ThinkData Works and IBM Partner to Make Open Data More Accessible

ThinkData Works’ Namara.io platform is now available directly through Bluemix, IBM’s platform-as-a-service.

Toronto, ON – 28 May 2015: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced it is now offering ThinkData Works’ open data solution on IBM’s platform-as-a-service, Bluemix, to give application developers access to clean, open data from all levels of government in Canada.

By building up-to-date and relevant public data directly into Bluemix, IBM and ThinkData Works’Namara.io are providing developers, business, and citizens with the resources they need to innovative and build data-driven applications and services that can help solve industry problems and address new challenges in ways previously unavailable.

This new access to high value data is currently leveraged by businesses of all sizes, from blue chip organizations providing services to millions of people, to small startups aiming to innovate within a specific sector, such as healthcare, banking, transportation and education.

One of the main challenges currently facing open data is that most government organizations make data available in multiple locations, on separate portals and in conflicting formats. This makes it difficult to access in user-friendly ways, often deterring businesses and developers from working with the data altogether.

To address this problem, Namara.io aggregates and catalogues all available data from multiple public sources and organizes them on a searchable platform. It then provides a common application program interface (API) to all its open data, making it simple to maintain content sharing among users and applications.

“We’re really pleased to be partnering with IBM because we share a similar goal”, says Bryan Smith, Co-founder and CEO of ThinkData Works. “By abstracting lower-level infrastructure components, IBM Bluemix helps developers spend more time writing the code that will differentiate their app and drive user adoption and engagement. We believe Namara.io accomplishes that same goal with respect to open data. It’s about making it as easy as possible to integrate data into an app so developers can focus on polishing their product, not cleansing data”.

Bluemix provides developers with a broad range of IBM, third-party, and open source APIs and services. The platform lets clients choose where their applications, data, and other services reside without compromising on the speed and economics of the cloud. With over 100 tools and services already available, developers are able to tap a multitude of services to create enterprise class cloud applications at consumer scale.

“Organizations that want to fuel innovation are embracing data as their most critical natural resource and are increasingly seeking out cloud platforms and services to better manage massive amounts of information,” said Nevil Knupp, VP Cloud, IBM Canada. “Bluemix provides governments, startups like ThinkData Works, developers and academia with a competitive advantage by helping them draw data insights and provide services at much faster rates to speed time to market, drive economic growth and transform technology, business and society.”

Created on open technologies that allow developers to build, run and manage cloud applications and services with more flexibility, Bluemix enables developers to mix and match different services and tools that best fit their strategy. IBM launched Bluemix via a $1 billion investment in 2014; since then, it has quickly become the largest Cloud Foundry deployment in the world and a favorite among enterprise developers and startups alike.

IBM recently announced new Bluemix services to make it easier for developers to create cloud applications for mobile, Internet of Things (IoT), supply chain analytics and intelligent infrastructure solutions. Along with the Namara.io platform by ThinkData Works, these new services will be added to the over 100 services already available in the Bluemix catalog, which includes complementary analytics tools from IBM such as those found in the recently unveiled IoT Zone and Watson Zone.