By Hande Sahin-Bahceci
Are you one of the many enterprise organizations experimenting with AI, but struggling to scale your initial deployments at multiple sites, with different analytics teams and new use cases?
Curating, orchestrating and deploying solutions in a complex and evolving AI ecosystem with a rigid, siloed Big Data foundation is no small task if you’re a data scientist and/or a developer. If you’re in an IT&O team, you may feel like you don’t have the tools, technology or automation in place to manage the complexity.
The challenges are real, but the results are well worth the effort. Many companies are finding success by leveraging expert help and infrastructure solutions from trusted partners to automate, orchestrate and simplify the deployment of their AI use cases and integrate the data pipeline. For example, you can read here how Seagate’s engineers, along with collaborators from Hewlett Packard Enterprise and other partners, implemented an artificial intelligence (AI) platform that eliminates inefficiencies and prevents anomalies from sneaking their way into products on the factory floor.
Every industry and business is different when it comes to AI and analytics. It’s important to map your own journey. The functional considerations may include:
- Optimizing and automating for faster AI deployment
- Abstracting data for analytics from underlying infrastructure and sources and ensuring portability
- Designing AI use cases that scale, and designing a data foundation that can support multiple AI use cases
- Keeping data governance, quality, security and management top-of-mind.
If you’re grappling with any of these challenges or requirements, read on – we have some great news for you!
Accelerating AI and data-driven innovation in the enterprise
HPE caused a major stir in the industry last year when we announced* our acquisition of BlueData, provider of a breakthrough software platform that removes many of the deployment and orchestration challenges around AI and Big Data. Today, HPE announced a new integrated offering that combines the HPE BlueData software platform with HPE Apollo systems and HPE Pointnext services, to provide customers with a powerful solution for AI and data-driven business innovation.
HPE BlueData’s container-powered EPIC platform enables companies to spin up environments supporting many industry use cases in minutes rather than months, wherever they’re needed. Now BlueData is also available as a standalone HPE software solution, and customers can continue to run BlueData software on any infrastructure with an as-a-service experience for AI/ML and analytics – leveraging the portability of containers across on-premises, hybrid cloud, and multi-cloud environments.
I won’t go into all of the details here – check out the press release for an overview of some truly compelling innovations. In this post, I’ll focus on the new HPE Pointext services and capabilities for BlueData that enable companies to ensure the success of their AI/ML and Big Data initiatives and drive faster time-to-value: HPE Pointnext Services for AI/ML including new BlueData EPIC Deployment and Integration Services.
BlueData made faster, simpler, easier
HPE Pointnext experts follow a 3-step approach to transformation. First, we work with your organization to explore AI use cases, analytics needs, and opportunities through a 1-day workshop (for example, the HPE Artificial Intelligence Transformation Workshop). Next, we work with you to experiment and validate the solution with a proof-of-value service for your use cases, leveraging HPE technologies such as BlueData. Then we help you evolve this POV with full implementation of the AI or Big Data solution and infrastructure modernization needed to scale. In addition, HPE Education Services can provide the reskilling and change management expertise needed to accelerate user adoption of your AI, Big Data solution or BlueData platform through onsite and remote training.
From a very full slate of innovative services, I’ll highlight some specific examples of how we can assist customers in their AI/Big Data journey with BlueData:
Ensuring Success with Deployment and Integration
We provide requirements assessment, solution development, design validation, and configuration of your BlueData EPIC platform designed to meet your needs at whatever stage of maturity your business has reached. Some organizations need more help with the overall solution design and implementation, so our team of consultants, through a series of workshops, will flesh out the business and technical requirements and map those to an executable plan.
Other customers may already have done that legwork and are ready to deploy; our team of architects and engineers will work with their customer counterparts to develop and deploy the AI/ML and analytics applications – and accelerate their data science development lifecycle by as much as 6 weeks! And for customers that have already deployed the BlueData EPIC platform and are ready to scale their implementation, we can also help architect and implement key integrations into other enterprise systems.
Developing AI/ML and Analytics Application Images
Architecture, consultation, and implementation are key steps in deploying the BlueData EPIC platform. But the rubber really hits the road for data scientists and engineers once their application packages for AI/ML and analytics tools (we call them “application images,” since they run on containers) are developed and deployed.
In my experience, the default set of containerized application images included with BlueData EPIC is great for the pilot or initial phase of a deployment. Moving past those phases, we’ve found that in order to get the fastest adoption and accelerated time to value, customers need to configure and develop application images for the very specific set of AI/ML and analytics tools they need for their use cases. This gives the data science teams the premium experience they need to drive analytical value back to the organization. Our expert consultants will sit with your data science, data engineering, and core IT teams to capture the requirements and then develop those application images, which will then be deployed on the BlueData EPIC platform.
With HPE BlueData EPIC Deployment and Integration Services, you can:
- Accelerate time to production. HPE Pointnext helps you evaluate your AI, Big Data and analytics requirements prior to implementing the new technology. And we provide all the planning and design expertise, knowledge transfer and documentation you need to get your BlueData initiative up and running quickly. That means you can start delivering crucial data-driven insights for your business sooner.
- Remove project risks. HPE’s expert assistance and knowledge of integration best practices help you mitigate costly installation and configuration errors and reduce the risk of unplanned downtime.
- Simplify IT&O for data teams. The shortage of specialized AI, Big Data and analytics staff is a well-recognized obstacle for these technology initiatives. HPE BlueData EPIC Deployment and Integration Services relieves the skills shortage, complementing your IT team with globally available advisory and professional assistance from HPE Pointnext. We validate your deployment, ensuring that it’s fully commissioned and operational. And we help you optimize the solution to deliver its full potential, maximizing ROI on your BlueData EPIC installation.
Helping you navigate the confluence of Hybrid Cloud, Big Data and AI
At HPE, we recognize that companies are looking for guidance for the journey to artificial intelligence, and that’s especially true as that transformation expands to include the IoT and hybrid cloud waves of recent years. HPE Pointnext delivers the extensive experience, deep expertise and global reach to fulfill that partnership need, and we see HPE BlueData EPIC Deployment and Integration Services as a key element in delivering integrated solutions for our customers.
Would you like to know more?
On May 7th 2019, HPE along with Wikibon hosted a CrowdChat at https://www.crowdchat.net/EnterpriseAI. The video recording used for the event was just posted here .
Also, check out
- Press release for the acquisition here
- A New Hybrid IT Vision for AI / ML and Analytics in the Enterprise blog post on bluedata.com
- HPE and BlueData: Accelerating time-to-value with AI and Analytics blog
- HPE Artificial Intelligence and Data Driven Services
- My earlier post on Making AI Enterprise-Ready.
About the author
Over 15 years of technology advisory, professional services development and marketing for IT Infrastructure, Artificial intelligence, Blockchain, Hybrid Cloud and Security. Hande holds an M.B.A degree from Bentley College, MA.
Hande Sahin-Bahceci
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
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Hande_Sahin_Bah
+ 20 years of global experience in technology services development and marketing for IT infrastructure, Artificial Intelligence, hybrid cloud, and security.
