Since becoming CEO of Infosys roughly three years ago, Vishal Sikka has taken the massive Indian systems integrator down new paths, chief among them a focus on creating intellectual property rather than relying on technologies from partners. One of Infosys's key creations under Sikka's leadership Mana, an AI (artificial intelligence) platform, and the company has now launched a new version called Nia.
The platform combines Mana's big data, machine learning and cognitive capabilities of Mana with AssistEdge, Infosys's robotic process automation tool. Nia also gets a boost from the recent acquisition of Skytree, a machine learning startup. Infosys laid out the value proposition of Nia in a statement:
Infosys's first-generation AI platform was about IT, simplification, efficiency and cost. Capabilities included socialization of organizational knowledge, deep analytics, service automation, automated incident root cause analysis and others. ... Infosys Nia tackles breakthrough business problems such as forecasting revenues, forecasting what products need to be built, understanding customer behavior, deeply understanding the content of contracts and legal documents, understanding compliance, and fraud.
Skytree emerged as a commercial company out of Georgia Tech in 2012, and raised $20 million in capital through 2013. However, it hadn't logged any other funding rounds since then, suggesting the Infosys deal may have been a fire sale, notes Constellation Research VP and principal analyst Doug Henschen. "Skytree was up against formidable competition, given the rise of open source machine learning options," he adds.
Infosys may have sought out Skytree for its talent. In a press interview earlier this month, Sikka noted that Infosys had picked up eight PhDs through the deal.
Infosys didn’t issue a press release on the deal, but in a press interview, Sikka stressed the talent picked up in the deal – eight PhDs in machine learning – rather than the IP.
Mana gained about 50 customers since its launch one year ago and Infosys is betting on software-driven services like it for growth.
The name change to Nia—which Sikka described in the video as a "beautiful word" that is both the last three letters of California and a Swahili word for "purpose—will hopefully stick, Henschen says.
"If Infosys hopes to build up a brand associated with AI, it has to settle on a name," he says. "The move to consolidate the many piece parts into a unified platform is a welcome step."
24/7 Access to Constellation Insights
Subscribe today for unrestricted access to expert analyst views on breaking news.