BIG DATA MANAGEMENT,DATA VISUALIZATION
AtScale | September 29, 2022
AtScale, the leading provider of semantic layer solutions for modern business intelligence and data science teams, today announced at the Semantic Layer Summit an expanded set of product capabilities for organizations working to accelerate the deployment and adoption of enterprise artificial intelligence (AI). These new capabilities leverage AtScale’s unique position within the data stack with support for common cloud data warehouse and lakehouse platforms including Google BigQuery, Microsoft Azure Synapse, Amazon Redshift, Snowflake, and Databricks.
Organizations across every industry are racing to realize the true potential of their data science and enterprise AI investments. IDC predicts spending on AI/ML solutions will grow 19.6% with over $500B spent in 2023. Despite this investment, Gartner reports that only 54% of AI models built will make it into production, with organizations struggling to generate business outcomes that justify investment to operationalize models. This disconnect creates an enormous opportunity for solutions that can simplify and accelerate the path to business impact for AI/ML initiatives.
The AtScale Enterprise semantic layer platform now incorporates two new capabilities available to all customers leveraging AtScale AI-Link:
Semantic Predictions - Predictions generated by deployed AI/ML models can be written back to cloud data platforms through AtScale. These model-generated predictive statistics inherit semantic model intelligence, including dimensional consistency and discoverability. Predictions are immediately available for exploration by business users using common BI tools (AtScale supports connectivity to Looker, PowerBI, Tableau, and Excel) and can be incorporated into augmented analytics resources for a wider range of business users. Semantic predictions accelerate the business outcomes of AI investments by making it easier and more timely to work with, share, and use AI-generated predictions.
Managed Features - AtScale creates a hub of centrally governed metrics and dimensional hierarchies that can be used to create a set of managed features for AI/ML models. Managed features can be sourced from the existing library of models maintained by data stewards or by individual work groups. Furthermore, new features created by AutoML or AI platforms can also become managed features. AtScale managed features inherit semantic context, making them more discoverable and easier to work with, consistently, at any stage in ML model development. Managed features can now be served directly from AtScale, or through a feature store like FEAST, to train models in AutoML or other AI platforms.
“Despite rising investments, greater adoption of AI/ML within the modern enterprise is still hindered by complexity. “The need for AI is huge, exploration is on the rise, but many businesses are still not able to use the predictive insights AI models can generate. Here at AtScale we can leverage our unique position in the data stack to streamline and simplify how the business can consume and use AI immediately, generating faster time to value from their enterprise AI investments.”
Gaurav Rao, Executive Vice President and General Manager of AI/ML at AtScale
About AtScale
AtScale enables smarter decision-making by accelerating the flow of data-driven insights. The company’s semantic layer platform simplifies, accelerates, and extends business intelligence and data science capabilities for enterprise customers across all industries. With AtScale, customers are empowered to democratize data, implement self-service BI and build a more agile analytics infrastructure for better, more impactful decision making.
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BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE,BIG DATA MANAGEMENT,DATA SCIENCE
ACA Group | September 26, 2022
ACA Group (ACA), the leading governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) advisor in financial services, today announced that it has acquired Ethos ESG (Ethos), a provider of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) ratings data and software for financial advisors, asset managers, institutions, and investors.
This acquisition marks ACA’s first analytics offering, which will be paired with ACA’s ESG experts to form an integrated tech and advisory offering under the ESG Advisory practice. ACA’s existing ESG Advisory practice supports with a range of programmatic needs for firms that integrate ESG into their business or investment activities. This currently includes advice and implementation support around strategy, policies/procedures, regulations and frameworks, training, and external reporting, among other areas. With Ethos, ACA’s clients will now also be able to easily analyze investments and automate several elements of ESG reporting.
Founded in 2019, Ethos offers an interactive platform that allows for the evaluation of over 350,000 impact ratings including companies, stocks, and funds through a prism of 45 ESG causes such as climate change, racial justice, mental health and more. Providing full transparency into how each impact score is calculated and the ability to upload portfolios and create models, Ethos allows for GRC professionals to understand the ESG characteristics of their investments and make responsible decisions that align with their firm's values and ESG commitments.
Ethos uses a proprietary set of approximately 100 underlying databases to generate its ratings. These databases provide a unique impact view of ratings, as well as provide insight into key metrics where available. The databases are fully transparent, so clients can see which underlying database source for each data point. Ethos also has capabilities developed to quickly scrape the public domain for material publicly available information to include in the ratings. These state-of-the-art capabilities allow Ethos to quickly add company coverage to help clients achieve full coverage of their investment portfolio.
Ethos has invested in innovation through the recent launch of its Impact Calculator, an embeddable widget that takes a dollar amount and immediately calculates the real-world equivalent impact of investing that amount in a specific fund or other product, compared to a benchmark.
Additionally, Ethos recently introduced its Carbon Neutral Certification program for mutual funds and ETFs, developed in conjunction with Change Finance. Through the certification, Ethos performs an independent analysis of a funds carbon footprint (covering Scope 1 and Scope 2 emission) and carbon credits (offsets) to verify whether the fund is carbon neutral during a specified period.
“This is an exciting step in helping to grow our presence in the ESG space and is ACA Group’s first foray into analytics as a service,” said Shvetank Shah, CEO of ACA Group. “We are invigorated to be building out and launching our data capabilities, starting with Ethos ESG. Combining data with our scalable solutions will continue to empower our clients to reimagine GRC and protect and grow their business.”
“We are thrilled to partner with ACA Group, as their brand and reach in the GRC space is well-known. “Not only is taking into consideration the ESG impact of your decisions right on its merits, but greater transparency into ESG issues helps firms mitigate risk and make informed choices while growing sustainably.”
Luke Wilcox, Founder and CEO of Ethos ESG
“This pairing will help us to leverage data in a new way to help firms of all sizes develop and monitor their ESG programs to mitigate risk, make informed choices, combat greenwashing, and grow profitably and sustainably in the process. Access to high-quality, transparent ESG data is an essential part of any ESG endeavor, and our partnership with Ethos will allow us to build and protect our clients’ ESG strategies in ways few others can,” said Dan Mistler, Head of ESG Advisory at ACA Group.
About ACA Group
ACA Group (ACA) is the leading governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) advisor in financial services. We empower our clients to reimagine GRC and protect and grow their business. Our innovative approach integrates advisory, managed services, distribution solutions, and analytics with our ComplianceAlpha® technology platform with the specialized expertise of former regulators and practitioners and our deep understanding of the global regulatory landscape.
About Ethos ESG
Founded in 2019, Ethos ESG provides data and analytics for financial advisors, asset managers, institutions, and investors. With over 350,000 impact ratings of stocks and funds across 45 causes, Ethos ESG helps firms offer robust impact reporting, monitor and address sustainability risks, and enhance quantitative research and modelling with transparent ESG data.
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BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE,BIG DATA MANAGEMENT
Dataddo | September 28, 2022
Dataddo, an SaaS startup that provides an automated, no-code data integration platform, today announced the launch of its Free plan—the first-ever free data integration plan with no extraction limits. This is a no-investment way for any professional, regardless of technical skill, to access and start working with data from disparate sources. The plan comes as a response to company cultural obstacles that hinder adoption of data initiatives within organizations across industries, such as low data literacy.
For at least the last five years, the grand majority of leading companies across industries has been investing in data initiatives, with the percentage today being as high as 97%. Yet only 26.5% of these companies claim to actually be data-driven.
Mounting evidence suggests that the main reason for this discrepancy is company culture, meaning both lack of executive buy-in on initiatives and lack of employee confidence in data skills. In a recent survey by Accenture of 9,000 employees from companies across industries, nearly three quarters of respondents (74%) claimed to feel “overwhelmed or unhappy when working with data.” This is critical because, as Gartner states, “the real drivers of [data-driven culture] are the people.”
Dataddo’s Free plan aims to help businesses overcome these obstacles by making it easier for them to share data and familiarize employees with visualization tools before investing in paid tools. The plan is the first free data integration plan on the market that puts no cap on extraction limits, and it can be used for an unlimited period of time.
Under the plan, subscribers can access any ten of Dataddo’s 200+ connectors and automate the synchronization of any volume of marketing, sales, financial, and other cloud data to up to three dashboarding applications and/or Google Sheets weekly. The company offers a growing library of free templates for popular dashboarding applications, enabling professionals with any level of data skill to start analyzing immediately.
The platform is SOC 2 Type II certified and compliant with all major data privacy laws around the globe, including ISO 27001, GDPR for Europe, CCPA and HIPAA in the US, LGPD for Brazil, POPIA for South Africa, and more.
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