RapidMiner’s partnership with Experfy looks to help companies find data scientists for specific analytics use cases and pilot projects.
Advanced analytics and machine learning are exploding in popularity, but the skills needed to take full advantage of them are hard to find. RapidMiner, which offers an open-source data science platform, is hoping to ease that gap with the launch of its new Expert Marketplace.
“While RapidMiner’s software is easy to use for data scientists and non-programmers alike, we recognize that not everyone wants to or has the resources to create their own predictive models,” said Ingo Mierswa, RapidMiner founder and president, in the announcement, “To empower all organizations to put data science behind every decision, we want to pair the vast expertise of the over 160,000-strong RapidMiner community with organizations looking to start data science projects.”
On any given day there are about 450 job postings for data professionals coming from every kind of company. “If your company is looking to hire data scientist right now, good luck,” Datanami wrote earlier this year. “Five years after Harvard Business Review first shone the spotlight on the data scientist shortage, the gap between data science supply and demand remains substantial. In fact, the gap may be getting bigger.”
KDNuggets, citing an IDC report, has predicted that by 2018, there will be a need for 1 million data scientists, though Deloitte stated in a report on analytic trends that it is difficult to pin down a set of capabilities that define a data scientist, because “different problems require different skill sets.”
“Some organizations are taking a multi-pronged approach by supplementing campus recruiting with alternatives—from turning to managed analytics to cultivating in-house talent,” Deloitte notes.
Then there’s RapidMiner’s marketplace, which will leverage its partner program as well as Experfy’s consulting marketplace, to match organizations with the right expertise needed to help launch data science projects.
In an email to the community, RapidMiner stated one of the core benefits of the new marketplace includes the ability of organizations to gain access to data science experts in wide variety of industries and use cases. Common projects that can be found in the marketplace include churn prevention, cybersecurity, customer analytics, fraud prevention, and predictive maintenance.
RapidMiner also says the marketplace is more cost-effective than traditional consulting and can deliver results with significantly more speed.
“Our objective is to make starting a data science pilot project as easy as ordering an Uber, eliminating the friction and prohibitive costs,” said Peter Lee, CEO of RapidMiner, “Pilot projects help organizations achieve a quick win, proving out the technology and giving ammunition to build a business case for further investment in data science. ”
