Deep learning models applied to big data platforms are capturing enterprise interest this week as entrepreneurs develop conversational interfaces that attempt to sound more realistic than anything else on the market. It’s a tall order, but the next Amazon.com Inc. may emerge from the fray.

“The vendors who appear to be on the verge of being winners are those who use deep learning inside some new innovation that appeals to a potential mass market. Those are the ones who are going to make a ton of money selling to a mass market,” said James Kobielus (@jameskobielus) (pictured, right), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio.

Kobielus’ prediction came during the second day kickoff at SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s BigData NYC event, where he and co-host John Furrier (@furrier) (pictured, left), discussed the need to stay customer-focused, the value of partnerships and the potential impact on developers.

Losing sight of the customer

Much of the news at the conference this week has been dominated by announcements of machine learning and deep learning tools drawing big data into the intelligence realm. But the rush to apply the latest in data science to big data belies the difficulty of the technology and makes some analysts wonder if companies are losing sight of customer value.

“It’s still not easy for data scientists to do their job. If you don’t have a solution that provides a tangible benefit to a company, then it’s probably not going to work out,” Furrier said.

Another clear message this week has been the need for companies to partner in the big data space. IBM Corp. partnered with Hortonworks Inc. to manage data across multiple platforms and environments. WANdisco PLC has announced a flurry of agreements in the past month involving Oracle, Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services, Inc.

“The partnership is amping up. You’ve got to go out and do something, but you can’t do it alone,” Furrier said.

A meeting of minds between competing companies in the data science space raises a question of whether this will affect developers, who possess more than a passing interest in the availability and potential use of new technology tools.

“The impact for developers is that there’s convergence among companies that might have competed to the death in hot, new areas like chatbot-enabled apps for mobile scenarios,” Kobielus explained. “It cuts short the platform wars fairly quickly.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of BigData NYC 2017.

Photo: SiliconANGLE