The Cayman Islands could pitch itself as no-questions- asked repository for data as well as cash and assets, a government official has suggested. The British Overseas Territory in the Caribbean Sea has long been an offshore banking and finance center and has no income tax, capital gains tax, or corporation tax.
Stephen Ta’Bois, the science, technology, engineering and maths specialist at the Department of Education Service, told a government workshop that the territory should develop its own AI tooling to avoid reliance on overseas technology, according to the Cayman Compass.
Ta’Bois added that the territory could be a “a regional hub for the Caribbean or the overseas territories to avoid turning data over to servers based abroad”. This could also be an antidote to increasing concerns about government over-reach, particularly US government overreach, which trumps local or regional data sovereignty rules and regulations. Of course, this is unlikely to go down well with Washington, which already bristles at individuals and organizations using the territory to harbour assets, never mind data.
Four-fifths of GenAI business apps will be built on existing data management platforms by 2028, Gartner senior directory analyst Prasad Pore told the firm’s Data and Analytics Summit in Mumbai this week. Pore told attendees that solving real business challenges meant combining LLMs trained on public data with organizations’ own specialized data, using RAG architectures. However, this meant data management platforms had to evolve to become RAG-as-a-service platforms, which would require a far more unified management approach. The alternative was longer delivery times and sunk costs, said Pore.
Analytics vendor Sisense has launched a suite of AI-powered tools to help organizations extract insights from data. Sisense Intelligence features Assistant, an “AI-first interface” to manage analytics creation from data acquisition through to modelling, insights generation and embedding. The GenAI Suite offers “Capabilities” including Narrative, Explanation, Forecast and Trend. And a Compose SDK allows developers to use React, Angular and Vue.js to embed AI analytics into applications. Ultimately, Sisense aims to deliver Analytics Platform as a Service. Customers on its Managed Cloud platform can access the features now.
Cloud storage provider Backblaze has launched a private preview of its new enterprise web console for managing B2 Cloud Storage deployments at scale. The console offers increased security, with role-based access and controls and mandatory multi-factor authentication, aligning with zero trust best practice, while also aiming to deliver more intuitive, streamlined experience. Backblaze B2 will also give customers the ability to create buckets in any region, boosting resilience, and giving more flexibility around data residency requirements.
dbt Labs unwrapped its Fusion Engine last week, built on Rust and incorporating “native SQL comprehension.” The firm reckons the new platform improves parse times by 30x compared to dbt Core, claiming that state aware orchestration, currently in beta, is showing average 10 percent cost savings for commercial customers. Other features include Intellisense autocomplete for SQL functions, macros and more, hover insights, and instant refactoring. Initial support for Snowflake will be followed by support for Databricks, BigQuery and Redshift. dbt also unveiled a VS Code Extension, which will open up Fusion to local developers, and a trio of governed accessible features: dbt Canvas for editing; dbt Insights, an AI powered query interface; and dbt Catalog, formerly known as Explorer.
