Software company Appian has announced the signing of a Strategic Collaboration Agreement (SCA) with Amazon Web Services (AWS), aiming to make generative artificial intelligence (AI) more easily accessible to enterprise business processes. The collaboration will utilise AWS's Amazon Bedrock and Sagemaker to enhance Appian's Data Fabric with generative AI capabilities.
The objective of this partnership primarily involves marrying Appian’s native AI abilities and data fabric with large language models (LLMs) powered by Amazon Bedrock and machine learning capabilities from Amazon SageMaker. Amazon Bedrock offers a selection of high-performing foundation models from leading AI firms via a single API, coupled with an array of features organisations require to build secure, privacy-conscious and responsible generative AI applications. On the other hand, Amazon Sagemaker provides a service to construct, train, and deploy machine learning models with fully managed infrastructure, tools, and workflows.
Built to automate mission-critical business processes, Appian serves many innovative, highly regulated, and security-sensitive industries. The company's private AI approach enables enterprises to maintain data security while leveraging AI capabilities. It ensures client data is not used to train public models, which can be accessed by other organisations. Appian's low-code AI process platform combined with its AI Skills capability empowers users to adequately incorporate AI into their business processes, facilitating harmonious collaboration between humans and AI.
"The AI economy is here and it will quickly create a strong competitive advantage for organisations that know how to use it," voiced Michael Beckley, CTO at Appian. He further elaborated that enterprises which leverage AI and Appian’s data-driven insights within their central business processes will prosper, while those who do not adapt risk losing control over their data and their future. "Amazon Bedrock is an important enabler for our private AI vision. Together, we give organisations the ability to effortlessly use AI for process automation with data privacy and security at the forefront," added Beckley.
Appian's collaboration with AWS also received positive backing from Matt Richard, CIO at LiUNA, who stated, “The Appian AI Skill Designer helps us get real value from AI without needing a team of data scientists to figure it out. The no-code design made it quick and easy for our developers to incorporate AI into our existing applications.”
Incorporating Amazon Bedrock, Appian can now host LLMs within customer compliance boundaries and customise these models privately to ensure the security of sensitive data. Furthermore, Amazon SageMaker allows Appian clients to create, train, and fine-tune their AI models using their own data. As AWS's AI and machine learning services follow best practices for security and privacy, Appian customers can make the most of their data, yielding more accurate and relevant results from their generative AI applications.
Finally, Chris Grusz, Managing Director of Technology Partnerships at AWS, expressed his approval of the partnership: "Companies deeply care about security and privacy, especially when leveraging AI. This collaboration between AWS and Appian helps customers streamline mission-critical business processes confidently by leveraging AI and machine learning in a secure and compliant manner."