Saltware said on the 28th that it signed a strategic partnership with AI data platform specialist Starburst and will move to expand its AI data platform business with a focus on on-premises environments.
Through this collaboration, Saltware plans to supply "Starburst Enterprise" to customers that require a high level of data security, including public institutions, defense, national strategic industries, and finance.
According to Saltware, adoption of software-as-a-service (SaaS)-based data platforms using public clouds such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform has been growing recently, but corporations and institutions that find it difficult to transfer data to external clouds for reasons such as security and regulation have faced relative constraints in adopting AI data platforms.
In particular, organizations such as government agencies, defense, national strategic industries, and finance that operate their own data centers and servers are seeing growing demand for on-premises data environments that let them keep critical data in-house while using it for AI.
Saltware said it plans to support customers in building a foundation for AI use while maintaining their existing on-premises environments and data assets through this collaboration.
Starburst Enterprise is a corporate data platform based on "Trino." It can connect to data distributed across multiple internal systems without moving it to a single location and then search and analyze it. The company said it boosted data search and collection performance by more than 30% over open-source-based environments by using enterprise Trino. It also quickly searches and collects structured and unstructured data and supports using it in AI environments needed by end users.
Saltware plans to expand support beyond public clouds to on-premises and hybrid environments to build AI data platforms suitable for customers' security policies and data operating environments. It also plans to broaden collaboration from simply supplying data platforms to connecting customer-held data in a form AI can use and linking it to real AI services, moving into data and AI build-out projects.
Chief Executive Lee Jeong-geun of Saltware said, "To use AI, you need not only models but also infrastructure and data platforms that can effectively connect and utilize the data corporations hold," adding, "By combining Saltware's capabilities in building cloud and AI infrastructure with Starburst's data platform technology, we will help customers build the AI environments they want while protecting critical data assets."