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First, there was analytics. The prehistoric dawn of our first business and scientific data analytics practices saw us crunch data streams in overnight batch processing workloads and deliver results to what we used to call Business Intelligence (BI) suites, often outputting results to clunky Excel files or - when times got better - to an extended range of business ‘dashboards’ designed to give C-suite managers insight into Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that were used to track every aspect of an organization’s wellbeing, worth and wealth.
Those business managers still exist, as do the KPIs and for that matter many of the Excel files and dashboards, but we’re now able to move to a new era of data analysis empowered by generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), enriched by Machine Learning (ML) engine strength and - in some cases - delivered to mobile devices for business professionals to asses on the go.
Night & day development
The move from ‘old fashioned’ data analytics to the new age is perhaps not quite as night and day as this and the progression has obviously been relatively gradual, but the impact of generative AI has been rapid and - for many organizations and indeed technology vendors - somewhat unanticipated.
Among the enterprise technology vendors aiming to champion the ‘modernization’ of data analytics is ThoughtSpot. The company used its virtual data-developer event this year to mark the development of its platform and explain how it now features new new ways to search data, new abilities to form connections to data sources and platforms, new ways to collaborate on analytics and ways to experience these features without logging into a BI tool of any description.
The company has now come forward with a preview release of ThoughtSpot Sage, technology that provides search experience combining foundational language models and ThoughtSpot’s own patented search technology. There are integrations with common workplace productivity tools and office suites, new Liveboard (ThoughtSpot’s reimagining of the ‘dashboard’ with more ability to continuously query an organization’s data from new angles) collaboration features. The company has tabled ThoughtSpot SaaS built on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and as well as a series of new database connectors.
All of this joins the arrival of ThoughtSpot’s new Monitor for Mobile service. This technology enables users to see proactive notifications pushed to their mobile device as KPIs change, paired with an explanation of the key drivers and change analysis, so users can make data-driven decisions whenever and wherever they are.
An AI inflexion point
According to Sudheesh Nair, CEO, ThoughtSpot, we are at a defining moment in the history of computing. Generative AI and foundational language models have redefined how machines and humans interact and in the process, enabled a new era for the world of data.
“We’re on the precipice of a world where we no longer have to dumb ourselves down for machines,” said. Nair “For the first time, machines are set to listen and partner with humanity on our terms and through our preferred user interface, natural language. Modern businesses want to run on reason built on data and logic, however, the language barrier between people and machines has meant making data insights and analytics accessible to everyone impossible. Foundational models change everything we’ve known to be true in the world of BI. Today, we bring continued innovation and partnership in helping companies embrace a new, modern data experience powered by responsible, ethical AI.”
Nair talks of his firm’s platform development and says users can now interact, interrogate and glean insights from their data as easily as they chat with a friend or colleague, with these insights going beyond the traditional BI tool and meeting users when and where they make decisions. Organizations face a new challenge, however, in ensuring this ease of interaction doesn’t sacrifice the specificity or accuracy required in an analytics context.
Sage, knows its onions
The company is now introducing ThoughtSpot Sage, an AI-powered search experience that enables users (regardless of technical skill level) use ‘foundational language models’ to gain insights from data through natural language search.
For clarity here with regard to this mention of ‘foundational models’ and as clarified by IBM, “The next wave in AI looks to replace the task-specific [data] models that have dominated the AI landscape to date. The future [will be defined by] models that are trained on a broad set of unlabeled data that can be used for different tasks, with minimal fine-tuning. These are called foundation models.”
The term foundational models in the context of data and AI was first popularized by the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence.
“With ThoughtSpot Sage, our engineers have brought the power of foundational language models together with our relational search engine to deliver a natural language search experience that automatically creates insights with verifiable accuracy and trust. Data discovery has never been so fast and easy. It’s truly bringing our vision of ‘Google for numbers’ to life,” said Amit Prakash, co-founder and CTO, ThoughtSpot.
ThoughtSpot says that its patented dynamic search architecture paired with a foundational model delivers the flexibility of natural language with accuracy, governance and reliability. This technology provides AI-powered search (so that users can search with natural speech), AI-generated insights and AI search suggestions.
“For the first time, the data experience is no longer defined by a choice between nuance and natural, power and performance, intuitive and impactful. The modern data experience brings all of this together, for everyone. While consumer-grade UX and natural language has always been at the core of our product strategy, today’s developments in AI paired with our patented search experience and backend architecture, signal a new stage for taking advantage of the power of AI for analytics,” said Sumeet Arora, chief development officer, ThoughtSpot. “Each of the new enhancements in this launch embrace the future of AI-Powered Analytics and enables organizations of all sizes to experience, collaborate, model, and access data in new ways that are personalized to the user and boost productivity.”
New kinds of data
Bringing this all together then, Arora and team say that no matter where an organization’s data lives or what kind of data it is, a company must be able to perform modern data analytics upon it. As such Arora has detailed new platform abilities and connectors that allow users to tap into new kinds of data from new places.. These deepening relationships and connectors across the ecosystem include the launch of ThoughtSpot built on Google Cloud Platform. It also includes new live query database connectors for Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL; Amazon Aurora for PostgreSQL; SQL Server and a universal JDBC connector that enables users to connect data with just a few clicks.
As organizations now continue to democratize their data i.e. make data analytics available to users outside of the IT team and extend these kinds of functions to businesspeople other than data scientists, they will most likely start to think about the proficiency of the data modeling approach and how its outputs are being accessed.
Although we’re suggesting that some of the developments showcased here are the components of what might be ‘modern’ data analytics and the working of the so-called modern data stack for IT, we will no doubt be discussing another reinvention of some kind before the end of the current decade.
