HPE's Machine Learning APIs, MIT's Sports Analytics Trends: Big Data Roundup

10 Startups Aiming To Change The Way You Work

This week in big data we've got machine learning news from Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), an easier way to deal with containers from MapR, an acquisition by Tableau, why your hotel concierge may soon be a robot, and more. Plus, we take a look at the country's least memorable city, and why you may be going there in a few weeks anyway.

Let's start with HP Enterprise. The company announced commercial availability for HPE Haven OnDemand, a cloud platform that it said provides advanced machine learning APIs and services that enable enterprises to build data-rich mobile and enterprise applications.

Enabling organizations to bake these kinds of analytics right into the applications they build has been part of HPE's big data strategy all along.

Haven is all about big data. Its name is actually a loose acronym:

HPE's announcement this week brings HPE Haven OnDemand as a service on the Microsoft Azure platform and provides more than 60 APIs and services that deliver deep learning analytics on a wide range of data, including text, audio, image, social, Web, and video. Customers can start with a freemium service that enables development and testing for free, and grow into a usage and SLA-based commercial model for enterprises.

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Hadoop distributor MapR delivered its own advance this week, adding advanced support for containers to its Converged Data Platform, which is a bundled toolbox of technology for big data customers. The company also made improvements to its security and governance capabilities. The new container support lets data be ported to new locations and automatically reconnect with applications in Docker containers without losing the context for that data.

Meanwhile, in Seattle, data visualization company Tableau Software acquired early-stage Munich-based database company HyPer. Tableau's director of engineering told InformationWeek that HyPer's database technology supports both OLAP and OLTP. By adding that technology to its own data engine, Tableau will be able to analyze real-time transactional data, too, and that's where the market is evolving in the years to come.

Welcome To Hilton

Can cognitive computing be applied to the hospitality industry? We may find out soon. Hilton Worldwide and IBM have announced a collaboration to develop a concierge robot named Connie that taps the intelligence of IBM's Watson and WayBlazer, a Watson ecosystem partner specializing in travel. Right now, you'll have to visit the Hilton McLean in Virginia to see Connie in action.

MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference

Do you want an an overview of the best submissions in the research paper competition for the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conerence? FiveThirtyEight put together a summary of five trends that were revealed by the papers submitted by the contest's eight finalists. This is well worth a look for anyone whose love for analytics converges with a love for sports. Some of the trends revealed include big data sets, the rise of machine learning, and a focus on classifying player types.

We Know The Way

Are you headed to San Jose for Strata + Hadoop World later this month? Well, FiveThirtyEight reports on research that says this major city in the heart of Silicon Valley is the most forgettable in the country. I'm personally looking forward to driving down Woz Way, stopping by Mojo Burger and Aqui Cal-Mex, and spending too much time at the Fry's on Brokaw. But that's just me.