Artificial intelligence and data science are high-profile fields right now. Like two sides of the same coin, they are connected, but separate.

“Think of data science more as human intelligence, and then the AI side is how we can augment that with computers as much as possible,” said Craig Taylor (pictured), executive manager of business technology and platforms at The Quantium Group Pty. Ltd. Australia-based Quantium has spent the past 16 years leveraging both AI and data science to advise business strategies for companies across the globe.

Taylor spoke with Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Lisa Martin (@LisaMartinTV), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during Cisco Live in San Diego, California. They discussed how Quantium is leveraging partnerships with Cisco and Cohesity Inc. to drive its core business of data science and AI (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

[Editor’s note: The following conversation has been edited for clarity.]

Martin: Can you explain how Quantium manages the two sides of data science and AI within the company?

Taylor: On the human intelligence [data science] side, we’re looking at things like data curation, how can we work with a company to understand their data, perhaps monetize their data. Then, on the AI side, we’re looking at things like how do we do predictive modeling or predictive analytics. And how can we get that in front of, say a supply chain solution.

Vellante: What does your environment look like? Is it cloud, not cloud, apps?

Taylor: A lot of companies still feel a little bit sensitive around where their data is going … so [we have an] on-premises stack with a bit over 300 servers running a Hadoop cluster. That’s where we do the majority of our AI work. And then we augment that with [cloud].

As we’re doing work globally … it’s not feasible to bring all that data back to Sydney, process it, and send it all back. So we use the cloud to take our technology, take our analytics, to the data. So if we’re working with a customer … and they’re in [Microsoft] Azure, we’ll deploy in Azure. If they’re in Google Cloud Platform, we can deploy in GCP.

Vellante: You’re a Cohesity Inc. customer. Could you talk about the data protection aspect of that relationship?

Taylor: Cohesity really had a lot of synergies with us [in] centralizing a whole raft of data sets into one location. Being a hyperconverged solution, it’s very similar to how Hadoop works. So, [for us] having all the secondary data that we still needed to keep combined into one location matched on a technology level. And then being able to have all that data in one space, you can do some analytics on it. So there are a lot of synergies from the data-science aspect and also the technology aspect, which has worked really well for us.

Vellante: So, you’re saying that Cohesity architecture is well-suited for a highly distributed environment?

Taylor: It certainly is. [Cohesity] augments [Hadoop] quite well. At the moment we keep the environments quite separate, but the way we manage them is very similar. There’s great audit login, great security controls that you can place on both environments. So the way that we structure Hadoop with role-based access, who can perform what action, the same thing applies in Cohesity. [Therefore], the way that we manage primary is the same way that we can manage secondary. So, it’s easier when we come to things like compliance or legislation. We value data, it’s our lifeblood, so we have to be very careful with it.

… Quantium is a fast-moving company … we always like to run close to the leading edge. We like technology to grow with us. And this is what we saw in Cohesity. They haven’t been around for long, and they’re already doing everything we need.

Vellante: Another infrastructure question. These 300 servers you mentioned; are they mostly Cisco Unified Computing System?

Taylor: Yes. We use Cisco for pretty much everything. When [you’re] looking at implementing anything to the environment, you don’t want it to be a lengthy process, because your return on investment is going to be hit. We were having issues with our previous backup solution, and we actually managed to implement the Cohesity solution on UCS and start using it before repairing our existing solution.

Vellante: What kind of issues were you having?

Taylor: Our previous backup solution [was] a fragmented solution that we had stitched together. So, something as simple as a RAID controller failure caused a whole bunch of data corruption across multiple areas. Whilst we were working through that, we had some other members of the team implement Cohesity and get it into the environment quicker than we could repair our existing solution. That’s the power of Cisco UCS.

Martin: How is Cisco’s transformation from a traditional network appliance vendor to hardware and software vendor impacting Quantium?

Taylor: We are a technology business, we are fast-moving, [and] our customers want things to be fast-moving. So, being able to rely on a technology partner like Cisco and knowing that they’re looking for the latest and greatest even quicker than ourselves, I think that’s probably where we start to see the biggest impact.

In the past, we might have a challenge that we need to solve, and [we] might hear something like: “Oh, we’re working on that; maybe in 12 to 18 months we’ll have it in the marketplace.” … That’s not what we’re seeing anymore with Cisco. More frequently than not, our Cisco account reps will say: “I think we have a solution for that.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Cisco Live 2019 event. (* Disclosure: Cohesity Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Cohesity nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE