DATA DISRUPTION
ears monitoring an environment .”
Peart is keen to emphasise the practical benefits of this real time capability and highlights his personal experience at a company event in San Francisco . “ One of our key , and first , US customers is Capital One – they run their fraud protection analytics using a Databricks model ,” he explains . “ That night I went into a bar and paid for dinner and drinks with my Capital One card and just as the card had been swiped I received a text message warning me of an unusual transaction . I replied that yes , this was me and the payment was authorised . That whole transaction took just four seconds from start to finish .” Databricks also works with multinationals such as Shell , which has implemented its solution for their supply chain analysis across partnerships with mining , drilling , petro chemical and processing plants . “ These are areas with high levels of maintenance parts requirements ,” notes Peart . “ They used to have big storage facilities strategically placed around the world with multiple versions of every part in stock . Now they ’ ve been able to rationalise that by looking at IoT sensors recording the likes of machine vibration and exhaust emissions to predict where the next part will fail , helping them streamline their process . It ’ s helped them save a significant amount of cost avoiding unnecessary down time .”
It ’ s this ability to manage predictive analysis and maintenance which attracted HP as a customer . Peart recalls how the printer giant was keen to meet the challenge of running its ink division : “ HP users can sign up for a service that monitors how much ink they use on an average day so when you ’ re low it orders one just in time so you don ’ t need multiple spares as back up .”
Peart believes successes like these that Databricks is having with a broad spectrum of customers are answering a key question : how can you derive more value from your data ? This can allow for transformative business decisions based on the data a company already holds . “ Quite frankly , you can have the biggest of big data but unless you can bring it to the surface and make use of it , what is it ’ s worth ?” he asks . “ Google noted back in 2015 that everybody was focusing on machine learning , AI … but actually the algorithms in that space ,
44 June 2018