DataRobot made its AI cloud platform available on the Google Cloud Marketplace and integrated the technology with GitHub and other online services in a move to boost the independent vendor’s appeal to large enterprises.
The AI and automated machine learning vendor also updated its AI cloud with new automation tools for compliance in regulated industries, and added more algorithmic bias detection and prevention capabilities and specialized tools for data scientists.
“It’s important for every independent AI platform to run smoothly on Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure and AWS,” said Mike Gualtieri, Forrester analyst. “Formalized on the Google Cloud Marketplace, DataRobot will make it easier for customers to try, adopt, and scale on GCP.”
cloud availability
DataRobot is already available on the cloud marketplaces of the two largest cloud service providers, including the AI Cloud Platform on Azure and DataRobot’s Automated Machine Learning Platform on AWS.
Full availability on the third-largest cloud vendor’s market is a milestone DataRobot was forced to reach, even as DataRobot competes with the tech giant’s own AI systems, Gualtieri said.
“From a market perspective, I don’t think it changes the competitiveness of DataRobot,” Gualtieri said. “It’s something they had to do. They’re not in a hurry. They’re not late.”
AWS, Microsoft and Google are eager to welcome smaller competitors as it expands the ecosystem of those tech giants, he said.
DataRobot revealed AI Cloud’s availability on the Google Cloud Marketplace and new integrations with online software development repository GitHub and other platforms on Tuesday, just ahead of the start of the vendor’s two-day virtual conference, DataRobot AIX 2022.
A subscription to DataRobot’s platform on Google Cloud, which includes AutoML and MLOps capabilities, is listed for $5,416.67 per month, or $65,000 per year.
Connecting to other platforms
In addition to GitHub, DataRobot said it has integrated with other software companies including log management vendor Sumo Logic, cybersecurity and IT operations vendor Splunk, IT monitoring vendor Datadog and customer service technology provider Zendesk.
Although DataRobot rolled out several updates and new capabilities for the AI cloud, upgrades to the vendor’s platform were largely expected, Gualtieri said.
DataRobot’s latest round of upgrades includes new features and capabilities called vendor integrated code-first notebooks, which enable data scientists to perform coding tasks.
Now in preview, the technology comes from cloud data science and analytics platform vendor Zepl’s acquisition of DataRobot in May 2021.
In addition, DataRobot added geospatial capabilities to its no-code predictive AI apps for business users. The vendor also highlighted a number of enhanced or expanded capabilities. This includes:
- Automated compliance documentation for all AI and Machine Learning models built outside DataRobot;
- Bias mitigation capabilities that automatically detect and optimize models before they reach deployment;
- Enterprise MLOps to support the full model lifecycle and deliver open models that IT groups can integrate with third-party software platforms and services;
- Greater support for DevOps practices, with integration of GitHub Actions to automate machine learning workflows in line with CI/CD (continuous integration-continuous delivery) principles.
Boston-based DataRobot competes with other independent AI vendors including H2O.ai, Dataiku, Databricks, SAS and the open source Jupyter Notebook.
While DataRobot has raised $1 billion in venture funding in 10 rounds, acquired seven small vendors and achieved a market valuation of up to $6.3 billion, it has faced significant setbacks during the past decade of rapid growth. .
Most recently, the privately held vendor laid off about 70 employees — 7% of its workforce — in early May amid a downturn in the market for tech companies.
In March 2020, DataRobot downsized at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, but did not disclose the number of employees in that round of layoffs.
