Variety is good when you're looking at your options for ice cream.
Variety can be an obstacle when you're a business trying to make sense of open datasets that may be available in a bewildering array of formats.
Enter ThinkData Works, that has built a software program that helps normalize datasets so businesses can get more out of data from a variety of sources.
ThinkData Works' solution to data accessibility problem is Namara, an open data search engine, made freely available to developers, that standardizes access to a multitude of open datasets released by providers that include governments, non-profits, large companies and startups.
According to CEO and co-founder of the Toronto-based company, Bryan Smith, the data pool available through Namara is enormous: "We have over 46 trillion points of open data on Namara currently. Our solution is built completely out of open data and our business is helping large corporate leverage it and build it into their existing practices."
This data resource has attracted some of Canada's largest data clients, including the Royal Bank of Canada, the Government of Canada, the Bank of Nova Scotia, TD Bank, the Globe and Mail, IBM, Thomson Reuters and commercial real estate consultancy The Altus Group.
Now, ThinkData Works is looking at the global data landscape, through a new partnership with OpenText Enterprise Apps Fund, a venture capital fund that counts among its investors Canada's largest software company, OpenText.
An early and important collaboration for ThinkData Works was its participation in the first cohort of ODX Ventures, the direct funding arm of Canada's Open Data Exchange (ODX). Each year, eight to ten companies are chosen to benefit from ODX mentorship and a $50,000 grant to help develop an aspect of their business that uses open data.
ThinkData Works' objectives meshed perfectly with the goals of ODX, to make datasets available to the public and academics, and to businesses that see opportunities in the commercialization of open data. The value of Namara to the development of open data applications was so clear, that ODX embedded the Namara tool into its website, where it is freely available.
The ODX Ventures funding helped ThinkData Works evolve the Unity machine learning tool to standardize data from diverse datasets. Now, ThinkData Works is leveraging the success of that first ODX Ventures project by exploring new opportunities with machine intelligence "to identify linkages and correlations that would be impossible to identify at scale with human labour."
Lewis Wynne-Jones, head of data acquisition and content strategy, says in a recent video that "ODX's grant gave us the resources we needed to build a solution that has already driven $1 million in revenue and is currently being deployed to some of the largest companies in Canada."
According to Bryan Smith, programs such as ODX Ventures are a gateway to the success of companies using open data: "The ODX Ventures program can absolutely help organizations of any size with the adoption of open data and the tools needed to work with it. I think the program is invaluable in that it enables organizations to dive into the often scary world of external data and take a risk finding something new. This is the type of activity that leads to major innovation."
