The Gilbane Advisor

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Databricks acquires BladeBridge to aid data warehouse migrations

February 5, 2025 /

Data lakehouse provider Databricks has acquired data platform modernization software provider BladeBridge for an undisclosed sum to help its new customers move from rival data warehouses, such as Teradata, Snowflake, Amazon Redshift, and Microsoft SQL Server, to its lakehouse built atop Databricks SQL.

BladeBridge will provide enterprise customers with insights into the scope of conversion, configurable code transpiling, LLM-powered conversion, and easy validation of migrated systems.

BladeBridge, which has four major products in the form of an Analyzer, a Converter, the Data Recon module, and a Studio, said it expected enterprises will save by automatically building a summary of all extract, transform, load (ETL) and database assets quickly.

The Analyzer provides a full report of the migration’s scope and complexity, while also automatically conducting query testing between the rival database and Databricks SQL to identify discrepancies for early remediation.

After conducting an analysis, the Converter starts converting the rival data warehouse into Databricks SQL by using a configuration-driven approach expected to account for differences between the data warehouse architecture and Databricks SQL.

BladeBridge has ties with system integrators, such as Accenture, Capgemini, Celebal Technologies, and Tredence.

https://www.databricks.com/company/newsroom/press-releases/databricks-acquires-bladebridge-technology-and-talent

Adobe Acrobat AI Assistant adds generative AI features focused on contracts

February 4, 2025 /

Adobe announced new intelligent contract capabilities in Acrobat AI Assistant to simplify working with contracts. The new generative AI features can help customers grasp complex terms and spot differences between multiple agreements so they can better understand and verify the information in these important documents faster and easier. Features include:

  • Contract intelligence: Acrobat AI Assistant automatically recognizes when a document is a contract—including scanned documents—and tailors the experience, generating a contract overview, surfacing key terms in a single click, quickly summarizing information and recommending questions specific to customers’ documents.
  • Straightforward explanations—verified: Acrobat AI Assistant generates summaries and responses with clear language and clickable citations, making it fast and easy to navigate to the source and verify responses.
  • Compare and contrast: Quickly see differences between versions​, check for consistency and catch discrepancies​ across up to 10 contracts, including scanned documents.
  • Secure sharing and signing: Easily review contracts with stakeholders and request e-signatures all in one app.

Adobe Acrobat AI Assistant supplements LLM technologies with the same artificial intelligence and machine learning models behind Liquid Mode to provide a highly accurate understanding of document structure and content, which enhances the quality and reliability of AI Assistant’s outputs.

https://news.adobe.com/news/2025/02/acrobat-ai-assistant-contracts

Brightcove launches AI Content Suite

January 29, 2025 /

Brightcove, a video engagement platform company, announced the launch of its AI Content Suite, the company’s first official general availability release following a customer pilot program in 2024. The suite introduces a range of AI-powered tools to increase the impact of video content, improve business productivity, make it an easier experience for content creators to get more from their content, and drive greater engagement across their audiences. 

The Brightcove AI Content Suite includes three AI-powered capabilities – content creation, metadata optimization, and translation – which simplify video content production by automating the creation and optimization processes. Features:

  • Rapid, automated conversion of long-form content into engaging short-form clips, highlight reels, and theme-based chapters to maximize reach across channels
  • Conversion of horizontal video content into vertical formats to extend engagement with mobile viewers and across social platforms
  • Enhanced discoverability through auto-generated metadata (including titles, tags and descriptions), ensuring audiences find and engage with relevant content
  • Universal translation capabilities to dozens of languages to extend global reach and make content more accessible (coming soon).

Brightcove ensures tools in the AI Content Suite are backed by its security framework and pledges to never use customers’ content or personal data to train AI models without explicit consent. 

https://www.brightcove.com/company/press/brightcove-launches-ai-content-suite-ga/

Gilbane Advisor 1-29-25 — Picking a go-to AI, DeepSeek implications

January 29, 2025 /

This week we feature articles from Ethan Mollick, and Alberto Romero.

Additional reading comes from Daniel Tunkelang, Cassie Kozyrkov, Mike Masnick, and Om Malik.

News comes from Progress Software, Perplexity, TransPerfect, and TileDB.

Next issue arrives February 12.

All previous issues are available at https://gilbane.com/gilbane-advisor-index

Opinion / Analysis

Which AI to use now: An updated opinionated guide

Picking your general-purpose AI

Ethan Mollick’s article is unbiased, non-technical, recent (well, 2 days old), includes 7 models, a feature table, and examples. This is a valuable resource for anyone who isn’t a full-time AI expert or practitioner, or doesn’t have the time or interest to try out all the models on their own.  (10 min)

https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/which-ai-to-use-now-an-updated-opinionated

7 implications of DeepSeek’s victory over American AI companies

DeepSeek burst into the AI mainstream a week ago on Monday, after DeepSeek R1 was released. Excitement and panic ensued as analysts and investors digested the potential implications. Alberto Romero published a good technical analysis, and followed up yesterday with a look at some larger market and political issues — both articles are worth reading. This free version of his post expands on 5 of the 7 implications he mentions. (14 min)

https://www.thealgorithmicbridge.com/p/7-implications-of-deepseeks-victory

More Reading

All Gilbane Advisor issues

Content technology news

Progress launches Progress Data Cloud Platform

The new Progress Data Cloud platform enables managed hosting of feature-complete instances of Progress Semaphore and Progress MarkLogic.
https://www.progress.com/data-cloud

Perplexity introduces Sonar Pro API

With Perplexity’s features combined with Sonar and Sonar Pro API you can build GenAI search capabilities with real-time, web-wide research.
https://docs.perplexity.ai/guides/getting-started

TransPerfect acquires H2A

Enables TransPerfect to enhance its global business services and broaden support for clients with diverse language needs.
https://www.transperfect.com/about/press/transperfect-expands-global-contact-center-and-bpo-capabilities-acquisition-h2a

TileDB now available in AWS Marketplace

Research, business and data teams can organize, structure, collaborate and analyze structured and unstructured data in one place.
https://tiledb.com

All content technology news

The Gilbane Advisor is authored by Frank Gilbane and is ad-free, cost-free, and curated for content, computing, web, data, and digital experience technology and information professionals. We publish recommended articles and content technology news most Wednesdays. We do not sell or share personal data.

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TileDB now available in AWS Marketplace

January 23, 2025 /

TileDB, a database designed for discovery, announced its availability through AWS Marketplace. AWS customers now have access to TileDB’s omnimodal capabilities directly within AWS Marketplace, streamlining the purchase and management of TileDB within their AWS environment. This expanded accessibility ensures a more diverse range of organizations can advance research and therapeutic development.

“Frontier” data is novel, large, diverse and complex, extremely valuable. Harnessing its power is key to an organization’s ability to unlock important insights and gain competitive advantage. For example, in healthcare and life sciences, diverse multiomics data is a valuable asset that fosters innovation, providing a clear competitive advantage by dramatically shrinking time to discovery for life-saving therapies. However, existing cloud database management systems struggle to efficiently manage such vast and varied frontier data, including population genomics, single-cell analyses, bioimaging, and other large datasets.

TileDB makes it possible for organizations to catalog all their data centrally, whether common and conventional or frontier and multimodal. This omnimodal architecture not only simplifies data discovery and enables secure collaboration, but also empowers research teams to make breakthrough correlations with speed.

https://tiledb.com

Progress launches Progress Data Cloud Platform

January 23, 2025 /

Progress, a provider of AI-powered digital experiences and infrastructure software, announced the launch of Progress Data Cloud, a managed Data Platform as a service designed to simplify enterprise data and artificial intelligence (AI) operations in the cloud to accelerate digital transformation and AI initiatives while reducing operational complexity and IT overhead.

Progress Data Cloud enables managed hosting of feature-complete instances of Progress Semaphore and Progress MarkLogic, with plans to support additional Progress products in the future. Benefits include:

  • Eliminates infrastructure complexity with always-on infrastructure management, monitoring service, continuous security scanning and automated product upgrades.
  • Reduces IT costs and bottlenecks with predictable pricing, resource usage transparency and no egress fees.
  • Hardens security with an security model that is SOC 2 Type 1 compliant.
  • Supports GenAI demands and large-scale analytics.

For MarkLogic customers Progress Data Cloud accelerates time to production by offering managed hosting for the Progress MarkLogic Server database and the Progress MarkLogic Data Hub solution with full feature parity.

For Semaphore customers Progress Data Cloud provides a new generation cloud platform with all existing Semaphore functionality plus new features for improved performance, security, reliability, user management and SharePoint Online integration.

https://www.progress.com/data-cloud

TransPerfect acquires H2A

January 23, 2025 /

TransPerfect, a provider of language and AI solutions for global business, announced the acquisition of H2A, a French company providing contact center customer experience and business process outsourcing (BPO) solutions.

H2A provides inbound and outbound customer support, telemarketing, order processing, and technical support for industries including telecommunications, retail, finance, and public services. The company’s focus on operational efficiency and client satisfaction has enabled it to consistently improve customer engagement and streamline business operations for its clients.

Joining forces with H2A will enable TransPerfect to enhance its global business services and broaden support for clients with diverse language needs. H2A will continue to operate under its current leadership team, with General Manager Marilynn Genieyz and Operations Director Anne-Sophie Samet joining TransPerfect’s senior management team.

https://www.transperfect.com/about/press/transperfect-expands-global-contact-center-and-bpo-capabilities-acquisition-h2a

Gilbane Advisor 1-22-25 — Knowledge graphs & trust, unverified code no-no

January 22, 2025 /

This week we feature articles from Juan Sequeda, Dean Allemang & Bryon Jacob, and Steve Jones.

Additional reading comes from Eli Pariser & Deepti Doshi, Tim Bray, Ethan Mollick, and Sara A. Metwalli.

News comes from Contextual AI, Contentstack & Lytics, dbt Labs & SDF Labs, and Foxit.

Next issue arrives January 29.

All previous issues are available at https://gilbane.com/gilbane-advisor-index

Opinion / Analysis

Knowledge Graphs as a source of trust for LLM-powered enterprise question answering

This paper by Juan Sequeda, Dean Allemang & Bryon Jacob, is the result of two years of research and experimentation primarily focused on the relative contributions of LLMs and knowledge graphs to modern knowledge engineering practices. A really useful and forward-looking contribution. Includes link to last week’s updated PDF. (22 min)

“Our definition of trust is based on three main aspects: (1) LLMs hallucinate, therefore we need to ensure accuracy of responses, (2) LLMs have a black box nature, therefore we need to provide an explanation of where answers come from and (3) there is a risk of incorrect information being used, thus we need to ensure governance.”

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1570826824000441

When did random code execution become a feature?

The largest security hole, presented as a bonus

Steve Jones on AI Agents… “There are three core times you should allow unverified code to be executed within the enterprise:

  • When you want to get fired
  • When you’ve decided that working for the company isn’t for you
  • When you’d really like to be personally liable for significant damages” (4 min)

https://blog.metamirror.io/when-did-random-code-execution-become-a-feature-e2b78a45ad6f

More Reading

All Gilbane Advisor issues

Content technology news

Contextual AI launches platform for building specialized RAG agents

Specialized RAG agents orchestrate retrieval and generation based on conversational context for complex knowledge tasks with structured and unstructured data.
https://contextual.ai/blog/contextual-ai-platform-generally-available/

dbt Labs acquires SDF Labs

dbt Labs will integrate SDF’s multi-dialect, dbt-native SQL comprehension capabilities into dbt to improve performance and developer experience.
https://www.getdbt.com/blog/dbt-labs-announces-sdf-labs-acquisition

Foxit launches standalone web-based AI platform

Includes AI chat assistance, document and image analysis, summarization, multilingual translation, and text enhancement for modern document management.
https://www.foxit.com

Contentstack acquires Lytics

The composable DXP adds first-party data, audience insights, content analytics and profile management to elevate brand digital experiences.
https://www.contentstack.com ■ https://www.lytics.com

All content technology news

The Gilbane Advisor is authored by Frank Gilbane and is ad-free, cost-free, and curated for content, computing, web, data, and digital experience technology and information professionals. We publish recommended articles and content technology news most Wednesdays. We do not sell or share personal data.

Subscribe | View online | Editorial policy | Privacy policy | Contact

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