Scalytics to accelerate enterprise AI adoption

Scalytics, the new name of DataBloom AI, founded in 2022, just participated to The IT Press Tour in Malta and we had the chance to meet its CEO and founder, Alexander Alten-Lorenz.

The project was initiated by a group of recognized industry experts, see below, all active within the Apache Software Foundation. So far the company has 6 employees associated with 20-25 students. The company is elf bootstrapped and should raise more money in the future to accelerate its development.

The idea came from the proliferation of independent AI and ML engines without any connection between them and finally optimized results and associated infrastructure. And as a side effect, costs explode.

The firm develops an enterprise software named Scalytics Connect that, as its names states, connects diverse AI engines to various data processing platforms such as Snowflake, Databricks or Confluent to name a few. The last version is 1.2 announced a few days ago. The movement of data is very complex and takes time due to large, very large volumes. So an alternative approach is needed and it will continue to be a tough task to do. This is key to benefit from AI globally at the enterprise level. Access is also an second mandatory features that needs to be seriously considered.

In a nutshell, the last release introduces key features:

• Federated Machine Learning to allow models to be trained on various platforms without migrating or copying data, it could be connected to Apache Spark, TensorFlow, and to JDBC compliant solution, with native code integration,
• Traceability and Auditability to deliver fine-grain log access and training processes,
• Enhanced Performance with a new runtime to reduce complexity and time in development and integration,
• Broader Compatibility and more are coming to be considered as an universal approach.
  
  

The performance benchmark to measure the impact of such an approach illustrates the gain with x150 time reduction for a dataset of 3TB.

Scalytics is open source and leverages partners to penetrate accounts such as NTT Data, Google Cloud or even ESA.  The company has launched its partner program a few weeks ago targeting MSPs, CSPs and of course ISVs.

Open source is a philosophy, a culture, some people even say a religion,  and very difficult to displace once adopted. Scalytics is the initiator of the incubated Apache project Wayang started in 2022.

The revenue started to take off promoting a subscription model and appears to be small as of today.

We'll learn more soon I think.

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ProxySQL to radically changes the MySQL user experience

ProxySQL, a performance companion for MySQL databases, joined The IT Press Tour this week in Valletta, Malta. It was a good time to learn more about the solution that accelerates SQL queries and speak with Jesmar Cannao, the COO and co-founder of the company.

Historically the project started in 2013 and the company in 2014 to support developers and users adoption. The company employs around 10 people.  The idea came in the mind of Rene Cannao, CEO and co-founder, a well recognized DBA and MySQL expert in the ecosystem. He thought about improving performance with an element positioned in the network between clients and MySQL server operating like a centralized query traffic manager. The slide below illustrates the key MySQL challenges addressed by ProxySQL.

Of course the solution is open source like the DB it works with and supports various topology such as replication, Aurora or Galera.

The network instance supports up to 1 million concurrent client connections with the capability to consolidate these connections into optimized backend queries. It is not limited to local instance but multi-region and multi-cloud architectures with potentially thousands of backend servers. If the database is sharded, ProxySQL routes requests to the right portion, shard or replica. It also is designed to provide some security, failover detection and routes requests accordingly, integration with various clustering flavors and caching for similar queries. In addition to MySQL, ProxySQL is well integrated with MariaDB, Percona Server among others.

So far 40 clients adopted ProxySQL, some of them are pretty famous names in finance and e-commerce, and of course local Malta companies in the gaming/betting industry. The team sells via key partners but also in direct mode and of course leverages the open source community. Key partners means hyperscalers but also MySQL integrators or monitoring or tools like Grafana, Prometheus... Oem is also an investigated path.

Essentially 2 flavors exist with the open source model and an enterprise licensing with premium features, updates and priority support - 24x7 - enabled by a subscription-based pricing. Beyond that, training and support are of course available. On average the 40 clients spend $45k per year.

Choosing ProxySQL appears to be cost effective reducing the need to extend a MySQL instance by growing the server or cluster the instance.

Based on the success of ProxySQL and its good reputation, the team has started to deliver similar model for PostgreSQL. But we'll see where it will go... but for sure they need to be more visible.

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DigiFilm develops a new approach for long term data preservation

DigiFilm Corporation, a french entity started in 2013 with the mission to develop a long term data preservation media, participated yesterday to the 59th IT Press Tour organized in Valletta, Malta. The team is pretty small but very active and highly skilled with Rip Hampton O'Neil who leads the technical part, Antoine Simkine around innovation and Pierre Ollivier, CEO.

The session was presented by Antoine Simkine who introduced their technology named Archiflix. It is a WORM media in a "Store and Forget" philosophy. First it's about the media and the choice relies on movie film reel who has a very high longevity and robustness. Second, the reader must be a standard with classic commercial scanner. Third, unlike tape and some other media, the goal is to avoid any technology refresh or migration. Fourth, the sustainability constraint is a must over a multiple decade lifecycle.

Some tentatives have been used to store information for multiple decades but the restore or retrieve of information results in a transformation and a new generation. It means that the final data is not equal to the original one and also lost all associated metadata. Such development must deliver the capability to retrieve the exact copy of the data and all metadata.

The team invents the Pixa code format to encode, store and decode the source data and promote it as an open standard. When the access is needed, a simple scan plus a decoding phase are required and thus the perfect copy of the original file. Each reel embeds information about the algorithm to use for decoding, scanner characteristics and blueprint as well. So the reel is self or auto described and allow easy data access. The addition element resides in the Archiflix Vault, a specific location to keep all reels.

The company is in the process to raise a small round to continue the development of Archiflix and is looking for partners to accelerate this phase. The idea is not to build any hardware scanner or machine. We understand that the pricing is based on Pixa. In terms of performance, don't expect to be fast and it is not an issue as we speak about archiving, it shows 5000-10000 documents for 5 minutes, 200GB per 600m/reel. This kind of support will need 10 minutes for one reel.

DigiFilm plays against Piql, another company from Norway who market microfilm for a few years to store data. We also met Cerabyte, BioMemory and other DNA storage actors and even Folio Photonics, not ready yet. And we also know that some hyperscalers have started some initiatives. All this illustrates a real need. We'll see how this project evolves but for sure the storage industry needs sone iteration on these directions.

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The IT Press Tour #59 will land soon in Malta

The 59th IT Press Tour will take place in Valletta, Malta, in a few days.

Topics will be about IT infrastructure, cloud, networking, security, data management, big data, analytics and storage and of course AI as it is everywhere. We'll meet 6 innovative companies, among them:

• DigiFilm Corporation, a emerging player in long term data preservation,
• EasyVirt, a specialist in the efficiency of physical and virtual servers,
• Indexima, a reference in fast BI and Analytics,
• Manticore Search, key actor for information search,
• ProxySQL, the fast enabler for MySQL and PostgreSQL,
• and Scalytics, the fast growing company in AI federation.

I invite you to follow us on Twitter with #ITPT and @ITPressTour, my twitter handle and @CDP_FST and journalists' respective handle.

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IPO on the horizon for ExaGrid?

Bill Andrews, CEO, ExaGrid, told The IT Press Tour a few weeks ago, that an IPO could be on the radar in the coming quarters even if the priority is to grow the business and gain market footprint. But there is no pressure on that and no special interest from investors. The 16 last quarters demonstrate strategy and operational excellence with impressive figures. The company revenue should pass the $200 million barrier for the next ARR window.

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Swissbit promotes a real security product line

Swissbit, the European leader in SSD and Flash media, started to extend its product line and address some security needs with dedicated products that leverage their expertise in flash. The idea is to provide some cybersecurity and trusted solutions to their partners and thus users in our world becoming more and more digitalized. This initiative has been launched in 2013.

This security solution line targets authentication, access control and identify management leveraging flash and ubiquitous devices. It means also to secure data and process such as secure boot or encryption to guarantee safe IT operations against cyberattacks.

And it makes really sense when you consider some synergies with embedded storage in automative vehicles for instance. all info is stored on plenty dispersed small devices and requires some security techniques both on the storage aspect but also on the access one.

The German company developed a MFA - multi-factor authentication - aligned with FIDO2. It is instantiated with iShield Key FIDO2 and Pro flavors and the new coming one, the iShield Key MIFARE. Force to comply with US, European and global regulations, the firm has released a security upgrade kit with encryption and access control for MicroSD/SD cards. The encryption uses a real time AES 256 bits and also the memory is based on industrial grade pSLC to improve endurance.

For government segments, RSA and Swissbit join forces to provide the RSA iShield Key 2 series and we expect new models in 2025.

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Some directions for ExaGrid

ExaGrid, a reference in secondary storage, will add soon 2 key product iterations. Bill Andrews, CEO, shared with The IT Press Tour group 2 additional flavors related, first, to some deep integrations with Rubrik in addition to Veeam, Veritas and Commvault and classic support via S3, NFS or SMB. The team picked Rubrik instead of Cohesity as Veritas will join officially them very soon now. It means that ExaGrid will cover deeply the 4 top data protection products and thus increase its market footprint significantly. The second news is about the release of a Flash-based appliance at least for the landing zone to boost backup and recovery times. It was not clear of the company will develop a full flash systems. Great news.

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Wasabi AiR to leverage content

Wasabi, the leader in alternative cloud storage, accelerates on what they called Intelligent Media Storage. The idea is to leverage the technology they acquired early this year with Curio AI to provide rich metadata management. Based on AI and some sort of advanced self content indexing, the product team wishes to offer a way to find and access data in a different way. The problem they address can be illustrated by this famous sentence "find a needle in a haystack" realizing that finding rapidly the right file in a very large opaque remote repository is a real mission. Now with Wasabi AiR, a searchable index is auto-generated with auto-tagging, recognition of face, people, object, image, logo, brand, sound, optical character, speech to text and multilingual transcription. The new service provides unlimited search and browse queries, unlimited playback, unlimited metadata review, zero egress or API request fees and no hidden costs.

The video below illustrates the immediate gain users receives with AiR.

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HYCU is ready for DORA and NIS2

HYCU, a reference in next generation data protection integrating SaaS and cloud capabilities, confirms that the last regulation - DORA and NIS2 - from Europe regarding data protection is almost in place. The article 12 of that new rule forces users to keep a local copy and for SaaS applications it could become a nightmare. This is probably why some moves happened recently such as Clumio swallowed by Commvault but above all Own by Salesforce for $1.9 billion.

HYCU will add Nutanix Objects, Dell, Cloudian, OVHcloud in addition to what they have today.

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Some directions for Wasabi

Wasabi, the alternative champion for cloud storage, shared recently during The IT Press Tour in Boston some directions for its future.

David Friend, CEO, insisted on the next corporate step and it could be a IPO.

On the product side, the team works on an on-premises instance to finally provide a global answer with local and remote storage capability, we could say an hybrid model, to increase data availability, durability and boost RTO. This is also alined with the last European regulation DORA that forces users to keep a local copy especially for online services. This new official rule will be in application in January 2025.

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