In this week’s real-time analytics news: IBM announced a new generative AI-assisted product to help enable faster translation of COBOL to Java on IBM Z.
Keeping pace with news and developments in the real-time analytics market can be a daunting task. Fortunately, we have you covered with a summary of the items our staff comes across each week. And if you prefer it in your inbox, sign up here!
IBM announced watsonx Code Assistant for Z, a generative AI-assisted product to help enable faster translation of COBOL to Java on IBM Z and to enhance developer productivity on the platform. Watsonx Code Assistant for Z is a new addition to the watsonx Code Assistant product family, along with IBM watsonx Code Assistant for Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed, scheduled for release later this year. These solutions will be powered by IBM’s watsonx.ai code model, which will have knowledge of 115 coding languages, having learned from 1.5 trillion tokens. At 20 billion parameters, it is on target to become one of the largest generative AI foundation models for code automation.
The watsonx Code Assistant product portfolio will extend over time to address other programming languages, improve time to value for modernization, and address growing skills challenges for developers. The product will be generally available in Q4 2023 and is designed to help accelerate COBOL application modernization.
VMware made several announcements at its VMware Explore 2023 Las Vegas conference. Many of the announcements help customers to accelerate their multi-cloud and digital transformation journeys. Some of the relevant items for the RTInsights audience include:
- VMware announced the next evolution of VMware Cloud. VMware Cloud services simplify the deployment and operations of VMware Cloud Foundation environments across any cloud or on-premises environment. Customers can take advantage of VMware Cloud services to run enterprise workloads more securely at scale with advanced data protection, cloud-based disaster and ransomware recovery, and multi-cloud networking and security.
- VMware expanded its Tanzu portfolio to help customers develop, operate, and optimize apps on any cloud with an enhanced Tanzu Application Platform, new Tanzu Intelligence Services with AI/ML capabilities for deeper insights, and updates to Tanzu Hub.
- VMware announced the evolution of a portion of the VMware Aria portfolio to introduce a new common data platform called Tanzu Intelligence Services, which spans several solutions: Tanzu Guardrails, Tanzu Insights, Tanzu Transformer, and Tanzu CloudHealth. These solutions include ML/AI capabilities to empower platform engineering and cloud operations teams to proactively optimize cost, performance, and security of applications across clouds.
- VMware also introduced VMware Tanzu with Intelligent Assist, which leverages the data and integrations across Tanzu Hub to provide a generative AI-powered conversational chatbot experience that supports more proactive operations and improves operator workflows.
NVIDIA announced that many of the world’s leading system manufacturers will deliver AI-ready servers that support VMware Private AI Foundation with NVIDIA, which was announced separately. The systems and solutions are designed to help companies customize and deploy generative AI applications using their proprietary business data. The NVIDIA AI-ready servers will include NVIDIA L40S GPUs, NVIDIA BlueField-3 DPUs, and NVIDIA AI Enterprise software to help enterprises fine-tune generative AI foundation models and deploy generative AI applications. Servers from Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Lenovo will be available by year-end.
AWS announced AWS Dedicated Local Zones. Dedicated Local Zones are a type of AWS infrastructure that is fully managed by AWS, built for exclusive use by a customer or community, and placed in a customer-specified location or data center to help comply with regulatory requirements. Dedicated Local Zones can be operated by local AWS personnel and offer the same benefits as Local Zones, such as elasticity, scalability, and pay-as-you-go pricing, with added security and governance features. These features include data access monitoring and audit programs, controls to limit infrastructure access to customer-selected AWS accounts, and options to enforce security clearance or other criteria on local AWS operating personnel.
Deloitte announced an expansion of the Deloitte AI Academy to bring tailored Generative AI training curricula to its professionals and clients. On the pathway of training up to 10,000 Deloitte practitioners, the AI Academy is developing a curriculum alongside major universities and technology institutes in the U.S. and India, including Virginia Tech, and the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee.
Real-time analytics news in brief
Airbyte announced the Airbyte API and Terraform Provider are now freely available to users of Airbyte Open Source, as well as Airbyte Self-Managed deployments. Also, Airbyte is now in the HashiCorp Partner Program. Previously available exclusively on Airbyte Cloud, Airbyte API, and Terraform Provider are now accessible to all Airbyte users, enabling Airbyte resources to be managed programmatically – streamlining workflows and integrating Airbyte configurations with existing data infrastructure.
Anaconda announced the beta availability of Anaconda Distribution for Python in Excel, a new integration with Microsoft Excel. Anaconda’s Python distribution is fully embedded and integrated into the Excel grid toolboxes for manipulating, analyzing, and visualizing data and for advanced machine learning and AI. Python in Excel is currently rolling out to Public Preview and is available for Microsoft Insiders.
Appen Limited announced the launch of two new products that will enable customers to launch high-performing large language models (LLMs). The solutions are AI Chat Feedback, which empowers domain experts to assess a multi-turn live conversation, enabling them to review, rate, and rewrite each response; and Benchmarking, a solution designed to help customers evaluate model performance across various dimensions, such as model accuracy, toxicity, etc.
Appian announced the immediate availability of the latest version of the Appian AI-Powered Process Platform, featuring Appian AI Copilot, an advanced AI assistant that increases developer productivity. In its initial release, AI Copilot uses generative AI to quickly convert PDF and other structured forms into intuitive digital interfaces that support great user experiences. AI Copilot does the tedious work of digitizing PDF forms into interactive business applications, empowering developers to use low-code design tools to refine and perfect applications.
Chainguard announced a new Chainguard Images AI bundle that will include a comprehensive collection of images for stages in the AI workload lifecycle, from development images to workflow management tools to vector databases for production storage. As with its previous Images, the new ones include critical software supply chain security features like software signatures, SBOMs, and CVE remediation.
dotData unveiled dotData Ops, a next-generation, no-code MLOps platform. It empowers BI and analytics professionals or ML engineers by providing an intuitive, self-service environment for efficiently deploying and operationalizing data, feature, and prediction pipelines. dotData Ops distinguishes itself from conventional MLOps solutions by managing and streamlining pipelines for data and feature transformations and ML scoring models.
Fauna announced the general availability of their new TypeScript-inspired database language, new web and local development experiences, and the addition of a declarative database schema. The new database language and developer experience unleashes the power of Fauna’s industry-leading distributed, document-relational database. Combined, these new capabilities deliver a superior software development experience for teams building and scaling new and existing applications.
Gupshup announced the launch of ACE LLM, a family of domain-specific Large Language Models specialized for functions such as marketing, commerce, support, HR & IT, and industries like banking, retail, utilities, and more. Built upon foundation models such as Meta’s Llama 2, OpenAI GPT-3.5 Turbo, Mosaic MPT, Flan T-5, and others, ACE LLM has been meticulously adapted for specific industries and functions and is also equipped with enterprise-grade safety controls and guardrails.
Neo4j announced that it has integrated native vector search as part of its core database capabilities. Neo4j’s graph database can be used to create knowledge graphs, which capture and connect explicit relationships between entities, enabling AI systems to reason, infer, and retrieve relevant information effectively. The result ensures more accurate, explainable, and transparent outcomes for LLMs and other generative AI applications.
New Relic announced that it has further enhanced its AIOps capabilities with recommended alerts. Powered by AIOps, New Relic recommended alerts streamlines alerting with its alert coverage gaps feature, which continuously and automatically highlights areas in an organization’s technology stack that are missing alert coverage across application performance monitoring (APM), mobile, and browser entities.
Renishaw announced its new Central manufacturing connectivity and data platform, a data-driven manufacturing solution that brings the power of connectivity to the machine shop floor. Renishaw Central collects metrology, status, and alarm data from connected devices, including additive manufacturing (AM) systems, on-machine measurement systems, shop floor gauging, and coordinate measuring machines (CMMs). With insight into the process performance of each workstation, manufacturers have a better understanding of where to take corrective measures.
ScyllaDB announced the general availability of ScyllaDB 2023.1. This new enterprise release introduces Raft-based strongly consistent schema management, distributed aggregates that reduce query execution time up to 20X, and numerous other features that further enhance ScyllaDB’s performance at scale. With Raft-based schema management, it becomes safe to perform concurrent schema change statements. A new Change Data Capture library for Rust was also released, speeding up ScyllaDB’s real-time streaming while requiring less infrastructure.
Partnerships, collaborations, and more
Altair announced that Altair SLC is now available on Google Cloud Marketplace. Altair SLC is an alternative SAS language environment that doesn’t require any third-party middleware to process applications containing the SAS language. Google Cloud Marketplace enterprise customers can now access Altair SLC without needing additional budget justification or vendor approval.
Arcion announced new connectors for Oracle and MySQL that offer higher throughput. Additionally, the company announced a native connector for Snowflake. Using Arcion’s new Snowflake connector, enterprises can seamlessly replicate data stored in Snowflake to any platform. Arcion also added online schema change support for all its OLTP connectors, ensuring no pipeline downtime if database schemas are changed.
Contextual AI announced a strategic partnership with Google Cloud as its preferred cloud provider to build, run, and scale its business and to train its large language models (LLMs) for the enterprise. The company selected Google Cloud for its leadership and open approach to generative AI, as well as the comprehensiveness of its compute infrastructure, purpose-built for AI/ML.
Datometry announced the availability of Datometry Hyper-Q for Databricks on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud platform. Datometry Hyper-Q for Databricks makes existing applications work as-is with Databricks without the need to rewrite or modify them. Now, customers, including those using Teradata Vantage on AWS and Oracle RDS, can run their workloads directly on Databricks in AWS.
HCLSoftware and Google Cloud have announced a strategic collaboration that will enable HCLSoftware to integrate Google Cloud’s generative AI solutions into its software products, giving customers access to Google Cloud’s leading AI capabilities and advanced large language models. By combining HCLSoftware’s expertise in software development and AI with Google Cloud’s cutting-edge AI technologies, the two companies aim to create a new generation of intelligent business applications that can transform industries, enhance business processes, and improve how organizations operate.
Lenovo and VMware announced the first solutions from their joint Edge and Cloud Innovation Labs, delivering modern hybrid multi-cloud capabilities to mid-size companies and helping customers more easily harness data to empower their intelligent transformation. Lenovo also unveiled its newest Reference Design for Generative AI in partnership with VMware, a fully integrated Lenovo ThinkSystem solution featuring NVIDIA-accelerated computing and software that is purpose-built to help businesses implement AI.
MosaicML selected Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) as its preferred cloud infrastructure to help enterprises extract more value from their data. With OCI, MosaicML has been able to gain access to the latest NVIDIA GPUs, a very high bandwidth interconnect between nodes, and large compute block sizes for scaling to thousands of GPUs. This has enabled MosaicML to help enterprises and startups operationalize AI models.
OpenText announced an expansion of its partnership with Google Cloud to deliver AI-powered integrations that will help organizations unlock the power of their data on Google Cloud. The co-innovation of OpenText’s information management solutions and Google Cloud’s AI capabilities will accelerate how organizations of all sizes surface insights quickly, boost productivity, and transform customer experiences.
If your company has real-time analytics news, send your announcements to [email protected].
In case you missed it, here are our most recent previous weekly real-time analytics news roundups:
