO and co-founder of Acopia networks which became the industry leader in high-performance network storage virtualization (acquired by F5 Networks in 2007). Throughout his career as an entrepreneur, Lynch has raised more than $150M in capital and returned in excess of $7BN to investors and shareholders … Datera, Inc., the visionary provider of 100% software-driven data services, announced that technology industry veteran Chris Cummings has joined the company as Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). In his new role, Cummings will drive Datera’s next phase of growth, leading all company marketing and related strategy development initiatives. Cummings will report to Datera CEO and Founder Marc Fleischmann … Ople, the platform that applies artificial intelligence to data science and machine learning, has hired Gilberto Titericz, one of the world’s leading data scientists, to head the company’s advanced data science research team. “This is a big deal in the data science world,” explains Pedro Alves, CEO, himself a highly accomplished data scientist. “We are a fast-growing startup, but still a startup. That a data scientist of Gilberto’s caliber would want leave Airbnb to join our team, shows how powerful our technology is.”
We also heard of some new customer wins starting with … Starmind, a leading technology to expand human ingenuity by applying neuroscientific principles to AI, announced that it is working with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the organization’s internal communications. The ICRC helps people around the world affected by armed conflict and other situations of violence by working to protect their dignity and relieve their suffering. Achieving this mission requires an intricate network of staff who need to be connected and informed at all times. Starmind will strengthen these connections with a human-centric solution. By powering the “Ask the ICRC” component of its internal communications system, Starmind will help facilitate communications between ICRC staff so they can better accomplish their mission of helping people affected by war … Pramata, a leading commercial relationship operations company, announced that Vertafore, a leader in modern insurance technology, is live on the Pramata platform. Pramata enabled Vertafore to consolidate massive stores of contracts and customer documentation across databases, business applications, legacy systems and hard-copy storage facilities into a “single version of truth.” With immediate access to critical commercial relationship data, Vertafore can now better understand and support customer relationships, drive renewals, reduce storage costs, assess risk and speed business processes by freeing up professionals to work on higher-value tasks … Supercomputer leader Cray Inc. (Nasdaq:CRAY) announced that the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay), a world-renowned global technology university, has selected a Cray® XC50™ system and Cray® ClusterStor™ scale-out Lustre® storage system to power breakthroughs in science, engineering research and education. The new supercomputer, coupled with Cray’s performance-engineered storage solution, will support IIT Bombay in its mission to deliver transformative education to create leaders and innovators … Linguamatics, a leading natural language processing (NLP) text analytics provider, and Secure Exchange Solutions (SES), a leader in enabling the secure exchange of health information, announced the selection of Linguamatics Health as the NLP platform for SES SPOT, a solution that, when combined with SES Fetch, streamlines clinical information exchange and automates the review process. Inefficient medical review processes (either before or after submitting claims) are major contributors to rising costs in healthcare systems. SES SPOT was developed to evaluate clinical information to help control costs and improve outcomes so that patients receive the appropriate care rapidly, reducing manual effort for providers and public or private health plans, and providing the opportunity to dramatically save time and money. SES SPOT includes Linguamatics I2E to provide Artificial Intelligence (AI) to extract information from both free text and codified data in an electronic medical record, to compare extracted data with guidelines, and to return evidence, recommendations and an audit trail to automate or semi-automate approval of claims … H2O.ai, the open source leader in AI, announced that Stanley Black & Decker, the global diversified industrial with business units focused on tools and storage, security, healthcare, and industrial products, is using H2O Driverless AI to develop AI-enabled manufacturing processes which have the potential to drastically reduce the amount of time required for product development. Since deploying H2O Driverless AI, Stanley Black & Decker has begun evaluating additional AI projects across the company where Driverless AI can help deliver greater insights and cost savings to the business … Sumo Logic, a leading cloud-native, machine data analytics platform that delivers continuous intelligence, announced GumGum, an artificial intelligence company with deep expertise in computer vision, has chosen Sumo Logic to manage, monitor and troubleshoot its 100 percent cloud-based infrastructure and modern application stack for a real-time view into all machine data being ingested across its entire computing portfolio. With Sumo Logic, GumGum can take advantage of interactive dashboards that supply instantaneous views of operational status, enabling them to rapidly detect and rectify problems without disrupting service for their customers and losing key advertising space … Hazelcast, a leading open source in-memory data management company with millions of productive clusters and over 60 million server starts per month, announced several new contract wins in the financial services sector. New Hazelcast customers include Lloyds Bank PLC, one of the “big four” clearing banks; UBS Investment Bank, a Swiss multinational investment bank; Bank BGZ BNP Paribas S.A., the world’s eighth largest bank; Euro Bank S.A., a retail banking service provider; Česká spořitelna, the largest Czech bank; KB Kookmin Bank, the largest retail bank in South Korea; and National Australia Bank, one of the fourth largest financial institutions in Australia.
Sign up for the free insideBIGDATA newsletter.
Speak Your Mind