Datameer, the world's leading data preparation solution, announced the general availability of Datameer X, a new release of the company's industry-leading data preparation and exploration software built for data scientists and machine learning engineers. Now, organizations can speed up machine learning analytics cycles and create robust data flows that feed more data into machine learning models to increase their accuracy. In today's data-driven world, companies are increasingly investing in artificial intelligence and machine learning. IDC predicts that spending on AI will grow to $77.6 billion by 2022, more than tripling from the $24 billion the market realized in 2018. Yet machine learning analytic cycles remain hindered as data scientists still spend up to 90 percent of their time preparing data to feed their AI and machine learning processes.

We are excited to reveal exciting new features in Datameer. Some new features were long-time requests from our most loyal customers and other new features are on the cutting-edge of data science. Customers depend on Datameer to transform their raw datasets by formatting, structuring and enriching the datasets for analytic processing and reporting. In addition to data prep, Datameer X is designed for data science. The new features empower users of all levels of technical expertise to speed development of machine learning models and generate trusted, business-ready data insights.

Datameer recently announced SmartAI that integrates Big Data with machine learning models to provide better data insights. The goal of SmartAI is to be able to operationalize AI for Big Data i.e. run AI algorithms at scale on big data, to enable business analysts to plugin AI models into analytic workflows, and to be able to do all this in a secure and compliant manner. InfoQ caught up with Andrew Brust, senior director, market strategy and intelligence at Datameer, regarding the general role of Big Data in AI in general and SmartAI in particular. InfoQ: Datameer has hitherto been in the Big Data space. Why move to AI? Is Big Data passe?