BridgeAI is an InnovateUK-funded national level AI (Artificial Intelligence) acceleration programme designed to stimulate the adoption of responsible AI in priority sectors such as Construction, Transport, Creative and Agriculture, by bridging the gap between innovation and implementation.
As one of the four main strategic partners of BridgeAI, Digital Catapult plays a crucial role in the business and technology co-creation aspects of the programme. For its Year-2 contributions to BridgeAI, Digital Catapult (DC) focuses on the topic of Machine Learning in production / Operationalizing ML.
Organisations often face numerous technical, organisational and operational challenges when transitioning their ML (Machine learning) models from development to production. These challenges include complexity in integration, lack of required skills and expertise, absence of mature tools and robust frameworks for ML Operations (MLOps) and more. In response to these challenges, Digital Catapult has developed its Applied AI suite offering, which includes the following:
- A comprehensive, web accessible MLOps maturity assessment.
- An end-to-end pre-built MLOps pipeline using open-source tools.
- A complementary ‘MLOps knowledge Hub’ that contains all relevant information on practical MLOps and how to successfully build an MLOps pipeline from scratch for commercial projects.
- An in-person MLOps clinic that offers hands-on help to participants via workshops as well as interactive support from a bunch of MLOps providers in the market.
While other knowledge bases offer in depth insights on how individual MLOps component / tool works, DC’s MLOps knowledge hub aims at explaining the design and implementation of an end-to-end MLOps pipeline, the hardware and infrastructure involves, software tool choices, containerisation and container orchestration, the CI/CD pipelines, the development and production environments and how all of the above are put together to implement a practical / viable MLOps pipeline for an organisation. It also aims to cover the research our team had undergone and the decision design made with explanation on why they were made and on what grounds.