BlueData Software Inc., a venture-backed provider of tools for simplifying analytics projects, is applying its technology to artificial intelligence.

The startup today unveiled an offering called the BlueData AI/ML Accelerator that aims to lower the entry barrier to machine learning and deep learning for enterprises. It focuses on a fairly understated aspect of what is an otherwise oft-discussed topic: the difficulty of deploying the tools needed to build AI software.  

“Artificial intelligence and machine learning are on just about every enterprise’s roadmap for digital transformation,” explained BlueData Chief Executive Kumar Sreekanti. “The potential value and impact of these new technologies is transformational, but it’s difficult to implement and configure these tools for large-scale distributed applications.”

BlueData AI/ML Accelerator tackles the challenge using the company’s flagship EPIC platform. Originally designed for “Big Data” technologies such as Apache Spark, the software promises to help companies set up an analytics environment with their preferred tools in a matter of minutes. It does so using software containers, which provide a relatively easy way of deploying an application on different kinds of infrastructure.

BlueData is now taking the same approach to addressing the complexity of AI development. Its new offering provides ready-to-use containerized versions of TensorFlow, the popular open-source AI engine, as well as several competing tools. BlueData claims that it takes as little as a few clicks to set up a development environment using these preconfigured bundles.

The heavy lifting involved in the deployment process is handled by EPIC. The software can create an AI environment both on a company’s internal infrastructure and in the public cloud, according to BlueData.

By streamlining the deployment of AI development software, the BlueData AI/ML Accelerator can potentially make it easier for companies to experiment with different tools and figure out what best suits their needs. That in turn might improve the success rate of artificial intelligence projects.

For added measure, BlueData said it will offer professional services such as training alongside the software to help enterprises figure out how they should handle their AI initiatives.

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