Oracle acquires machine learning platform Datascience.com

Oracle announced today that it has acquired DataScience.com, a privately held cloud workspace platform for data science projects and workloads. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

In the near term, not much will change for customers of Datascience.com — it will continue to offer the same products and services to partners post-acquisition. But Oracle envisions combining its Cloud Infrastructure service with Datascience.com’s tools for a single, unified machine learning solution.

“Every organization is now exploring data science and machine learning as a key way to proactively develop competitive advantage, but the lack of comprehensive tooling and integrated machine learning capabilities can cause these projects to fall short,” Amit Zavery, vice president of Oracle’s Cloud Platform, said in a statement. “With the combination of Oracle and DataScience.com, customers will be able to harness a single data science platform to more effectively leverage machine learning and big data for predictive analysis and improved business results.”

Datascience.com, which counts Sonos, EBTH, Amgen, and Rio Tinto among its customers, offers a number of services that help artificial intelligence and data analytics teams coordinate their work remotely, with tools that allow users to share computing resources and corpus data to quickly build out model development workflows and AI solutions.

“Data science requires a comprehensive platform to simplify operations and deliver value at scale,” DataScience.com CEO Ian Swanson said in a press release. “With DataScience.com, customers leverage a robust, easy-to-use platform that removes barriers to deploying valuable machine learning models in production. We are extremely enthusiastic about joining forces with Oracle’s leading cloud platform so customers can realize the benefits of their investments in data science.”

In a statement provided to investors and members of the press, Oracle said that it is reviewing Datascience.com’s existing product roadmap and will issue guidance to customers in the coming months.

Today’s acquisition marks Oracle’s latest expansion into the AI sector. At Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco last October, the Silicon Valley firm took the wraps off Oracle AI Platform Cloud Service, a suite of pre-configured AI libraries and deep learning frameworks, in addition to Oracle Mobile Cloud (a conversational AI platform), Oracle Autonomous Data Cloud (machine learning utility for industrial workloads), Oracle Analytics Cloud (an AI data visualization tool), and Oracle Security and Management Cloud (AI-powered cybersecurity threat analysis).

Oracle, citing research from Deloitte, expects companies to spend more than $57.6 billion on machine learning by 2021, up from $12 billion in 2017.