There is already a wide range of artificial intelligence (AI) platforms on the market for every size of business imaginable, but OpenText’s latest announcement hopes to stand out.
The Canadian enterprise information management (EIM) company unveiled OpenText Magellan, its new flexible AI platform that combines open source machine learning with advanced analysis to acquire, merge, manage, and analyze big data, at its annual Enterprise World 2017 in Toronto on July 11.
Magellan is powered by OpenText Analytics and Apache Spark to easily integrate with any EIM architecture, which “dramatically” reduces the time, effort, and expertise needed to take advantage of advanced analytics in decision making and task automation, the company says.
“Enterprises have created vast data lakes of information over the last decade, and OpenText Magellan helps to organize that information and unlock its value,” Mark J. Barrenechea, OpenText CEO and CTO, says at Enterprise World. “As automation advances at incredible rates, and enterprise data grows larger, Magellan brings the power of analytics, algorithms and statistical models to organizations around the world for advanced decision making and better business insight. We are moving towards a more open, scalable and affordable future for AI and cognitive computing.”
Magellan’s highly scalable cognitive computing platform comes with fast self-service analytics to unlock the value of EIM data, while also empowering data scientists to create custom algorithms for business analysts and operational users.
Taking on the competition
“We’ll be taking Magellan to market and it will be competing head on with existing AI platforms like IBM Watson and SAP Leonardo,” Adam Howatson, chief marketing officer, tells IT World Canada. “However, OpenText is taking a decidedly different approach because our platform is not only built to handle massive amounts of structured and unstructured data, but it’s also open source Apache Spark-based so our customers can get the most current insights and updates.”
He adds that while AI platforms like Watson and Leonardo are already established platforms, it’s not a “one-size-fits-all market because there’s room for every type of automation and cognitive computing platform.
“We’re already seeing the proliferation of machine learning and AI in every sector of the market, and that will only continue. But not every organization has hundreds of data scientists on staff or massive professional service budgets to engage with an application like Watson, so where’s the AI platform for the masses?” he explains. “OpenText is democratizing that process and leveraging those open source communities for the exchange of algorithms and insight to help build applications on top of our AI platform.”
He goes on to say that another differentiator between Magellan and Watson is the fact that OpenText already has its information repositories deployed that contain that unstructured data, providing “easier integration and offering more industry-specific applications.”
Built for large enterprises and the mid-market segment, the platform is generally available now in a flexible deployment model, offered both on the OpenText cloud, as well as on-premises and as a service.
“We think that the top end of the mid-market to the enterprise space will see the benefits of Magellan. It has a wide range of applications across any industry, such as new drug approval processes in the pharmaceutical industry, optimizing supply chains in retail or industrial, or employee management in human resources,” Howatson concludes.