Big Data Startup BigML Offers Machine-Learning as a Service

Machine Learning for everyone is the claim BigML makes on their homepage. They offer a scalable machine learning as a service in the cloud that is easy to integrate by companies. BigML helps online companies understand and predict the important aspects of their business. The machine learning algorithm of BigML can help companies analyse and predict customer behaviour, site visit behaviour, diagnostics, risk profiles, stock levels etc.

Users have to create a data source by uploading their data to BigML. At the moment users can only upload data files up to 2 GB, which does not look like a lot taking into account the ever-expanding available data for companies.  Uploading is done only via https, without any other security measures taken place and BigML even recommends not uploading any data that contains personal data.

When you train a predictive model, BigML learns to predict one field in the model from all available data source. So it uses all data to predict one aspect of it. BigML allows the possibility to create a machine-learning model with just 1 click. However, if you want a more extensive predictive model, it will take a lot more work. If you find it difficult to decide which fields you need to incorporate in the predictive model, the system can help users by guiding the user through the process. When the model is built, it is visualized and a user can interact with it. A lot of information is shown within the model, which can be overwhelming in the beginning and can take quite some time to understand. Luckily users can select how many use cases they are shown to make it a bit better to understand.

BigML offers a pre-paid, pay-as-you-go pricing structure. In order to use the software, you have to buy credits in advance. Pricing ranges from $2,50 for extremely small database to over $ 22k for massive, terabyte size, database that needs predictive analysing.

BigML was founded in January 2011 and has not yet needed any funding. At the moment they are still building and extending their product, which will hopefully lead to more extensive visualizations instead of just tree nodes. BigML has 4 patents pending, but have not yet won any awards. They are official open to the public, but it looks like there is still quite some work to do. Big Data Startups therefore gives BigML a 4 bits rating.