Zegami

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP of digital health strategies at Ultivue, a biotech company. We’re developing multiplex immunofluorescence (mIF) services. We’re US-based and have more than 100 employees.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Zegami?

We want to exploit the rich information in the tissue, so we’re using image and data analysis to interpret the scientific meaning of the tissue’s information.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’ve obtained digital images from tissue, and Zegami uses their algorithm to help us assess the quality of those particular tissues and explore the information in the images in a data-driven way. We can visually explore the data with interactive tools. Also, we’ve been particularly interested in the proof of concept study, where we can identify artifacts in the tissue that we want to exclude from the analysis.

Initially, we worked interactively with their team to define the scope and identify a promising case for combining their and our technology. We used flight scanners to digitize the tissue and provided them with digital images.

They’ve implemented a prototype solution that combined unsupervised and supervised machine learning techniques with imaging. They use a machine-learning algorithm to assess the similarity of image patches. Then, they use interactive flocks to visualize the similarity and confirm if parts of different images show necrosis, which can be identified because they cluster together.

In the future, we may work with Zegami to explore the image analysis readouts.

What is the team composition?

We have a product manager from our side, and they do as well. We don’t know how many people have worked on the implementation, but we’ve interacted with five of their team members in our regular calls.

How did you come to work with Zegami?

Initially, I was getting to know Stephen (Founder & CSO) and learned about what they were doing at Zegami. Their scientific credibility and innovative approach convinced me — they complemented what other people were doing in a busy AI-learning field, emphasizing data-driven thought and visualization.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $30,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in June 2021. We’ve completed the proof of concept and are discussing the next steps.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We’ve been impressed with the quality. It has helped us shape our thinking and see multiple opportunities to deploy the functionality in our internal processes and customer-facing offerings. We haven’t implemented those applications, but they could result in internal cost savings and improved quality of our product. Also, the external-facing offerings could potentially become a revenue stream.

How did Zegami perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management has been excellent. The project's scope was exploratory, so we weren’t able to define what we wanted at the beginning. However, Zegai responded well with an agile approach.

We have regular update calls between the teams, so we check in regularly. They show us what they do to get feedback on the next steps. Overall, it’s an efficient and collaborative way of working.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’re impressed with their ability to relate to the science and translate it to technical implementation. They imagined what the project could actually look like; they didn’t sit and wait for us to tell them what we needed. Zegami was willing to think about the scientific problem we wanted to solve and suggest how they could support us.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there isn’t anything that comes to my mind. So far, the engagement has been excellent.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Seek an open dialogue on what you want to achieve. You can get input and ideas from their team.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a research leader in the Science Directorate of an international botanic garden based in the UK.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Zegami Ltd., and what were your goals?

We are increasingly looking at machine learning solutions to accelerate our assessment of the conservation status of the world's flora. Zegami can make our data accessible in a highly innovative and interactive format.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

Zegami's service is unique.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

We were in discussion with Zegami developers at an early stage and our use and plans for Zegami have evolved with their service. On our side we are still building Zegami collections and unlocking its power for our project needs.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We have had most contact with three people: the COO, the Chief Technology Officer and co-founder and increasingly our technical account manager.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

We are still at the development phase, but initial feedback from end-users has been very positive, and Zegami collections have featured in several of our conservation projects.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

Zegami work hard to ensure that customers get the most out of their service. They listen to needs and respond quickly.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Zegami is at the cutting-edge of online data visualization and is constantly innovating.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

From our perspective the changes that we would find useful are already in the pipeline.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the managing director of a data recovery and protection platform. We are a modern platform business that offers orchestration and automation for backup and recovery products. That way, administrators can be much more efficient with how they manage data protection for large organizations. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Zegami Ltd.?

I approached Zegami Ltd. to help me build a proof of concept (POC). I have a potential use case for their tool, called Zegami, with the platform that we use in my new business, and I wanted to see if the tool would help fix that requirement. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The overall goal was around a large amount of data that we hold on a customer-by-customer basis, including all of their databases, virtual machines, and workloads that we back up. I wanted to see whether their tool created a way for our customers to visualize all of this data.

We want clients to get reports on what was getting backed up, what backups were failing, how big the backups were, and whether the data was growing or shrinking.

From previous experience, their tool seemed like it could help us with that visualization. They’re working with us to build a POC so we can see whether it will actually work for our needs.

What is the team composition?

We work with four people from Zegami Ltd. including a salesperson, the finance director, and people from their technical teams.

How did you come to work with Zegami Ltd.?

I had worked with Zegami Ltd. before at a previous company. We used their reporting tool to help visualize data for our customers — they have a very nice tool for visualizing large data sets. Rather than build something from scratch, I wanted to investigate whether partnering with them again would give us a quicker route to market our platforms.

How much have you invested with them?

At the moment, we have spent less than $10,000 on the POC.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in March 2021. The POC is finished, and we are looking at how we can bring that concept forward, so it’s still a work in progress.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Since the project is just a POC, we don’t have metrics to share. However, if we do decide to move forward with integrating their tool into ours, it will be about four times quicker than if we were to develop our own solution from scratch. We're looking at implementing it because it would be a much faster and efficient way to bring something to market. 

How did Zegami Ltd. perform from a project management standpoint?

Zegami Ltd.’s communication and project management are very good. We mainly communicate by email or Google Teams, and we have no issues with how they manage the project. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

The main thing that distinguishes them is that their technology is a good piece of software. Their technology is the primary reason I went to them because it’s very good. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there's nothing that stands out to me that would make a huge difference.

Any advice for potential customers?

Be very clear with your requirements and take some time to understand what their tool can and can't do. If you understand their tech and you're very clear about what you want, you'll generally get good output from them.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a professor of mathematical biology at a higher education institution. I do research in developing models and analyzing biomedical data.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Zegami Ltd.?

Images for experimental data and simulations that we run can be kind of difficult to search for, so Zegami helped us by offering a visualization tool to generate the images we’re looking for.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Zegami provides us with a beautiful data visualization tool, to make it easier for us to navigate, analyze, and organize data in different ways. We’re also building on its existing infrastructure, and possibly adding new bits of functionalities that are specific to the data analysis we’re developing — we work very much as a team in that regard.

This is very much the first pump-priming project, but there’s a lot in the scope to continue developing the relationship.

What is the team composition?

At the moment, for this particularly small project, we mostly work with Steve (Chief Scientific Officer). However, there’s a large multidisciplinary team across the university working together.

How did you come to work with Zegami Ltd.?

I’m not sure who reached out first, but I believe we’ve been aware of them for a number of years. We’ve had conversations about their interest in developing biomedical use cases, to highlight the benefits of the visualization and analytical tools — this interest seemed to move more into a biomedical application.

This particular project we’re working on got a grant from Amazon Web Services with a fairly tight budget. As part of that, I had to put out a tender for other suppliers, and Zegami was the only vendor who could deliver what we needed within the budget.

What is the status of this engagement?

The ongoing partnership started in November 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

Zegami has been great and brilliant. Their tools and the way they organize the data have been revolutionary, and they make it so much easier for us to navigate and see trends in our simulation results. The simulations are quite complex if you can’t examine to pull up images one by one, but to have them all on a desktop and enable us to try different things is quite amazing. One of my other Ph.D. students has also started using Zegami and utilizing the beautiful visualizations, and organizing simulation results.

How did Zegami Ltd. perform from a project management standpoint?

We have a quite tight timeline, but they’ve been very professional at summarizing what they’re up to in our weekly meetings. We usually communicate through phone, virtual meetings, and email.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We like that they’re a little bit unique in the way that they sit across the university’s commercial divide. Steve has a position in the university, so I think they’re very well-placed and that they understand the difference between a commercial for-profit organization, and a university — which to some extent, is about fundamental research and also translation. I believe the team has a good overview of the landscape, from research to industry commercialization. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

In terms of the way we interact with them, nothing comes to mind to be quite honest. We’ve been very happy with how our interactions have gone, and what they’ve delivered for us. All that’s done is highlight other areas where we can adapt and use the database management tool that they offer. Our goal now is to improve all the functionalities, so I hope this is just the start of a longer partnership.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Zegami is made up of very decent and honest people, so I would say just go for it and tell them what you want. They’ve been very helpful, accommodating, and a pleasure to work with. Although I don’t know how interactions with commercial customers would be like, I’m only commenting on my own experience with them.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a product manager at Ebbon Intelligence, which is part of the Ebbon Group. The Ebbon Group provides a broad range of digital platforms to the automotive community within the UK and Europe. Ebbon Intelligence’s role is to apply AI technologies to the group’s products.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Zegami Ltd.?

We’re creating a system to identify and quantify the amount of damage on an alloy wheel. When you lease a car and return it back, we can tell how damaged the wheel is based on a picture of that wheel.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Zegami has provided us with a toolset for gathering data and they provide consultancy services.

As a part of an existing product in Ebbon Group, we have a large number of vehicle images. We use the toolset to enhance that data so that we can apply machine learning to it.

For the consulting services, Zegami helps us direct our efforts and brings their expertise to help us achieve our objectives.

What is the team composition?

Zegami’s team composition varies. We don’t have a team assigned to us, but we have access to the most relevant parts of their team whenever we need them. They provided us front-line support for the toolset.

For the consulting work, we’ve worked with data scientists and technical architects depending on the problem that we’re handling.

How did you come to work with Zegami Ltd.?

Zegami was introduced to us by another group located roughly in the same location. We looked at the marketplace and decided that they were a good fit for us.

How much have you invested with them?

We’re expecting to spend between $60,000–$80,000 (approximately $80,900–$113,300 USD). It’s a rolling project, so the cost may be more if we reach our goals.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in April 2021, and the partnership is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Zegami has helped us achieve an alpha version of our first machine learning model. We’re hoping to have a prototype by the end of June 2021. Therefore, we’re on track for hitting our target, which we’re incredibly pleased with.

How did Zegami Ltd. perform from a project management standpoint?

We have a fortnightly meeting with Zegami. They’ve always been incredibly clear about what they’re working on, who is working on it, and when we can expect the delivery. Zegami has done everything that they’ve promised.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The toolset and the personnel distinguish Zegami from other providers. They have the exact mix of knowledge and creativity on their team that we need.

Are there any areas they could improve?

This is an ongoing project, and we’re in the early stages of it. Given that our work started last month, I can't think of anything that Zegami could improve on.

Any advice for potential customers?

Zegami’s expertise has accelerated helping us achieve our goals, so if you're looking to get involved in AI projects, get an opinion from someone like Zegami early on.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the data architect and software engineer at a government-funded research organization. We help researchers in plant science validate their experimental findings.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Zegami Ltd.?

We approached Zegami Ltd. to help us with data visualization and data accessibility. We make all of the research we conduct publicly available, and we didn’t have a great way to publish our findings.  

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The equipment we run is complex and prone to many subtle failure cases. Zegami Ltd. helps us perform quality control on our images.

What is the team composition?

We work with everyone from their CEO, CTO, and lead engineers, as well as many senior and junior developers.

How did you come to work with Zegami Ltd.?

Originally, they approached us when they were a startup. We met them at a data science event. We weren’t seeking solutions actively, but we had a look at their product anyway. The team was very quickly able to help us.

How much have you invested with them?

Initially, we paid somewhere around $50,000 AUD (approximately $39,000 USD). Now, we pay a subscription fee of about $5,000–$10,000 AUD per year (approximately $4,000–$8,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in June 2014, and our work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

We’ve made multiple improvements thanks to aspects of our equipment we’ve been able to measure with Zegami. We have close to 100 data collections that we’ve been able to share with a dozen different research organizations; that wouldn’t have been possible without Zegami.

How did Zegami Ltd.perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re excellent. They’ve always been highly engaged and capable from day one. They’re very willing to work with us based on strict requirements. Zegami consistently makes improvements to handle our unique use cases. We communicate via Zoom meetings.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I haven’t seen anything like the tool that they offer. It allows us to view and interact with data from a variety of different sources. Users can find the important pieces of a large data set quite easily.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, not really. If there were other organizations that wanted to use them in a similar manner as we do, it would be beneficial for Zegami to document the tools we use.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would encourage future clients to spend time thinking about what they want to achieve. That way, Zegami will allow you to get to that goal faster.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We develop effective capability-based readiness assessment solutions by optimizing disparate data sources and operational systems to reduce costs, maximize efficiencies and streamline access to critical military decisioning data. As CEO, I oversee all aspects of the business.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Zegami?

We bought Zegami for our HR analytics projects as well as supporting our customers in the DoD

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

The primary differentiator is the ability to visualize the data at all levels with images of actual employees on the HR project.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

We use Zegami to measure performance, goal achievement, learning progress, retention and several other HR related analytics.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We've worked with several people including the CEO and COO.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We've had excellent results to better understand and optimize our HR workforce and have become a best places to work in all locations.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

They are very effective

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

The unique nature of the tool and ease of use

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

none