Data Science

Advantage Acquires Strong Analytics, Provider of AI and Machine Learning Solutions

Advantage Solutions has acquired Strong Analytics, a provider of artificial intelligence, machine learning and data science services for leading brands in consumer goods and retail, automotive, hospitality, marketing and advertising, pharmaceuticals, technology and other industries.

The agency helps its clients design, create and deploy custom, end-to-end machine learning and AI products and solutions.

“Strong Analytics’ data scientists and engineers have solved challenges as diverse as retail inventory optimization and multichannel marketing personalization,” said Gary Colen, president, marketing and digital commerce solutions for Advantage Solutions. “Their reputation for delivering high-value business solutions based on using data differently is well earned and we consider them key to our ability to continuously and proactively identify and address our clients’ and customers’ business opportunities and obstacles.”

Founded by data scientists Brock Ferguson and Jacob Zweig, Strong Analytics works with organizations of all sizes, from startups to Fortune 500 firms. Its work focuses on applying state-of-the-art innovations in machine learning — in areas such as deep learning, natural language processing and reinforcement learning — to automation and optimization problems. Among the agency’s areas of expertise are AI strategy and leadership, data analytics, data engineering, machine learning engineering and DevOps and architecture.

“Strong Analytics and Advantage share an unwavering dedication to clients and a penchant for collaboration,” Ferguson said. “We’re very excited about coming together to bring added value to Advantage’s clients and help them solve their most difficult and complex problems — in weeks, not years.”

About Strong Analytics
Strong Analytics was founded in 2016 and provides data science consulting, machine learning engineering and data engineering services to companies across industries. Its suite of AI platforms enables custom-tailored solutions to go from design to deployment faster and more effectively than ever before.

About Advantage Solutions
Advantage Solutions is a leading business solutions provider committed to driving growth for consumer goods manufacturers and retailers through winning insights and execution. Advantage’s data and technology-enabled omnichannel solutions — including sales, retail merchandising, business intelligence, digital commerce and a full suite of marketing services — help brands and retailers across a broad range of channels drive consumer demand, increase sales and achieve operating efficiencies.
Headquartered in Irvine, California, Advantage has offices throughout North America and strategic investments in select markets throughout Africa, Asia, Australia and Europe through which it services the global needs of multinational, regional and local manufacturers.

Spotlight

Other News
Big Data

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.

Read More