“Above the Trend Line” – Your Industry Rumor Central for 3/18/2019

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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, industry partnerships, 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@insidebigdata.com. Be sure to Tweet Above the Trend Line articles using the hashtag: #abovethetrendline.

Do you feel it? Spring is in the air, at least here in LA after an unusually wet winter. No more drought in California! It also means Daylight Savings Time which in turn means more hours for data science. Yipee. I’m also starting two new Intro to Data Science classes at my alma mater UCLA. It will be great to get back to teaching. Also, this week I’m at my favorite tech conference, GTC by NVIDIA in beautiful Silicon Valley. Be sure to watch out for my GTC Field Report.

For now, let’s get on with some industry scuttlebutt starting with new funding news … igneous, Inc., the Seattle-based startup delivering an Unstructured Data Management (UDM) as-a-Service solution, has raised $25 million in Series C funding led by WestRiver Group (WRG). Igneous has experienced tremendous growth and customer traction within leading data-centric enterprises across industries. With this latest round, Igneous will accelerate its mission to help organizations see, organize, protect and mobilize their most valuable data assets. WRG is joined by all existing investors, including Madrona Venture Group, NEA, Vulcan Capital and Redpoint Ventures. Funding will be used to expand the company’s technology and go-to-market investments to further tackle the mounting issues enterprises deal with in managing, protecting and getting value from their growing volumes of unstructured data … Brodmann17, a provider of vision-first technology for automated driving, announced that it raised an $11M Series A funding round from both new and existing investors, including OurCrowd, who led the round, Maniv Mobility, AI Alliance, LLC, UL Ventures, Samsung NEXT, Sony Innovation Fund, and lool Ventures. With the funding, Brodmann17 will expand partnerships, accelerate integration of its deep learning solution with customers, and continue its mission to put efficient, powerful automated driving capabilities in every vehicle. As the advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) market, a crucial element of automated driving, is projected to reach over $90B by 2025, there is a growing need for highly reliable AI-based vision technology. While other companies are relying on hardware that is bulky, costly, and power-inefficient to meet this demand, Brodmann17 is focusing on software, offering game-changing deep learning perception technology so efficient that it can run on any hardware, including low-power processors … Zinier, a leading provider of intelligent field service automation, announced that it has raised $22 million in Series B funding to accelerate global growth and expand its platform to meet the growing needs of field service organizations. Returning investor Accel led the round, along with Founders Fund, Nokia-backed NGP Capital, Qualcomm Ventures LLC and returning France-based investor Newfund … ArangoDB, a leading open source native multi-model database, announced it has raised $10 million in a Series A financing led by Bow Capital, and has moved its headquarters to the U.S. to better service its fastest-growing market. As part of the investment, Bow Capital Advisor Murat Sönmez, a former EVP of Global Field Operations at TIBCO and Managing Director at the World Economic Forum, joins ArangoDB’s board of directors. Existing investor Target Partners also participated in the round, bringing ArangoDB’s total financing to $17 million.

In the M&A category, we heard … TIBCO Software Inc., a global leader in integration, API management, and analytics, announced it has acquired SnappyData. The acquisition will complement the TIBCO® Connected Intelligence platform with a unified analytics data fabric that enhances analytics, data science, streaming, and data management for various use cases requiring speed, volume, and agility. Customers will benefit from enabling streaming, transactional, and interactive analytics in a single unifying system, delivering faster insights from high volumes, while maintaining a low total cost of ownership due to performance and ease of administration. The result is increased performance that is up to twenty times faster than native Apache Spark™, while scaling to support large Apache Spark-compatible stores … Veritas Technologies, a leader in enterprise data protection and software-defined storage, announced that it has acquired APTARE, Inc. a privately-held software company based in Campbell, California. APTARE is a global leader in analytic solutions for hybrid cloud environments and the industry’s leading open and extensible IT analytics platform. It supports hybrid cloud storage and backup systems, as well as technologies such as OpenStack, software-defined storage and flash infrastructures.

As for new partnerships, alignments and collaborations we learned … SigOpt, Inc., a leading provider of solutions that maximize the performance of machine learning, deep learning and simulation models, announced a strategic partnership with Two Sigma, a leading systematic investment manager. Two Sigma has become a customer of SigOpt and is advising SigOpt as they build out their platform. Additionally, as part of the partnership, Two Sigma is making a minority equity investment in SigOpt, joining Andreessen Horowitz, Blumberg Capital, SV Angel, Y-Combinator, DCVC and In-Q-Tel as investors in SigOpt. The terms of the deal were not disclosed … ThoughtSpot, a leader in search and AI-driven analytics, announced a new partnership with Alteryx, Inc., revolutionizing business through data science and analytics, to simplify the entire data pipeline for business users, from data preparation through insight generation. Business users can leverage the Alteryx Platform to perform advanced analytics, and then find insights and answer data questions using a simple, natural language search … Japan Airlines (JAL) is working with Accenture (NYSE: ACN) on a new service that applies artificial intelligence (AI) to answer passenger requests at the airline’s check-in counters. The service assesses what check-in counter agents are saying to passengers and then pushes relevant information to the agents’ tablets in near real-time, which includes additional relevant information tailored to the individual’s journey. JAL and Accenture are piloting the AI-enhanced service at its international check-in counters at Narita Airport and Haneda Airport. The service uses AI applications including voice recognition to identify and interpret statements made by the agents, so it can retrieve data from JAL’s knowledge database or website and proactively answer passenger queries. For passengers, the service is designed to speed up the check-in process and also make the time they spend at the airport less stressful. This supports the airline’s goal to create new value for customers and remain one step ahead of its competitors … SQream, developer of SQream DB, the GPU-accelerated data warehouse designed for rapidly analyzing massive data stores at a fraction of the cost, announced a new agreement with LG Uplus, the mobile carrier owned by LG Corporation. The partnership is expected to improve LG Uplus’ network operations and efficiencies, reduce costs and downtime, and offer better quality of service to customers. Critical to the collaboration is the use of the IBM POWER9-based IBM Power Systems AC922 server with NVIDIA V100 Tensor Core GPUs and IBM FlashSystem 9100 storage to grow LG Uplus’ capacity to perform faster queries of massive amounts of data previously unavailable with its current infrastructure. LG Uplus becomes SQream’s first customer in South Korea as the company grows its worldwide market share within the telecom industry … The University of Evansville’s Department of Mathematics is partnering with EdjAnalytics, a Louisville-based data science firm, to launch the UE Data Science Academy Powered by EdjAnalytics, a week-long program for high school students. The program will run from July 7 – 13, 2019, and will take place on UE’s campus. In the Academy, students will learn the basics of data science through a variety of activities. Participants will work with UE mathematics professors and undergraduate students and connect with peers who share an interest in mathematics. Students will attend classes, engage in hands-on projects, and learn to present material and develop interactive apps … Leading Enterprise Artificial Intelligence® provider, Noodle.ai, and leading supply chain solutions provider, NFI, announced their partnership, bringing world-class artificial intelligence (AI) into the transportation and distribution industries. As a leader in the logistics industry, NFI is committed to engineering end-to-end supply chain solutions, customized to address customers’ unique challenges. NFI and its world-class IT professionals are dedicated to driving results and continuous improvement, and constantly look for new ways to bring innovation to customers’ supply chains. By enhancing its service offerings with innovative applications of artificial intelligence, automation, robotics, and predictive analytics, NFI is able to create greater operational efficiencies and help its customers grow … InsightRX and CHLA, two leaders in precision dosing, are now working together to bring best-in-class dosing to clinicians. InsightRX will incorporate CHLA’s technology, BestDose – and its non-parametric algorithms and models – into the InsightRX Nova precision dosing platform. Many of these models have been evaluated rigorously and published in peer-reviewed medical literature.

In people movement news, we heard … Scale Computing, a market leader in edge computing, virtualization and hyperconverged solutions, announced the appointment of Dan Pierce and Marlena Fernandez to the executive team as a part of the company’s 2019 high-growth plans. Pierce will serve as the vice president of strategic sales, responsible for Scale Computing’s rapidly growing global OEM business in licensing its IP to strategic partners, and will also lead sales efforts in emerging markets (APAC and LATAM). Fernandez will serve as vice president of marketing, responsible for content marketing, demand generation, brand management and the company’s go-to-market strategy. Both advance Scale Computing’s mission to lead the way as the top edge and HCI solution for global organizations.

 

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