Architecting Data and Machine Learning Platforms
by Marco Tranquillin, Valliappa Lakshmanan, Firat Tekiner
Preface
What is a data platform? Why do you need it? What does building a data and machine learning (ML) platform involve? Why should you build your data platform on the cloud? This book starts by answering these common questions that arise when dealing with data and ML projects. We then lay out the strategic journey that we recommend you take to build data and ML capabilities in your business, show you how to execute on each step of that strategy, and wrap up all the concepts in a model data modernization case.
Why Do You Need a Cloud Data Platform?
Imagine that the chief technology officer (CTO) of your company wants to build a new mobile-friendly ecommerce website. “We are losing business,” he claims, “because our website is not optimized for mobile phones, especially in Asian languages.”
The chief executive officer (CEO) trusts the CTO when he says that the current website’s mobile user experience isn’t great, but she wonders whether customers who access the platform through mobile phones form a profitable segment of the population. She calls the head of operations in Asia and asks, “What is the revenue and profit margin on customers who reach our ecommerce site on mobile phones? How will our overall revenue change over the next year if we increase the number of people making purchases on mobile?”
How would the regional leader in Asia go about answering this question? It requires the ability to relate customer visits (to determine the origin of HTTP requests), customer purchases ...