Findify Achieves a Smarter Search Solution With Databricks Machine Learning Capabilities

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Feb 12, 2016) - https://www.databricks.com/, the company behind Apache Spark, today announced that Findify, an intelligent e-commerce search solution powered by machine learning and big data, has selected Databricks as its big data platform to utilize Spark for its mission-critical use cases including extract, transform and load (ETL), analytics, and machine learning.

Findify's mission is to create seamless online shopping experiences that lead to loyal customers, ultimately increasing revenue. By utilizing advanced machine learning techniques, Findify's Smart Search continuously improves its accuracy as users use the service. As such, building features that employ predictive analytics requires Findify to retain user behavior patterns and determine popular suggestions in a short amount of time. Findify began using Apache Spark on a homegrown solution to perform their ETL process, conduct analytics, and execute machine learning algorithms. Yet, the complexity of the process was time-consuming for their team and ultimately led to customer frustrations and reduced productivity of the entire development team.

Findify turned to the Databricks platform to scale up the deployment of sophisticated machine learning models and streamline complex big data operations. Databricks enabled Findify to easily overcome their big data challenges, resulting in:

• Faster time to complete projects: Zero-maintenance Spark clusters and Jobs infrastructure resulting in faster feature development and reduced customer frustration caused by delayed analytics.
• More efficient operations: The managed platform eliminated time spent on DevOps and infrastructure issues, allowing the engineering team to focus on leveraging machine learning to build innovative features.
• Improved collaboration: With a team that is spread across Europe and traveling globally, the ability to easily iterate, visualize, and collaborate allowed Findify to complete their projects quickly and effectively.

"From day one, we saw the value of Apache Spark and the level to which our business would benefit from utilizing the engine. There are no other solutions in the market that offer such ease of implementation, usage, and zero-maintenance -- while allowing us to be so close to running a pure Apache Spark stack -- as Databricks," said Meni Morim, cofounder and CEO at Findify.

"Everything that Findify does is data-driven, from choosing which features to develop, to exposing the right analytics to their customers," said Ali Ghodsi, CEO at Databricks. "Databricks is helping to further Findify's mission of creating frictionless online shopping experiences, while enabling their team to gain significant productivity improvements and easily collaborate across the globe."
With Databricks, Findify has been able to focus less on DevOps and more on employing advanced machine learning algorithms and models to build more innovative features, creating new revenue opportunities for their customers.

Download the Findify case study: https://www.databricks.com/
For more information on Databricks: https://www.databricks.com/product/databricks

About Databricks:

Databricks' vision is to make big data simple for the enterprise. The company was founded by the team that created and continues to drive Apache Spark, a powerful open source data processing engine built for sophisticated analytics, ease of use, and speed. Databricks is the largest contributor to the open source Spark project providing 10x more code than any other company. The company has also trained over 20,000 users on Apache Spark, and has the largest number of customers deploying Spark to date. Databricks is venture-backed by Andreessen Horowitz and NEA. For more information, contact [email protected].