AWS, DeepLearning.AI and Coursera announced the launch of Practical Data Science, three-part series of hands-on courses designed for data professionals to learn the essentials of machine learning.

The courses delve into how to use state-of-the art algorithms for natural language processing and natural language understanding using Amazon SageMaker and Hugging Face’s optimization of the BERT algorithm. 

“We’re excited to expand our collaboration with DeepLearning.AI and AWS to help data scientists around the world keep up with the many tools at their disposal,” said Betty Vandenbosch, the chief content officer at Coursera. “Through hands-on learning, cutting-edge technology, and expert instruction, this new content will help learners acquire the latest job-relevant data science skills.”

Nintex acquires AssureSign 

The process management and automation provider Nintex announced that the company acquired AssureSign to meet customer demands for native eSignature capabilities within the Nintex Process Platform. 

“AssureSign’s automation technologies, like with our previous acquisitions, are well architected and will be integrated within the Nintex Process Platform over the months ahead to bring powerful and easy-to-use digital signatures to every organization that is leveraging Nintex to improve the way people work,” said Eric Johnson, the CEO at Nintex.

The course is designed for data-focused developers, scientists and analysts that are familiar with Python so that they can learn how to build, train and deploy scalable, end-to-end ML pipelines.

Vault Platform raises for workplace ethics and compliance 

Vault Platform secured $8.2 million in Series A funding that it will use to further its AI-based misconduct reporting solution and to grow its team. 

“Since announcing our platform to the market, the response has been remarkable,” said Neta Meidav, the co-founder and CEO of Vault Platform. “Major breaches and ethical failures that go unreported can cost companies a fortune and turn into crises. Until now, enterprises could only rely on passive reporting mechanisms. Vault Platform is transformational, by empowering employees to surface the problems they experience, connecting the dots on repeated patterns and offering our customers an unparalleled risk detection capability.”

Vault Platforms offers organizations an end-to-end solution to facilitate secure communication, collaboration between teams and quicker resolution of cases. Additional details are available here.

Apache weekly roundup

Last week, the Apache Software Foundation saw the release of Apache Tika 2.0.0-BETA, which includes improved performance in the pipes module and still further refactorings to the toolkit that detects and extracts metadata and text from over a thousand different file types.

Other releases this week included Apache Flink 1.13.1, NetBeans 12.4, Camel 2.25.4, Commons IO 2.9.0, Qpid ProtonJ2 1.0.0-M2, SkyWalking NodeJS 0.3.0, HTTP Server 2.4.48  and Core v2.3-next-M6.

Also the Pulsar Virtual Summit North America 2021 is taking place between June 16th and 17th. Additional information on the new events and releases are available here.

The post SD Times news digest: Practical Data Science course, Nintex acquires AssureSign, and Apache weekly roundup appeared first on Artificial Intelligence.

ThoughtWorks, a global software consulting firm, has announced that the company is acquiring Fourkind, a privately-held Finnish consulting services company that combines data science and machine learning (ML) with strategy, design and engineering. 

As ThoughtWorks’ second acquisition in 2021, it will allow the company to expand its European footprint, and improve its customer service experience in Finland, Netherlands and the Nordics countries.

Founded in 2017 in Helsinki, Fourkind is a consulting services firm that helps forward-looking organisations create futureproof services and products. Fourkind has a strong team of 40 data scientists, machine learning experts, designers, engineers and strategists, and has managed to work with 80+ organisations in 10+ countries. And with this acquisition, ThoughtWorks will leverage its machine learning and data science capabilities for its business.

According to the news media, Fourkind will continue to operate from their existing premises in Helsinki and Amsterdam, along with its founders and leadership team.

When asked about this acquisition, Guo Xiao, the President and Chief Executive Officer of ThoughtWorks said that the company has been looking to partner with a company that can help them “accelerate growth in our key strategic focus areas of data, digital transformation, enterprise modernisation and customer experience.” And this acquisition will allow ThoughtWorks to take advantage of Fourkind’s competence in machine learning, data science, strategy, design and engineering to “help clients lower the perceived risk of adopting new approaches to artificial intelligence,” said Xiao.

He further added, “We were impressed with their track record of delivering significant return on investment for their clients’ AI and ML investments, and believe that our complementary strengths and culture make Fourkind and ThoughtWorks a winning combination,” said Xiao.

Even Fourkind has been quite excited with this recent partnership. Expressing views, Jonne Heikkinen, managing director and one of the founding partners, Fourkind stated that the company’s vision was to create futureproof services and products for companies. 

As a matter of fact, the company has been known for utilising ML in revolutionary ways for groundbreaking innovation. Being a part of ThoughtWorks will allow the company to flourish and expand faster, and “be part of an agile and successful global team of like-minded, passionate technologists” who are continuously striving to create a remarkable impact on the world,” said Heikkinen.

The post ThoughtWorks Acquires Fourkind To Leverage Its ML & Data Science Capabilities For Accelerating Growth appeared first on Artificial Intelligence.

Today, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) announced its acquisition of MapR business assets. MapR began as a company focused on providing a cloud data platform. They extended their message into machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI), claiming to be good support for data sources needed in those arenas. In addition to the cloud, they focused on a container message for scalability. They had some early backing, but that backing wall pulled earlier this year.

Phil Davis, president, Hybrid IT, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, said in the press release, “MapR’s enterprise-grade file system and cloud-native storage services complement HPE’s BlueData container platform strategy and will allow us to provide a unique value proposition for customers. We are pleased to welcome MapR’s world-class team to the HPE family.”

The press release also focused on the partners in the AI/ML and analytics markets more than it did on the technologies.

What’s interesting to note is that no price was announced for the acquisition. In addition, the stated purpose of working with BlueData, another acquisition focusing on container-based software for AI/ML should make folks wonder about the purpose and benefit of the acquisition. What we have is a second acquisition in the same space, but the MapR one is of a company from with the backers withdrew funding. It is reasonable to assume that HPE acquired it for the connections into the market and not for the technology. Could they have just paid for the lead list and for the partner relations?

From a non-financial evaluation, the larger companies are continuing the fast follower strategy mentioned in my previous article, but MapR didn’t have the presence that OpenAI had, pre-acquisition. I’m sure HPE didn’t pay as much as Microsoft did, but there is still a lot left unanswered in the press release and related material. That means there is no way to evaluate what kind of sense the acquisition makes.

The post HPE Acquires MapR Assets In An Attempt To Strengthen Its Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning Portfolio appeared first on Artificial Intelligence.