Recently, David Siegel, Rachel Kurtz and I spent the day with the team over at Dataiku HQ in New York to learn about the platform and celebrate the release of the new DSS 5.0. It was a very productive and enlightening day—I learned a ton about the power and various capabilities of the platform.
Collaboration
My primary goal onsite was to get to know the platform a bit better and see how it compares to others in the space. I was particularly surprised by its collaborative features. It’s built for teams with diverse skillsets, so while I’m cleaning up the raw data, Rachel can work on training a machine-learning algorithm, and David can spin up an API so we can interface with the endpoint from other programs—all at the same time!
Updates for DSS 5.0
As I mentioned, Dataiku was celebrating the release of their latest update. A few exciting new features got our brains turning. We can’t wait to see them in action!
- Improved Collaboration – Wikis, a brand new UX, discussion sections and revamped dashboards (that can be output to PDF or pushed to email!) are just a few of the updates targeted at making it easier for you to work with your team within the tool.
- Machine Learning Updates – They’ve gone a step beyond the previous version’s visual machine learning capabilities and added deep learning capabilities to the repertoire. Further, it will suggest algorithms during the model-building process. And don’t worry—all of this comes with a big emphasis on documentation, so you’ll be able to really dive in and know what you’re getting yourself into.
- Operating at Scale – Finally, Dataiku has seen how organizations are using the tool and wanted to ensure the product can scale with the heavier use cases. They’ve introduced containerization of deployments using Kubernetes and Docker, so you can throw as many requests at a trained model’s API endpoint as your heart desires. And for the system admins out there, they’ve added resource control via Linux cgroups, so your users won’t be able to eat all of the resources on your production environment.
The Positive Dataiku Culture
Finally, going onsite gave us the opportunity to discover one of Dataiku’s strongest assets firsthand: the team. Being at their headquarters and speaking with people from all around the organization reminded me of my own team. One of my favorite parts of working at InterWorks is that I’m surrounded by hard-working, intelligent, passionate, fun people – plenty of whom I saw over the course of the day. We even stayed after to celebrate the new release!
The casual setting brought our teams together even further, and I can’t wait to do more great work with the all-stars at Dataiku. If you want to read more detail about the updates for DSS 5.0, make sure to check out Ben Bausili’s blog, or if you’d like to discuss the platform further, feel free to get in touch! You can also try a 14-day free trial if you like!
