Amazon Deep Learning AMIs vs. IBM Watson Studio on Cloud Pak for Data

Amazon AMIs has been very useful for the quick setup and implementation of deep learning for data analysis which is something I have used the service for in my own research. We commonly use the service to enable students to run intensive deep learning algorithms for their assessments. This service works well in this scenario as it allows students to quickly set up a suitable environment and get started with little hassle. If you are looking to run simple, surface level deep learning algorithms (kind of contradictory statement I know) then AMI is more complicated than most will need. When it comes to teaching the basics of Machine Learning, this kind of system is unnecessary and there are other alternatives which can be used. That being said this service is a must if you are looking to run complex deep learning via the cloud.

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It has a lot of features that are good for teams working on large-scale projects and continuously developing and reiterating their data project models. Really helpful when dealing with large data. It is a kind of one-stop solution for all data science tasks like visualization, cleaning, analyzing data, and developing models but small teams might find a lot of features unuseful.

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• Setting up environment
• Support for different types of machines
• Perfect for Machine Learning / Deep Learning use cases
• Nvidia / Cuda / Conda support easily

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• Integration of IBM Watson APIs such as speech to text, image recognition, personality insights, etc.
• SPSS modeler and neural network model provide no-code environments for data scientists to build pipelines quickly.
• Enforced best-practices set up POCs for deployment in production with a minimum of re-work.
• Estimator validation lets data scientists test and prove different models.

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• Some aspects of the User Interface are quite confusing and activating packages can be a bit convoluted
• It can be a bit confusing to switch between frameworks for novice users

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• The cost is steep and so only companies with resources can afford it
• It will be nice to have Chinese versions so that Chinese engineers can also use it easily
• It takes a while to learn how to input different kinds of skin defects for detection

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because we find out that DSX results have improved our approach to the whole subject (data, models, procedures)

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The UI flawlessly merges this offering by providing a neat, minimal, responsive interface

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From time to time there are services unavailable, but we have been always informed before and they got back to work sooner than expected

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Never had slow response even on our very busy network

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I received answers mostly at once and got answered even further my question: they gave me interesting points of view and suggestion for deepening in the learning path

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The trainers on the job are very smart with solutions and very able in teaching

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The Platform is very handy and suggests further steps according my previous interests

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It surprised us with unpredictable case of use and brand new points of view

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Both of these services provide similar functionality and from my experience both are top class services which cover most of your needs. I think ultimately it comes down to what you need each service for. For example Amazon DL AMIs allows for clustering by default meaning I am able to run several clustering algorithms without a problem whereas IBM Watson Studio doesn't provide this functionality. They both provide a wide range of default packages such as Amazon providing caffe-2 and IBM providing sci-kitlearn. My main point is that both are very good services which have very similar functionality, you just need to think about the costs, suitability of features and integration with other services you are using.

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The main reason I personally changed over from Azure ML Studio is because it lacked any support for significant custom modelling with packages and services such as TensorFlow, scikit-learn, Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit and Spark ML. IBM Watson Studio provides these services and does so in a well integrated and easy to use fashion making it a preferable service over the other services that I have personally used.

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It helped us in getting from 0 to DSX without getting lost

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• Saves a lot of Infra Costs
• Saves a lot of time in handling environment issues
• Easy to start a new instance

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• Could instantly show data driven insights to drive 20% incremental revenue over existing results
• Still don't have a real use case for unstructured data like twitter feed
• Some of the insights around user actions have driven new projects to automate mundane tasks

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