Combination of Appian’s services and technologies with Amazon Bedrock and SageMaker from AWS should make Private AI more widely available.
Last year at Appian World, Appian unfolded its vision for AI. CEO Matt Calkins made no bones about it and wanted nothing to do with Public AI. That kind of AI “is not made for you, but for its providers,” were his words. Private AI had (and has) the future, according to him. What then followed was the announcement of some pretty specific so-called AI Skills, focused on classification and extraction.
However, it is also important for organizations to be able to deploy AI more broadly than just with some specific Skills. Ultimately, organizations that see that Private AI is the future also want to deploy AI across the board. By that, we mean across the entire breadth of AI offerings in the market, but also for the organizations’ processes. To make this possible, Appian today announced a so-called Strategic Collaboration Agreement with AWS.
Data Fabric + GenAI
The collaboration between Appian and AWS is potentially very interesting. It connects the AI offerings from a public cloud to Private AI. With Amazon Bedrock, AWS offers a fully managed service that currently includes more than 20 Foundation Models. In addition, AWS has long had SageMaker, which developers can use to add ML functionality to applications and processes.
The main thing Appian has been working with and building on lately is the Data Fabric. That’s a very nifty piece of technology that allows Appian to connect all data sources, but in a way that complies with even the most stringent laws and regulations, even in heavily regulated industries.
Many new opportunities
If Appian succeeds in optimally connecting Bedrock and SageMaker to the Data Fabric on which the company’s entire contemporary automation and orchestration platform is built, it will be possible for organizations to widely deploy Private AI, also when this means using GenAI and LLMs. Appian then ensures that everything stays within compliance boundaries. In addition, it is also possible to adjust the models within the parameters of Private AI. Sensitive data remains secure and confidential at all times. AWS’ AI and ML services are themselves built on current security and privacy best practices as well, of course.
According to Mike Beckley, Appian’s CTO, this new partnership is a “major leap forward.” A step that both Appian and organizations looking to deploy AI really need to take, by the way. According to Beckley, the AI economy is now a fact of life. Everyone has to keep up, otherwise you risk being left behind.
Finally, the fact that Appian is entering into a strategic partnership with AWS for this collaboration is not all that surprising. Appian’s SaaS offering has been running on AWS since 2007, so then this is a logical choice. It would have been a lot stranger if the choice had fallen on another provider.
Also read: Appian’s Data Fabric gets more out of data, wherever it resides