News

MapR Update Reflects Big Data's Shift to AI

• By David Ramel
• June 27, 2018

Remember when Big Data used to be all about Hadoop, and then Spark, Kafka and other tools, evolving into real-time analysis and other breakthroughs to help enterprises glean important business insights from their accumulated information?

Now it's all about artificial intelligence (AI).

The latest case in point is MapR Technologies -- one of the original "Big Three" Hadoop-based vendors -- yesterday announcing a "major data platform update for AI and analytics."

MapR used to describe itself in news releases as the "provider of the top-ranked distribution for Apache Hadoop" and now says it offers "the industry's leading data platform for AI and analytics."

That shift to AI is also reflected in various ways by the other two members of the "Big Three," Cloudera -- "the modern platform for machine learning and analytics optimized for the cloud" -- and Hortonworks, which has detailed "our bigger strategy to help clients advance toward artificial intelligence (AI) through the development of a data platform."

For its part, MapR yesterday said ""Customers have made it clear that traditional approaches to managing and processing data for AI and analytics leave critical gaps. In response, MapR's newest innovations enable data scientists and developers to power distributed AI and analytics by leveraging all data for more impactful results."

Those newest innovations include:

• Core data service innovations to speed AI and analytics and lower TCO
• Simplified development and deployment of AI and analytic applications
• Streamlined security and critical data asset protection

MapR blogged about its new AI capabilities, with a focus on machine learning, here.

The AI-infused MapR Data Platform update -- MapR 6.1 -- is said to be entering customer beta testing in advance of becoming generally available in the next quarter.