infoTECH Feature

February 09, 2016

Data Science to Benefit from Huge New API Availability

Who can doubt the impact that big data projects are having on society? Taking advantage of the rapidly growing heaps of data currently available, big data in all its forms is taking that data and helping businesses and others turn it into actionable insight. Several new applications programming interfaces (APIs) have emerged to help make that a little smoother, and a recent look at the field suggests some of the best ones.

Not surprisingly, IBM (News - Alert)'s Watson was front and center. The tools that made Watson dominate the game show circuit also make it able to serve in healthcare, in business and a host of other fronts. That versatility makes its machine language API one of the best around.

Microsoft (News - Alert)'s Azure Machine Learning API followed up, using some of the same technology seen in both Bing and Xbox One. It allows for predictive models that can be used in Internet of Things (IoT) applications, as well as a variety of other fields from text analytics to fraud detection and beyond.

Google (News - Alert) Prediction API comes in next, and Google's algorithm development experience shines through here in fields ranging from spam detection to sentiment analysis. It's already being used by firms like Ford (News - Alert) and Pondera Solutions, and uses classifiers for programming such that, even if users don't have a working understanding of AI, it's enough to put it to work.

Finally, Amazon Machine Learning and BigML round out the list. Amazon Machine Learning is sufficiently advanced that it can predict if a user will be a paid customer by analyzing activities the user undergoes in the first week or month, and can analyze website records to find spammers or bots. BigML is regarded as one of the more user-friendly entries in the list, making predictive analytics easier to use overall

Those wanting to find out more about APIs, meanwhile, will have a great opportunity to do so this July. Coming to Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas July 18 – 21, the event called All About The API will hit and demonstrate new innovations in API, as well as a slate of hackathons, workshops, presentations and more.

APIs are one of the biggest parts of the rapidly growing market sector of big data and analytics tools, as these help bring a variety of related tools directly to the user. With businesses able to put so much use behind these tools, APIs therefore become particularly valuable, with at least indirect bottom-line impact. Greater sales, lower expenses, and smoother operations all come together, and it's APIs just like these five here that are driving such benefits.

It's in a business' best interest, therefore, to figure out just which API will best do the job for a company. With different tools on offer, finding that perfect fit of an API can mean the difference between failure and success. Businesses have no shortage of options, and these five will make a fine starting place to look.

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