Data science company Iguazio Systems Ltd. today announced it’s joining with data storage firm NetApp Inc. to help customers develop and deploy artificial intelligence-based applications on the latter’s ONTAP AI framework.

Iguazio sells a “serverless” data platform-as-a-service product that creates real-time intelligence for applications located at the network edge as well as on public clouds and in on-premises data centers.

It works by consolidating data into a repository and making it available to the applications that need it, as files, messages, streams and forms. Data can be analyzed on site without sending it back to the cloud, thereby enabling much faster insights.

The “serverless” aspect of Iguazio’s platform, powered by its open-source Nuclio framework, means users don’t have to worry about the underlying information technology infrastructure, such as servers and storage. Nuclio also helps reduce bandwidth constraints by aggregating data before sending it to the cloud.

NetApp’s ONTAP AI framework is a hardware platform for AI workloads. It combines NetApp’s popular A800 flash array with DGX-1, a specialized server built by Nvidia Corp. for running AI workloads. DGX-1 is powered by Nvidia’s graphics processing units, which are more suited to running AI models than regular central processing units.

The companies said the integration will enable customers to handle more data at scale and harness real-time information for predictive applications, which are some of the main challenges they face when moving AI models into production environments.

By integrating with ONTAP AI, Iguazio customers will be able to take advantage of “production ready” infrastructure and benefit from more efficient use of compute resources. In turn, that should help them reduce both the costs and complexities associated with running AI workloads.

“Iguazio’s solution enables our customers to benefit from an end-to-end data science platform that supports real-time machine learning applications at peak performance,” said Santosh Rao, head of AI/ML/DL Platform at NetApp. “NetApp is committed to simplifying MLOps for enterprises, allowing data scientists to run AI at scale with a simple, one-click deployment methodology.”

Image: Iguazio