Database-as-a-service (DBaaS) provider DataStax on Thursday said that it is acquiring Seattle-based machine learning services providing firm Kaskada for an undisclosed amount.
The acquisition of Kaskada will help DataStax introduce data-based, event-driven and real-time machine learning capabilities to its offerings, such as its serverless, NoSQL database-as-a-service AstraDB and Astra Streaming, the company said in a statement. AstraDB is based on Apache Cassandra.
DataStax’s decision to bring Kaskada into its fold comes at a time when enterprises are looking to build more intelligent applications in order to boost the efficiency of internal operations and enable better customer experience.
According to a report from market research firm Gartner, by 2022, nearly 90% of new software applications that are developed business will contain machine learning models or services as enterprises utilize the massive amounts of data available to companies these days.
However, enterprises can face challenges of scaling and high costs while building AI-driven applications, as these programs cannot rely on traditional processes such as batch extraction, transformation and loading (ETL), but rather have to be built in such a way that data analysis occurs directly on a data platform in order to achieve faster decision-making.
Kaskada’s technology helps solve these issues, according to a joint statement sent by the companies.
“The Kaskada technology is designed to process large amounts of event data as streams or stored in databases and its unique time-based capabilities can be used to create and update features for machine learning models based on sequences of events, or over time,” the companies said, adding that this allows enterprises to adapt to evolving content and generate predictions based on different contexts.
DataStax will release the core Kaskada technology under an open-source license later this year, said Ed Anuff, chief product officer at DataStax.
The company plans to offer it as a new machine learning service in the cloud in the near future, Anuff added.
Kaskada, which also has been contributing to open-source communities, has raised about $9.8 million in funding from venture capital firms such as NextGen Venture Partners, Voyager Capital and Bessemer Venture Partners.
Its co-founders, who hail from Google’s engineering team and The Apache Software Foundation, include CEO Davor Bonaci andCTO Ben Chambers.
Copyright © 2023 IDG Communications, Inc.
