Orchestrate all the Things

Amazon just unveiled Serverless Inference, a new option for SageMaker, its fully managed machine learning (ML) service. The goal for Amazon SageMaker Serverless Inference is to serve use cases with intermittent or infrequent traffic patterns, lowering total cost of ownership (TCO) and making the service easier to use. We connected with Bratin Saha, AWS VP of Machine Learning, to discuss where Amazon SageMaker Serverless fits into the big picture of Amazon’s machine learning offering and how it affects ease of use and TCO, as well as Amazon’s philosophy and process in developing its machine learning portfolio. Article published on VentureBeat

Modern agriculture was broken long before pandemics, wars, supply chain disruptions and fertilizer shortages. Regenerative agriculture can fix that, and data can help. What could a multi-national corporation like Unilever and an environmental leader and activist like Vandana Shiva possibly have in common? Shiva has a history of actively opposing the commodification and appropriation of natural resources for the benefit of corporate interests. Unilever is at the heart of the international corporate web. Shiva, a prolific author, just published her latest book: "Agroecology and Regenerative Agriculture: Sustainable Solutions for Hunger, Poverty, and Climate Change".  Unilever, whose products need around 4 million hectares of land to grow the raw materials for, recently published a new set of regenerative agriculture principles. There has to be something about regenerative agriculture. Let's take a look at what it is and why it's important, what the data tells us about it, and how analytics and AI may help going forward. Article published on ZDNet

Whether you're genuinely interested in getting insights and solving problems using data, or just attracted by what has been called “the most promising career” by LinkedIn and the “best job in America” by Glassdoor, chances are you're familiar with data science. But what about graph data science? As we've elaborated previously, graphs are a universal data structure with manifestations that span a wide spectrum: from analytics to databases, and from knowledge management to data science, machine learning and even hardware. Graph data science is when you want to answer questions, not just with your data, but with the connections between your data points -- that's the the 30 second explanation according to Alicia Frame. Frame is the Senior Director of Product Management for Data Science at Neo4j, a leading graph database vendor. She has a PhD in computational biology, and has spent ten years as a practicing data scientist working with connected data. When she joined Neo4j about 3 years ago, she set out to build a best in class solution for dealing with connected data for data scientists. Today, the product Frame is leading at Neo4j, aptly called Graph Data Science, is celebrating its two-year anniversary with version 2.0 which brings some important advancements: new features, a native Python client, and availability as a managed service under the name AuraDS on Google Cloud. We caught up with Frame to discuss graph data science the concept, and Graph Data Science the product.

Processing data in real-time is on the rise. The streaming analytics market (which depending on definitions, may just be one segment of the streaming data market) is projected to grow from $15.4 billion in 2021 to $50.1 billion in 2026, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 26.5% during the forecast period as per Markets and Markets. A multitude of streaming data alternatives, each with its own focus and approach, has emerged in the last few years. One of those alternatives is Apache Pulsar. In 2021, Pulsar ranked as a Top 5 Apache Software Foundation project and surpassed Apache Kafka in monthly active contributors. In another episode in the data streaming saga, StreamNative just released a report comparing Apache Pulsar to Apache Kafka in terms of performance benchmarks. We caught up with StreamNative Chief Architect & Head of Cloud Engineering Addison Higham to discuss the report's findings, as well as the bigger picture in data streaming. Article published on VentureBeat

There's no business like powering business. That may seem like a paradox, and most of us don't really think of accounting as a separate line of business. In that sense, it's a secret hiding in plain sight: accounting is big business, in and of itself. The global accounting services market is expected to reach $735.94 billion in 2025, and digital transformation has targeted it for impact. The size of the accounting software market is projected to reach $22,9 billion by 2027. This includes names from Microsoft, Oracle and SAP to Intuit and Xero, plus many others. Yet, there's something none of these names are applying, says Isaac Heller: AI in accounting. That's why Heller and Amir Boldo co-founded Trullion in 2019. Trullion seems to be on a mission to disrupt the accounting software market by "unifying the unstructured and structured worlds of accounting by reading PDF or Excel-based contracts and translating them into financial workflows, connected to the data source". In February 2022, Trullion announced that it has closed $15 million in Series A funding. Trullion has more than 100 clients, a mixture of large enterprise clients and audit firms which procure directly for their clients, and has crossed the seven figure mark in recurring revenue. We caught up with Heller to discuss Trullion's focus and its use of AI to innovate in the accounting software market. Article published on VentureBeat

A pragmatic and direct approach to ethics and trust in artificial intelligence (AI) — who would not want that? This is how Beena Ammanath describes her new book "Trustworthy AI.”  Ammanath is the executive director of the Global Deloitte AI Institute and is well-qualified to write a book on trustworthy AI. She has had stints at GE, HPE and Bank of America in roles such as vice president of data science and innovation,  and CTO of artificial intelligence as well as lead of data and analytics.  Ammanath said part of her motivation to write the book was her desire to help organizations start off with ethics and trust in AI on the right foot and another part was her frustration with existing approaches to AI Ethics. Article published on VentureBeat

Arguably, two of the most iconic examples of digital transformation are Kodak and Amazon. Kodak failed to keep with the times, leading to the demise of a once dominant commercial empire. Amazon, however, had the foresight to not just “stay in its lane,” but step out and shape the world’s digital infrastructure with AWS. Now, Lexmark, is taking note of Kodak’s failure and Amazon’s success and piloting into its own. Moving beyond printers, supplies and accessories — which is how Lexmark first made a name for itself — the company’s current motto seems to be “Print, secure and manage your information.” In 2022, Lexmark lists Print and Capture as just two of its solutions, which also include Cloud, Security and IoT. The Lexmark Optra IoT Platform, unveiled September, is featured prominently on the company’s site. Today, the company is unveiling Optra Edge, the latest addition to its Optra IoT solutions portfolio. Vishal Gupta, Lexmark’s senior VP of connected technology, CTO and CIO, says the company’s new tools and move into IoT are just the beginning. Article published on VentureBeat

Did you ever feel you've had enough of your current line of work, and wanted to shift gears? If you have, you're definitely not alone. Besides the Great Resignation, however, there are also less radical approaches, like the one Andrew Ng is taking. Ng is among the most prominent figures in AI. Founder of deeplearning.ai, Co-Chairman and Co-Founder of Coursera, and Adjunct Professor at Stanford University. He was also Chief Scientist at Baidu Inc., and Founder & Lead for the Google Brain Project. Yet, his current priority has shifted -- from bits to things, as he puts it. Andrew Ng is also the Founder & CEO of Landing AI, a startup working on facilitating the adoption of AI in manufacturing since 2017. This effort has apparently contributed in shaping Ng's perception of what it takes to get AI to work beyond Big Tech, in what he calls the data-centric approach. We connected with Ng to discuss the data-centric approach to AI, and how it relates to his work with Landing AI and the big picture of AI today. Article published on VentureBeat

Run:AI offers a virtualization layer for AI, aiming to facilitate AI infrastructure. It's seeing good traction, and just raised a $75M Series C funding round. Here's how the evolution of the AI landscape has shaped its growth. Article published on ZDNet

What if what you think you know about developer productivity and the value of software is off the mark, and that is hurting the quality of your software, the operation of your organization, as well as your bottomline?  Article published on ZDNet