JFrog Advancing MLOps Capabilities with Qwak Acquisition

JFrog is acquiring Israel-based Qwak to beef up its machine learning operations (MLOps) capabilities.

With the acquisition, JFrog plans to provide simplified, secured and governed AI/ML pipelines as part of its software supply chain platform.

JFrog is the single system of record for all software packages (binaries), including models stored in its Artifactory DevOps solution. Enhancing its ML model capabilities will enable users to streamline models from development to deployment.

Gal Marder, JFrog’s executive vice president of strategy, said this acquisition is an opportunity for JFrog partners to expand their reach into a new community of data scientists and MLOps engineers, those who are developing AI models and applications.

“The ability to build and train models, and move them to production efficiently is key to deliver AI-powered applications,” he said. “Combining the JFrog platform with Qwak’s capabilities allows that. As part of the company’s approach to universality, JFrog will continue to deliver integrations with other leading MLOps ecosystem partners to provide developers and ML engineers with freedom of choice and avoiding vendor lock-in.”

New MLOps Capabilities for Partners

All JFrog partners will have access to new communities, a new field of applications, and new capabilities in the areas of MLOps, DevOps and security, Marder said.

JFrog's Gal Marder

“The practice of developing and releasing software is challenging, particularly when it comes to AI/ML models,” he said. “With this acquisition, our partners will gain the opportunity to better cater to their customers’ current and future needs with simplified MLOps pipelines that accelerate the flow of ML models from development to production.”

JFrog is the first platform to unify the needs of MLOps, DevOps and security to accelerate the flow of AI/ML models from development to production with full traceability and governance, Marder said.

“Data scientists and ML engineers currently use tools that are mostly disconnected from standard DevOps and security processes within companies, delaying release timeframes and eroding trust,” he said. “As part of the JFrog platform, Qwak’s technology will combine a straightforward and hassle-free user experience for bringing models to production with a level of trust and provenance enterprises expect when delivering AI-powered applications.”

Qwak has a few partners, mainly other software vendors and small specialized consulting companies/individuals, Marder said.

“Qwak will keep conducting their business as a separate unit and we do not expect any changes with partners,” he said.

The acquisition follows a successful integration between JFrog and Qwak solutions announced earlier this year.

“We’re beyond excited to join the JFrog family and to help customers accelerate their AI initiatives,” said Alon Lev, Qwak’s CEO and co-founder. “Our founding vision for Qwak was to change the way software development teams and data scientists work together to bring AI assets into production. With the power of the JFrog software supply chain platform to deliver secure software components at scale, we’re creating a whole new experience that will pave the way for unified digital delivery teams to bring responsible, secured models into their applications much more simply and predictably.”