IBM has launched a cloud-based development environment for near real-time, high performance analytics. Available on the IBM Cloud Bluemix platform, the ‘Data Science Experience’ provides 250 curated data sets, open source tools, and a collaborative workspace. Building on its $300 million investment in developing Apache Spark as a type of ‘analytics operating system,’ IBM says it created the Data Science Experience to extend Spark to more than two million members of the R community through new contributions to SparkR, SparkSQL and Apache SparkML.

IBM’s Digital Science Experience is the killer enterprise app for Apache Spark

“With Apache Spark, we see an opportunity to significantly transform the role of the data scientist by providing access to curated data sets, open source tools and a collaborative platform to accelerate innovation,” said Bob Picciano, senior vice president, IBM Analytics. “IBM’s Digital Science Experience is the killer enterprise app for Apache Spark, and gives data scientists new opportunities to deliver insight-driven models to developers, and opens the door for unprecedented innovation from the open source community.”

IBM has built Spark into its platforms including Watson, Commerce, Analytics, Systems, Cloud as well as IBM BigInsights for Apache Hadoop, IBM Analytics on Apache Spark, Spark with Power Systems, Watson Analytics, SPSS Modeler and IBM Stream Computing. The company says it continues to collaborate with data science organizations including Galvanize, H2O.ai, LightBend and RStudio, and is joining the R Consortium.