Alluxio, the developer of an open source data platform, has launched Alluxio Enterprise AI Version 3.2. The platform can now utilize GPU resources universally, and there are improvements in I/O performance too.Additionally, a new Python interface has been introduced and “sophisticated” cache management features have been added, says the firm. “These advancements empower organizations to fully exploit their AI infrastructure, ensuring peak performance, cost-effectiveness, flexibility, and manageability,” Alluxio claimed.
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Chorology, which claims it is a “cutting-edge innovator” in compliance and security posture management, has emerged from stealth mode, to provide “ground-breaking” data governance solutions built on patented “deep artificial intelligence” technology.
That technology is designed to overcome the “pain points” of “ineffective” enterprise data compliance, security, and privacy solutions, it says. With a previously secured $9 million Series-A strategic investment, and “marquee” Fortune 500 customers, Chorology says it is well positioned, with “engaged” and “well-resourced” investors, “seasoned advisors,” and a veteran management team with “decades of success” in the security and compliance industry.
The company’s CHOROLOGY.ai platform provides a detailed understanding of data sprawl, without requiring extensive pre-processing or machine learning overheads. The platform promises to protect and future-proof sensitive data from rising internal and external threats, and expanding regulatory compliance mandates, while “dramatically lowering” the TCO of managing enterprise data.
Tarique Mustafa, the company’s founder and CEO/CTO, says he has secured several key “blocking” patents in deep artificial intelligence, building upon more than two decades of research and development experience in cyber security and deep AI fields.
Mustafa previously founded cyber security platform GhangorCloud, and has held senior positions at the likes of Symantec, Nevis Networks, Andes Networks, Nextier Networks, and MCI WorldCom. Chorology’s founding team includes executives that bring combined experience from firms including McAfee, TrendMicro, Cisco, and Array Networks. San Jose-headquartered Chorology’s platform is available immediately, and is priced based on deployment configuration.
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Cloud data services firm Datadobi has appointed Denise Natali to the new position of vice president of Americas sales.
Natali will report directly to CRO and co-founder Michael Jack, and will be responsible for developing and executing revenue growth strategies, growing and leading Datadobi’s sales team, and ensuring customers “remain the most highly satisfied across the industry,” claimed the provider.
Natali comes to Datadobi with a track record and expertise in organizational transformation and expansion, as well as cyber security, digital modernization, and cloud solutions. Before Datadobi, Natali served as vice president at Cox Communications, regional director of enterprise sales at Lumen Technologies, and vice president of sales at FastPay. She is a military veteran, having served in the US Army as a military intelligence officer.
“I am honored to join Datadobi, a company that stands out not only for its ground-breaking innovation and advanced, proven solutions, but also for its unwavering integrity. This is a refreshing and increasingly rare quality in today’s market,” she said.
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Despite growing interest and enthusiasm for generative AI, significant challenges are emerging that threaten the success of GenAI projects, according to research from Enterprise Strategy Group and Hitachi Vantara.
Surveying 800 IT and business leaders across the US, Canada, and Western Europe, the report explores the critical role of data infrastructure for enterprise GenAI, and the associated decisions underpinning successful implementation.
It found that 97 percent of organizations with GenAI “in flight” view it as a “top-five priority.” Additionally, nearly two thirds (63 percent) say they have already identified at least one use case for GenAI. But despite the increasing pursuit of GenAI implementation, several factors pose “serious risks” for businesses:
- Less than half (44%) of organizations have well-defined and comprehensive policies regarding GenAI;
- Only slightly more than one third (37%) believe their infrastructure and data ecosystem is well-prepared for implementing GenAI solutions;
- 61% of respondents agreed most users don’t know how to capitalize on GenAI, with 51 percent reporting a lack of skilled employees with GenAI knowledge;
- 40% agreed they are not well-informed regarding planning and execution of GenAI projects.
“Enterprises are clearly jumping on the GenAI bandwagon, which is not surprising, but it’s also clear the foundation for successful GenAI is not yet fully built to fit the purpose, and its full potential cannot be realized,” said Ayman Abouelwafa, Hitachi Vantara CTO. “Unlocking the true power of GenAI requires a strong foundation with a robust and secure infrastructure that can handle the demands of this powerful technology.”
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Lightbits Labs’ storage management technology has been picked by cloud service provider Nebul to build AI services. Nebul is allowing companies across the EU to unify their data, deploy Nvidia-based private AI, and extract actionable insights from their data through a “robust and protected” cloud infrastructure.
Lightbits claims it is enabling the service provider to offer customers “16x better performance” at “significantly lower costs” than alternatives on the market, while at the same time supporting sustainability.
The technology is compatible with with common orchestration environments like Kubernetes, VMware, OpenShift, and OpenStack, making it suitable for cloud builders or service providers supporting diverse performance-sensitive workloads at scale.
“We considered the usual storage providers, but even the software-defined ones tend to have a ‘closed recipe’ now in terms of infrastructure. We prefer to build with software that’s open, innovative, and especially performant,” explained Arnold Juffer, CEO and founder of Nebul. “With Lightbits as part of our platform, we can offer our customers 16 times the performance at half the cost of AI services from the hyperscalers,” he promised.
“This remarkable efficiency allows Nebul to improve large language model (LLM) performance and handle latency-sensitive workloads under stress without compromising cost or reliability.”
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NetApp has introduced new capabilities designed for strategic cloud workloads, including GenAI and VMware. The enhancements to NetApp data and storage services are said to reduce the resources and risks for customers, when managing strategic workloads across increasingly complex hybrid multi-cloud environments.
“Strategic workloads, including GenAI and virtualized environments, are driving business innovation and have increasingly complex and resource-intensive infrastructure requirements that are pushing IT teams to the limit,” said Pravjit Tiwana, senior vice president and general manager, cloud storage at NetApp. “We are helping customers take back control of their data with intelligent data infrastructure that leverages unified data storage, integrated data services, and automated cloud operations.”
New capabilities include NetApp BlueXP Workload Factory – for AWS, a data infrastructure service that uses defined industry best-practices to automate the planning, provisioning, and management of cloud resources and services for key workloads.
There is also NetApp GenAI Toolkit – Microsoft Azure NetApp Files Version, allowing customers to include private enterprise data stored in Azure NetApp Files in their retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) workflows, in a secure, programmatic manner.
Additionally, Amazon Bedrock with Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP Reference Architecture offers guidance for customers on implementing RAG-enabled workflows, that bring proprietary data stored on Amazon FSx for ONTAP into their GenAI data pipelines.
And NetApp BlueXP Disaster Recovery Support for VMFS provides expanded DR support to VMFS datastores for on-premises to on-premises disaster recovery.
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The VAST Data Platform has been certified as a high-performance storage solution for Nvidia Partner Network cloud partners. The certification is said to underscore VAST’s position as a “leading” data platform provider for AI cloud infrastructure, and “further strengthens VAST’s collaboration with Nvidia in building out next-generation AI factories,” said the storage software provider.
The VAST Data Platform supports the training and fine-tuning of AI models, of all sizes and modes. These range from multimodal and small language models with less than ten billion parameters, to the world’s largest models consisting of over one trillion parameters.
“This certification with Nvidia builds on VAST’s already tremendous success with cloud service providers, as the de facto AI data platform solution for large-scale, cloud infrastructure,” maintained John Mao, vice president, technology alliances at VAST Data. “With our platform independently validated and certified, organizations can more confidently and securely deploy their AI models at unprecedented scale across thousands of GPUs.”
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Data infrastructure management firm Volumez has completed a $40 million Series-A financing round led by Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT). New investors include Samsung Venture Investment Corporation and J-Ventures, with participation from existing investors Pitango First and Viola Ventures.
The additional $20 million comes after a first tranche of $20 million funding led by KDT in April 2023, taking the total raised to $40 million.
The company’s controller-less orchestration software harnesses the power of Linux to “quickly execute” modern data infrastructure for data-intensive workloads, using a declarative interface that makes it easy to deploy a wide variety of applications in hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
Volumez says it will use the extra funds to continue to expand its customer base and grow its business operations in the US and EMEA, while maintaining R&D execution in Israel.
“This completed round of funding is a strong commitment of our existing and new strategic investors to support our business growth plans, the partnerships with the major cloud providers – Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Oracle Cloud – and our additional customers,” said Amir Faintuch, CEO of Volumez. “It will also enable us to broaden our cloud services to additional AI and machine learning workloads, expanding our solution offerings on the Volumez platform.”
