Use Apache Spark? This tool can help you tap machine learning

Finding insight in oceans of data is one of enterprises' most pressing challenges, and increasingly AI is being brought in to help. Now, a new tool for Apache Spark aims to put machine learning within closer reach. Announced on Friday, Sparkling Water 2.0 is a major new update from H2O.ai that's designed to make it easier for companies using Spark to bring machine-learning algorithms into their analyses. It's essentially an API (application programming interface) that lets Spark users tap H2O's open-source artificial-intelligence platform instead of -- or alongside -- the algorithms included in Spark's own MLlib machine-learning library. Among the highlights of the new software is the ability to run Spark and Scala through H2O's Flow user interface.