Issue 10 2021

4 Acquisition International - Issue 10 2021 News : from around the world Aiimi and Databricks partner to deliver deeper AI and analytics capabilities across shared client base AI and data specialist Aiimi has formed a partnership with enterprise software company Databricks, formalising a three-year-long collaborative relationship. Through a combination of Aiimi’s data and delivery expertise and Databricks’ Lakehouse Platform, the consultative agreement will unlock crucial data-driven value for users across the firms’ shared client base. As a Microsoft Gold Certified partner, Aiimi’s team of Microsoft Azure experts offer full support to a broad spectrum of businesses choosing to migrate their data and information from traditional data warehouses to Azure cloud-based lakehouses, such as the Databricks Lakehouse Platform which unifies data, analytics, and AI. Integrating data teams with an open, scalable, and unified data analytics system, the Databricks Lakehouse Platform helps organisations streamline analytics, AI, and business intelligence (BI). By consolidating data engineering, data science, ML, and analytics into one collaborative and simplified system, users can build solutions together, accelerating teamwork, innovation, and the customer journey. Since 2018, Aiimi and Databricks have combined their respective offerings, working together on advanced analytics and data platform projects with customers such as Anglian Water, Northumbrian Water, and the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS). At Anglian Water, the collaboration rapidly brought together structured, unstructured, and streaming data into one secure data lake platform. By powering self-service analytics and equipping data science teams with trusted datasets to power AI and ML use cases, Anglian Water realised its visionary data strategy. Benefits across the business ranged from telematics (health and safety through safer driving), storage points analysis (ensuring a consistent water supply to consumers, and avoiding interruption to service), and leakage prediction (reducing leakage and fines, saving water, and meeting leakage performance targets outlined by the regulator) through to smart meter data analysis. Data was spread across several systems at Northumbrian Water, hampering its potential to resolve pain points across the customer journey – and achieve its strategic data-led objectives. Aiimi’s expert Azure team stepped in, setting up an Azure cloud-based architecture underpinned by Databricks. Unifying existing data into the Databricks Lakehouse Platform empowered Northumbrian Water to create predictive models for its customer journey. Establishing a Customer Experience Digital Twin supported resource management analysis during the COVID-19 pandemic, helping the organisation to maintain services with a reduced workforce. At BEIS, Aiimi and Databricks built a new Grants Data Management System leveraging Delta Lake on Databricks’ storage layer to capture, store, and securely progress grant return data for the COVID-19 business support grants and Green Homes Grant. The solution has dramatically reduced the time taken for BEIS data scientists, analysts, and statisticians to collect and analyse this data – and will eventually supply insights to more than 300 local authorities across the UK. “At Aiimi, we believe organisations are better able to achieve their business goals by successfully operationalising their data into capability and insights,” said Richard Lewis, Channel Sales Director at Aiimi. “Our consulting partnership will ensure continued collaboration between Aiimi and Databricks, delivering successful analytics and insight-driven business outcomes for our joint customers.” “The ability to uncover actionable insights from data has never been more important, as enterprises look to adapt, innovate, and better prepare for a secure future in an uncertain world,” said Kim Nash, Director of Strategic Partners, at Databricks. “We’re excited to be working with Aiimi, because they successfully leverage the power of our lakehouse platform to help organisations solve their most challenging problems with data. We look forward to seeing the value that this partnership will deliver to our joint customers.”