Altair aims to acquire data analytics and machine learning company RapidMiner.
Altair has made a move to boost its already impressive AI and machine learning (ML) portfolio by announcing the acquisition of RapidMiner, a data analytics and ML company. The engineering firm already aims to produce an AI and IoT ecosystem, and with this new addition they will be bringing RapidMiner’s low-code platform into the mix.
“This acquisition significantly strengthens Altair’s end-to-end data analytics (DA) portfolio, which already offers customers the power to understand, transform, act on and automate their data,” said James R. Scapa, founder and chief executive officer, Altair.
The idea is to bring the power of AI and ML to those that are in the weeds of a particular domain expertise. Instead of building the smart tools from scratch, when these experts may know nothing about programming or AI, they are instead offered a drag-and-drop platform with hundreds of building blocks already produced.
“Altair and RapidMiner share the same vision to make data analytics simple enough for all users, but scalable, governed and safe enough for all enterprises,” said Ingo Mierswa, RapidMiner founder and chief technology officer, who will join Altair. “We see this as an incredibly exciting opportunity to watch our solutions grow across the globe and expand into a larger, more powerful ecosystem.”
The RapidMiner platform is available on desktops and the cloud, so it will fit right in with the other tools on Altair One, the SaaS cloud-based ecosystem for engineering software. In fact, it was announced that it will already integrate with tools like Altair Knowledge Studio, Altair SmartWorks and Altair SLC.
Why Engineers Should Pay Attention
There is no shortage of AI applications in engineering. The challenge is that for AI to be useful requires producing systems for each specific niche. Since the developers of these systems are often engineers, not AI experts, drag-and-drop tools are beginning to pop-up frequently.
“Machine learning is becoming an essential part of business, but often the barriers to building ML models are too high to get started,” said Scapa. “Too much data, not enough data science expertise and insecure or unscalable production environments can all keep a business from executing on their data analytics vision. That’s where RapidMiner can be transformative.”
As mentioned in a recent article, offering engineers a suite of AI ready software will give engineers the boost they need to get their applications running.
