Although many are wary of the massive amounts of data being generated by today’s enterprises, all of that data is proving useful as more companies seek out ways to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) / machine learning (ML) analysis to innovate their processes. Scality offers a way to securely store that data in the cloud while still making it available at a moment’s notice for real-time AI/ML operations through products like the new ARTESCA solution, which they showcased at May’s AI Field Day event.
Using Object Storage for AI Applications
In today’s AI/ML space, having the right data to drive your models is crucial. Of course, for many organizations, the trouble isn’t creating data (there are petabytes upon petabytes of data being generated yearly that say otherwise). The problem often faced by these organizations is how to properly store AI data so that it can be quickly referenced and consumed as necessary.
There’s a growing consensus around the industry that object storage is the way to go for AI operations, and, given the nature of object storage’s reliance on containers and metadata, it makes a lot of sense. With object storage, AI models can pull requisite information from wherever, whenever, using metadata as a way to organize and streamline data queries.
Scality Object Storage and AI
Due to their renown in object storage space, Scality naturally comes to mind when thinking of storing data for AI/ML. Their recently announced ARTESCA product provides cloud-native, containerized object storage across a variety of applications, and most notably, smaller-scale needs at the edge as well as in data centers.
This scalability makes ARTESCA ideal for AI modeling, especially for applications that require lots of smaller file sizes, such as image or voice recognition, inferencing, and manipulation. In practice, ARTESCA fits the bill for a variety of needs when it comes to analyzing data through AI.
ARTESCA AI Use Cases
At their appearance during May’s AI Field Day, Scality’s CTO and co-founder, Brad King, discussed several of the ways Scality customers use their products like ARTESCA to further their AI goals. In his presentation, King brought up a few of the classic AI use cases: self-driving cars and flight path mapping being two of the big ones. But, as he continued, King noted some less well-known but just as intriguing use cases as well.
One in particular that I thought was fascinating was the use of ML for digital pathology. Pathologists use wet slides of tissue samples to determine if a person has become infected with a specific pathogen, comparing it to existing known infected tissues. According to King, ML can be introduced into this model to automatically compare the images captured of these captured samples against the database of known samples.
As it sits now, pathologists actually ship around a box filled with the slides of known pathogens to others in the field, taking up time that could mean the difference between life and death of an infected person. By working AI into the process, that time is cut down tremendously, both removing the need to literally ship data around, as well as reducing time comparing the collected sample against the known ones.
Beyond that, King also talked about how FinTech customers are using Scality to securely store and recall banking data for analysis, detecting things like fraud or other non-compliant events in order to keep customers’ personal information safe from attack. With up to 400 TB being generated by these organizations a day, Scality enables them to handle all of that data in a swift, secure fashion.
Zach’s Reaction
Hearing real-world examples of how AI is being used to advance and innovate today’s data analytics and seeing how Scality’s products are facilitating those efforts gets me excited, and I hope it does for you, too. With the ability to quickly and confidently act on learnings that come from AI, Scality’s customers have been able to grow while also keeping things like security and compliance at top of mind.
To learn more about how Scality improves AI data availability, including a live demo of ARTESCA being used in conjunction with Kubernetes to provide real-time image inferencing, analysis, and manipulation, watch all of their AI Field Day appearance. Or, for more reading materials, be sure to visit their website.
