The latest IBM and Anaconda partnership has the potential to transform the open-source AI ecosystem by simplifying and accelerating the deployment of AI open source technologies across any cloud.
Open-source culture is not a new concept for IT companies – from the Firefox web browser to the Linux operating system, the IT landscape has witnessed iconic innovations around the open-source software movement. According to a surveyOpens a new window of US CEOs last year, 62% of business leaders believed Artificial Intelligence (AI) will drive company efficiency and competitiveness but on the flip side, nearly half of business decision-makersOpens a new window reported their organization lacked skilled personnel to implement AI. The burning question is, how to bridge the skills gap and accelerate the adoption of AI at the same time?
Addressing these challenges, IBM Watson announced a collaboration with the Python data science platform, Anaconda, to make data science and machine learning more accessible and increase the adoption of open-source AI. This is less than a year after IBM unveiled Explainablity 360,Opens a new window its open-source toolkit of state-of-the-art algorithms supports the explainability and interpretability of machine learning models.
What is Open Source AI?
A new reportOpens a new window by Grand View Research, Inc predicts that the Global Artificial Intelligence market size is expected to reach $390.9 billion by 2025. The booming AI market clearly shows business readiness for AI implementation. On the other hand, the skills gap issue has burgeoned the demand for open-source AI. Developed for collaborative public access, Open Source SoftwareOpens a new window (OSS) is computer software in which source code is available for programmers to use, learn, modify, and distribute according to their prerequisites. Open-source AI software libraries and algorithms are available for developers, giving them the freedom to innovate with AI and collaborate with the open-source community. A report revealed that 64% of developersOpens a new window believe open source technology is sustainable due to the contributions of a dedicated community, openness culture, and large enterprise sponsored projects.
Why are Companies Opting for Open Source AI?
One of the biggest reasons that prompted the IBM and Anaconda collaboration is to decentralize talent and enable enterprises to leverage open-source tools repositories in any cloud environment. In recent years, the tech world has witnessed some of the biggest open-source acquisitions where Microsoft bought GitHubOpens a new window and IBM purchased RedHatOpens a new window for $34 billion which certainly indicates the fast adoption of the open-source culture. The challenge around AI and data science is choosing the right framework for training the AI models which require a depth of knowledge of choosing datasets to train the AI models and familiarity in Python and Java languages. To solve this persisting challenge, companies are rooting for open-source AI. Some of the key players in the open-source AI market are IBM (IBM Watson), Google (TensorFlow), Apache Mahout, Scikit-learn among others.
Sri Ambati, founder and CEO of H2O.ai explainsOpens a new window , “A software-maker culture inspires established companies to experiment with AI and create platforms that align with their own business needs. And with open source, they don’t need to spend millions on AI software that they haven’t built and can’t customize. These companies already have the data that fuels AI; they just need the freedom to build models as rapidly as data changes. Open source helps them become co-inventors of software, not just buyers of it.â€
Tech News: Top Tech Product News from IBM, SysAid, BigID, Adaptiva: week of 01 June 2020Opens a new window
IBM and Python’s Ultimate Goal with AI and Open Source
Encouraging enterprises to heavily rely on open-source technologies, the partnership will integrate Anaconda Team Edition repository with IBM Watson Studio on IBM Cloud Pak for Data. Furthermore, Anaconda plans to showcase Watson Studio with a no-charge lite plan to its growing 20 million users which will enable its users to manage their data science projects within IBM’s environment.
Peter Wang, CEO and co-founder of Anaconda, sharesOpens a new window , “Our aim at Anaconda is to help organizations unleash their full potential through data science, and we’re proud to work with IBM to give their customers the latest open-source data science packages in an enterprise-friendly way. Both our companies share a goal of making data science and machine learning more accessible, and this relationship is a further step in that direction.â€
Additionally, the collaboration involves an Original Equipment Manufacturing (OEM) agreement to market the Anaconda Team Edition solution with IBM Watson Studio, as part of IBM Cloud Pak for Data – an automated AI lifecycle platform which will enable businesses to build and operationalize AI. The solution will be available from June 19, 2020.
IBM’s Red Hat acquisition and a partnership with Anaconda is a clear signal that IBM wants to spearhead the growing open AI ecosystem and deliver flexible and extensive choices to its customers.
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