DataRobot Inc. is riding on the wave of interest in artificial intelligence this year with the well-timed release of a key update to its AI development platform.

The new version, DataRobot AI Platform 9.0, is available today. It brings new AI Accelerators, redesigned service offerings and new partner integrations centered on helping companies obtain measurable value from their AI investments.

DataRobot’s AI Platform is designed to function as the central hub of a company’s AI initiatives and provides tools for all of the key coding and software deployment tasks involved in creating machine learning applications. What sets DataRobot apart is that it’s targeted at both data scientists and business users. For the latter, it provides a simple point-and-click AI builder that allows them to create AI models without any coding.

It works by evaluating the task that the user wishes to automate with AI, then searches for the most appropriate neural network from its library of pre-packaged algorithms. The selected neural network is then trained to carry out that task, with every step fully automated.

Data scientists, on the other hand, often prefer to create their own, customized neural networks, and DataRobot caters to these users too with a feature called Composable ML. Users can generate a neural network using DataRobot’s no-code AI builder and customize it to their requirements with custom code, an approach the company promises is faster than building everything from scratch.

With today’s release, DataRobot is adding quite a few features to its platform, including a new user experience called Workbench that it says will enable more collaborative experimentation and faster discovery of insights. It’s also introducing new guard rails aimed at protecting against AI bias and automating AI model compliance in order to eliminate barriers to production and reduce enterprise risk.

Another highlight is the new AI Accelerators and AI services that DataRobot says will help customers to jumpstart new AI projects and get results much faster than before.

Finally, DataRobot said its platform now features an enhanced Snowflake integration that will streamline data preparation, model building and monitoring, plus a brand new partnership with SAP SE. Customers can now use business data from SAP HANA cloud and other non-SAP sources to create custom machine learning models in DataRobot and embed them in SAP’s application stack.

Andy Thurai, principal analyst and vice president of Constellation Research Inc., told SiliconANGLE that AI and machine learning is moving rapidly from the experimentation phase to the implementation phase, meaning that once a model has shown its ability to produce conceivable business value, it needs to be deployed quickly in production. With today’s update, DataRobot is giving users the capability to do so.

“DataRobot is moving the conversation up the value chain,” Thurai said. “AI used to be model-driven, then later it was data-driven, and now with this push, DataRobot is making it business value-driven. If this works, it can sell to different personas at different ticket prices and at a different value proposition than its competitors.”

Thurai explained that one of DataRobot’s main strengths is that it has more than 250 data scientists on its team that work directly with customers to help them get their projects going. Moreover, most of its new customers are in the cloud, enabling DataRobot to hold its ground and even win against hyperscalers like Amazon Web Services Inc. and Google Cloud, the analyst said.

“The CI/CD, API, governance and compliance improvements introduced today mean that DataRobot is able to plug and play with large enterprises easily, especially in regulated industries,” Thurai continued. “The integrations with Snowflake and SAP mean enterprises can do their ML model work where the data resides, without moving it around. In this way, DataRobot has created a true enterprise model based on business value, and that should enable it to sell at higher prices and longer terms than the competition.”

International Data Corp. analyst Ritu Jyoti said the partnerships are encouraging, because enterprises need an AI solution that works well with their existing infrastructure and investments. “With its platform and integration enhancements that make it easy for customers to deploy in their preferred environment, DataRobot has demonstrated leadership within a crowded market,” the analyst said. “Their compliance and governance is also uniquely positioned to drive value for customers today.”

DataRobot said that with today’s release, DataRobot AI Platform is now available as a “Single-tenant SaaS” on Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, meaning customers with the most stringent security and compliance requirements can now benefit from a managed AI service. Meanwhile, the on-premises version of DataRobot AI Platform now supports Red Hat OpenShift.

“Since our founding, we have been 100% focused on helping enterprises realize measurable value from AI by offering an AI lifecycle platform designed to solve business problems, and the applied AI expertise to help customers envision what’s possible – and achieve it,”
said DataRobot Chief Executive Debanjan Saha.

Image: DataRobot