Nairobi, January 24, 2024 — Sama, the leader in providing data annotation and model validation solutions, has announced the global activation of a multi-cloud integration strategy within its central operating platform.
The launch of the multi-cloud systems integration offers Sama customers, including Fortune 50 companies like General Motors, Ford and Walmart, significant cost savings and easier compliance with internal and internationally recognized security standards. Sama service executives at various company offices, including Kenya and Uganda, can now access client content stored on all three of the leading global cloud storage providers: AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure.
Speaking when she confirmed the local activation, Sama’s Vice President of Global Service Delivery, Ms. Annepeace Alwala, said the solution would allow the firm’s clients to keep their data on any of the three major global cloud providers and seamlessly and securely give Sama access to that data, saving data transfer costs.
The activation in Kenya is locally supported via Safaricom Fibre Optic connectivity links, which provide the download and upload speeds necessary for the amount of data needed for ML models to perform at high levels. The multi-cloud integration will also potentially make Sama one of the largest data bandwidth consumers in Kenya providing artificial intelligence (AI) value chain export services, and local internet infrastructure continues to handle increasing bandwidth demands with no issue.
“With these new integrations, customer onboarding can be reduced to just one day, speeding the process up as much as seven times. This will enhance Kenya’s competitiveness as an ideal investment and export services destination and further emphasizes its role as the true Silicon Savannah,” Ms Alwala said.
The faster onboarding process reduces the need for custom coding solutions to grant Sama access to customers’ servers, saving additional resources and time. Sama’s custom data pipeline integrations allow the company to work seamlessly with already-designed data flows, eliminating the need for client engineers to set up annotation and validation workflows and further reducing resource use.
Sama’s Senior Vice President of Product and Technology, Mr Duncan Curtis, added: “To adequately address the many different edge cases that can lead to model failure in fields like AgTech, autonomous driving or e-commerce, an immense dataset is required. Sama’s new compatibility with major cloud providers allows us to access these datasets on behalf of our clients quickly, securely and cost-effectively. The faster we can complete onboarding, the faster we can assist our clients in getting their models to market.”
Preventing security breaches remains a critical concern due to the use of large amounts of data that potentially involve personally identifiable information. Sama’s multi-cloud integration ensures that the company does not retain a copy of private data. Instead, Sama can securely access a customer’s files, make any modifications needed (such as filtering and generating 3D ground points), then write the updated file back to the customer’s server. Kenya also continues to strengthen its data privacy laws and protections to continue providing multinational companies with the assurances that data will remain secure; Sama anticipates its platform, which already has ISO and TISAX certifications, will meet and exceed all regulatory requirements put forth by the Kenyan government.
These newest integrations support Sama’s continued efforts to accelerate time to market and reduce the total costs of model ownership. Leveraging its Platform 2.0 and fully-trained expert workforce, Sama has previously improved the speed at which a model could be brought to market by 3-4x by eliminating lengthy delays caused by rework. Platform 2.0 has achieved a 99% client acceptance rate for AI training data through SamaAssure™, the industry’s highest quality guarantee, with an annotation delivery rate of 300+ million frames, 850+ million shapes and 10 billion annotation points a month.
About Sama
Sama is a global leader in data annotation solutions for computer vision that power AI and machine learning models. Our solutions minimize the risk of model failure and lower the total cost of ownership through an enterprise ready ML-powered platform and SamaIQ™, actionable data insights uncovered by proprietary algorithms and a highly skilled on-staff team of over 5,000 data experts. 25% of Fortune 50 companies, including GM, Ford, Microsoft, and Google, trust Sama to help deliver industry-leading ML models. Driven by a mission to expand opportunities for underserved individuals through the digital economy, Sama is a certified B-Corp and has helped more than 65,000 people lift themselves out of poverty. An MIT-led Randomized Controlled Trial has validated its training and employment program. For more information, visit www.sama.com
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