- BlackSwan is set to disrupt the market and make it easier for enterprises to adopt different AI-based technologies to create their own applications.
- Startup launches world’s first cloud-based OS for enterprises based on AI .
- An enterprise can create their applications in just five months compared to the legacy way of a couple of years.
- They are looking to open an office in UAE and hope to benefit from the UAE-Israel normalisation agreement.
- Aim is to become a top-five option by 2027 for any enterprise application.
Tel Aviv-based start-up – BlackSwan Technologies – is set to disrupt the enterprise software market and make it easier for enterprises, big and small, to adopt different AI-based technologies to create their own applications.
The Paas/SaaS platform came into the limelight when they raised $28 million pre-Seed round recently but the company is active from 2015. It became commercially viable in September 2019.
Speaking to TechChannel News, Michael Ouliel, CEO of BlackSwan Technologies, also a former Oracle executive and Israeli intelligence officer, said that what BlackSwan is going to do to the data is exactly what the cloud has done to IT.
“We were in complete stealth mode still December last year. We gradually went into the market and secured customers one by one. We have eight big customers. What we build is a system called Element which is predominantly a cloud OS for enterprises based on AI.
“We have a patent to start with and we are going to open the platform by the end of the year to allow startups to execute their ideas on Element,” he said.
What is Element?
Element is a big data, cognitive computing, AI, a contextual analytics system that covers the entire data life cycle.
It is composed of a host of capabilities addressing data acquisition and fusion through analysis, insight discovery and predictions, which are pre-built and pre-integrated.
The capabilities can be combined to perform a virtually unlimited range of tasks that address customers’ most critical business challenges.
Monetising the data
Ouliel said that companies buy software to solve a specific problem but this software is catered to multiple customers and to solve multiple tasks.
“How long will it take for a bank to build a new compliance system or for an insurance company to build an underwriting application, six years or seven years and at what cost. With BlackSwan, it can be done in just five months and costs about 30 per cent of what a traditional player charges,” he said.
Instead of going for a long, time consuming, complex process of consulting and integration, and taking a couple of years to execute, he said that clients can execute their ideas in five days in a very low code environment with BlackSwan and it can give clients what they require in just five months.
“We are looking at five pillars of AI – machine learning, natural language processing, deep learning, neural network and data operation facilities. Every one of them will have a different version of how to look into the data and how to monetise the data,” he said.
When considering the legacy players such as IBM, Microsoft, Oracle or SAP, he said that they have AI as a layer on top but they don’t deal with the “data challenge”.
They are playing on the application level and not on the data level, he said and added that they [legacy players] need to organise the data, cleanse the data and use multiple sources to achieve the target.
“It will take a very long time and a very high cost. With Element, you don’t have to massage your data (for an enterprise, it takes three years) and you can add entities, schema inside the system and the system is going to adopt you rather than you adapt to the system,” he said.
In essence, he said that enterprises can build a variety of applications on top of Element to cater to various industries in the market.
Digital university
“The benefit is coming in multiple ways – speed from ideation to production is about five months, everything in the white box can be controlled by the use of the system and to the code level, schemaless, cloud-agnostic and microservice (bringing your legacy into the system in a seamless way),” he said.
Companies can integrate Element into the apps they already have and, at the same time, he said that BlackSwan has built multiple apps for banking, insurance, pharmaceutical and finance sectors and the company plans to build two apps every year.
On top of that, BlackSwan has also built a digital university to help a company build its own applications step by step and own the asset they build.
Ouliel said that they are looking to raise more money in the first half of next year to grow the product and compete with the likes of Salesforce, IBM, Oracle, SAP, etc.
“We have just started and there is still a long way for us to grow but in terms of technology, the sky is the limit. We aim to become a top-five option by 2027 for any enterprise application,” he said.
On the UAE-Israel normalisation agreement, he said: “I think there might an opportunity for us to be a potential vendor of high value to the UAE and its ecosystem to adopt AI.”
Opening an office in the UAE is definitely on the cards; he said and added that they are actively looking into it in the last couple of weeks.