Data Science: A Business Lynchpin, Not an Experiment

Too many organizations still view data science a technical skill, acquired simply by hiring a few data scientists. By doing so, they are not building the critical organizational muscle necessary to leverage predictive models as an enduring competitive advantage. Today’s leading companies didn’t get there by accident. They got there by putting models at the center of their business. They release innovative products powered by models, such as Netflix’s recommendation algorithm or Amazon’s Alexa assistant. What’s less obvious is how these companies are weaving models into their business operations to drive constant, iterative improvement. Whether it’s fraud detection, supply chain optimization, or employee retention, model-driven companies are leveraging the power and scale of models in ways often invisible to the end customer or competitors. This transformation is not limited to the technology sector. It is akin to what began 30 years ago with the emergence of software development as a key organizational discipline. At first, there were only a few “software” companies. Software teams were relegated to the dark corners of the enterprise. Now, software engineering is a defining organizational capability across industries. Those companies who did not fully embrace the change have ceased to be relevant, if they exist at all. The same dynamic is happening with data science. Companies that embrace it as a discipline will become leaders, and those that do not will cease to exist. According to a recent survey of data science practitioners and managers, 90% of companies view data science as a key source of innovation, but less than 30% have more than five models driving production business processes. The reality is most organizations still view data science as a technical practice of talented individuals, while model-driven companies view data science as an organizational discipline.

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Airbyte Racks Up Awards from InfoWorld, BigDATAwire, Built In; Builds Largest and Fastest-Growing User Community

Airbyte | January 30, 2024

Airbyte, creators of the leading open-source data movement infrastructure, today announced a series of accomplishments and awards reinforcing its standing as the largest and fastest-growing data movement community. With a focus on innovation, community engagement, and performance enhancement, Airbyte continues to revolutionize the way data is handled and processed across industries. “Airbyte proudly stands as the front-runner in the data movement landscape with the largest community of more than 5,000 daily users and over 125,000 deployments, with monthly data synchronizations of over 2 petabytes,” said Michel Tricot, co-founder and CEO, Airbyte. “This unparalleled growth is a testament to Airbyte's widespread adoption by users and the trust placed in its capabilities.” The Airbyte community has more than 800 code contributors and 12,000 stars on GitHub. Recently, the company held its second annual virtual conference called move(data), which attracted over 5,000 attendees. Airbyte was named an InfoWorld Technology of the Year Award finalist: Data Management – Integration (in October) for cutting-edge products that are changing how IT organizations work and how companies do business. And, at the start of this year, was named to the Built In 2024 Best Places To Work Award in San Francisco – Best Startups to Work For, recognizing the company's commitment to fostering a positive work environment, remote and flexible work opportunities, and programs for diversity, equity, and inclusion. Today, the company received the BigDATAwire Readers/Editors Choice Award – Big Data and AI Startup, which recognizes companies and products that have made a difference. Other key milestones in 2023 include the following. Availability of more than 350 data connectors, making Airbyte the platform with the most connectors in the industry. The company aims to increase that to 500 high-quality connectors supported by the end of this year. More than 2,000 custom connectors were created with the Airbyte No-Code Connector Builder, which enables data connectors to be made in minutes. Significant performance improvement with database replication speed increased by 10 times to support larger datasets. Added support for five vector databases, in addition to unstructured data sources, as the first company to build a bridge between data movement platforms and artificial intelligence (AI). Looking ahead, Airbyte will introduce data lakehouse destinations, as well as a new Publish feature to push data to API destinations. About Airbyte Airbyte is the open-source data movement infrastructure leader running in the safety of your cloud and syncing data from applications, APIs, and databases to data warehouses, lakes, and other destinations. Airbyte offers four products: Airbyte Open Source, Airbyte Self-Managed, Airbyte Cloud, and Powered by Airbyte. Airbyte was co-founded by Michel Tricot (former director of engineering and head of integrations at Liveramp and RideOS) and John Lafleur (serial entrepreneur of dev tools and B2B). The company is headquartered in San Francisco with a distributed team around the world. To learn more, visit airbyte.com.

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