Smart Vision Europe has recently become an accredited and certified Business Partner to EDB Postgres. Given our long heritage and deep expertise in the application of data science and AI technologies, this is a strategically important decision for our business.
Why are we making this investment now, and why is EDB interested in Smart Vision Europe as one of its select cohort of partners? In this blog post, I will outline our criteria and logic.
Smart Vision Europe has now been trading consistently for almost 15 years since I founded the business as a start-up in July 2011. Over that time, we have grown organically, establishing a loyal client base, building an internal team with the right expertise and investing in strong partner relationships with data science software developers and open source data science communities.
We have reached our current stage of development through a focus on high levels of technical expertise and quality customer service delivery, while maintaining close attention to commercial competitiveness. We are committed to supplying quality products, professional services and ongoing support. Another ingredient in our steady success has been a methodological approach to helping clients address their data science and AI challenges. Specifically, we help organisations clearly define objectives and then achieve them through the application of data science, machine learning and AI.
That said, there have always been natural limits on how far we can reach back into a client’s technology stack when proposing advanced analytical projects and initiatives. This new partnership with EDB helps in several specific and meaningful ways.
Data visibility, accessibility and quality
One of the challenges we have encountered many times in the early stages of client projects is the visibility of, accessibility to and quality of data. Input data is, of course, the raw material of data science.
At times, identifying these issues has delayed the start of a project or, at best, constrained its short-term scalability. On occasion, we have found ourselves waiting behind the slow-moving juggernaut of a large IT data warehousing programme attempting to address questions of data quality, availability and governance.
Our relationship with EDB Postgres now enables us to actively offer solutions that complement these wider corporate initiatives. Put simply, EDB offers a coherent answer to the increasingly fragmented and hybrid landscape of data storage and data engineering in today’s technology environment.
Data sovereignty
When we work with clients on data science projects, meeting compliance requirements and demonstrating the veracity of data-driven decision-making is crucial.
Here too, EDB’s contribution to the Postgres community provides strong answers to these important requirements. EDB has the right focus, enabling key capabilities such as:
- Data sovereignty, including on-premise deployment as part of a hybrid data storage environment
- Data encryption, helping ensure data is secure and vulnerabilities are addressed
- Low-code / no-code AI application development capability, enabling the rapid deployment at scale of data-driven decision-making applications and models
Avoiding the vendor lock-in trap
At Smart Vision Europe, we have always believed in helping clients minimise dependence on any single vendor or technology stack.
We put this belief into practice by working towards client self-sufficiency in analytical capability and in the tools and technologies they choose to use. That means offering vendor-agnostic solutions where possible, reducing costly lock-in and clearly identifying situations where dependency risk should be considered.
We found this same philosophy reflected in our early conversations with EDB.
Of course, both Smart Vision Europe and EDB Postgres are commercial organisations and must operate profitably. However, the shared belief that clients should remain free to determine their own technology choices, and the important role open source plays in enabling that freedom, is central.
A strong strategic fit
These are the broad strategic reasons why we have chosen to invest in our relationship with EDB. In return, our deep expertise in building and deploying analytical applications for clients means we are a strong mutual fit.
About EDB
EDB Postgres® AI (EDB PG AI) is the first open, enterprise-grade sovereign data and AI platform—secure, compliant, and scalable, on-premises and across clouds. Built on Postgres, the world’s leading database, EDB PG AI unifies transactional, analytical, and AI workloads, enabling organizations to operationalize their data and LLMs while maintaining control over sovereign environments. EDB PG AI is supported by a global partner network and delivers up to 99.999% availability as well as hybrid management and a built-in AI factory. As one of the most active contributors to the PostgreSQL project, EDB is deeply invested in the vitality of the global community. To learn more, visit www.enterprisedb.com.
