With the current release of RapidMiner v6, and the introduction of application wizards to help business analysts instantly work with their data, RapidMiner will continue to be the platform of choice for anyone analyzing Big Data.
Why RapidMiner?
By Usama Fayyad, Ph.D.
It is no surprise that I have a strong interest and affinity for data analytics companies and solutions, especially those that engage an active community of users. Some time ago, I met Ingo Mierswa, CEO and Founder of RapidMiner. RapidI, as it was then known, was no ordinary vendor of analytics software. Based in Germany, the company had quietly acquired about 500 enterprise customers, and hundreds of thousands of active users for its flagship RapidMiner predictive analytics tool. Used by business analysts and scientists around the world, RapidMiner looks beyond what has happened, and helps predict what might happen customer churn, factory breakdowns, better results from changes in advertising and marketing campaigns, as examples.
Now let me repeat something very significant I just said:
“RapidMiner has hundreds of thousands of active users”
Do you realize how shocking that fact is? How many people would have guessed that predictive analytics would have such a huge appeal in terms of people using sophisticated tools like RapidMiner. The initial shock got me to wondering why this was the case. My conclusion was because of the company’s open source heritage, RapidMiner is able to offer a wide range of solutions (personal to enterprise) with the lowest total cost of ownership.
Ingo seemed in a continuous state of excitement about his technology and user community, and had an extensive and detailed vision about improving RapidMiner and exponentially growing the user base, without compromising on the quality of the technology or engagement with users. Given my experience in data mining and Big Data at KDD (the leading forum advancing the “science” of knowledge discovery and data mining), Yahoo!, Microsoft Research, and other several startups I founded and ran: Audience Science (digiMine), DMX Group (acquired by Yahoo!), Open Insights, Blue Kangaroo… I quickly identified with Ingo’s focus and enthusiasm.
Also, my position in Oasis500 where we invest in a large number of tech startups, many of whom are users of RapidMiner drove home my conviction of its great potential. To this point, Gartner has estimated the BI market, which includes predictive analytics, will surge to $81 billion by 2014 and be as high as $136 billion by 2020.
For these reasons, and the extraordinary team, technology, global community, and outside investors, I decided to join the Board of Directors, support the efforts to grow, and strategize about further business and technology plans.
With the current release of RapidMiner v6, and the introduction of application wizards to help business analysts instantly work with their data, RapidMiner will continue to be the platform of choice for anyone analyzing Big Data. I expect significant advances year to year, and am excited about the possibilities of the new RapidMiner. In fact, I look forward to contributing significantly to the future growth areas for the product and its deeper integration with BigData platforms as well as its adoption in very large enterprises.
I welcome you to download a free trial of RapidMiner v6 at rapidminer.com/download-rapidminer/.
I’m confident you will discover what I did about the platform’s power and flexibility.
Usama M. Fayyad, Ph.D. is a leading data scientist, a serial entrepreneur, and one of the founders of the field of Data Mining and Data Science.
He is Chairman, coFounder & CTO of ChoozOn Corporation/ Blue Kangaroo a mobile and web search engine service that helps consumers make sense of the chaos of overwhelming offers, discounts and deals through personalization and intelligent matching. In 2010 he was appointed by King Abdullah II of Jordan to lead the OASIS500 as its Executive Chairman a tech startup investment fund that runs an accelerator/incubator, entrepreneurship training program, and angel investment network that aims to fund 500 Internet and Technology startups.
He is a fellow of AAAI and ACM, has over 100 publications and over 30 patents, and a recipient of the ACM SIGKDD Innovation Award (2007) and Service Award (2003) the only person to receive both awards.