Netflix and Finnish creative tech company Codemate have developed a graphic user interface for Metaflow. The development enables Netflix data scientists to run track numerous large data science projects simultaneously and increase the value of its data science practices to its customers. Netflix is now releasing Metaflow’s GUI as an open-source project, making it freely available for the data science community.
Data scientists help Netflix address complex business problems that would be nearly impossible to solve without large amounts of data. They use Metaflow to develop algorithms meant to improve a host of business decisions. Netflix’s ML practitioners identified the need for a better user interface for Metaflow to make it easier to keep track of their work. They also needed a better and faster way to manage numerous data science projects.
Codemate has been Netflix’s development partner for Metaflow since spring 2020. Codemate developed Metaflow’s first-ever Graphic User Interface (GUI) with the specific needs of data scientists as a starting point. Now Netflix data scientists can focus on modeling and use the Metaflow GUI to track and manage their ML pipelines. Codemate designed the GUI to run on AWS. They also developed clear documentation of the GUI project enabling a smooth open-source release of the product. Initial feedback from Netflix’s data scientists has been very positive, as the GUI is seen to save a significant amount of user time.
“Together with Codemate and their agile design and development team, we have been able to develop Metaflow into an even better and more efficient tool with its new intuitive visual UI. Now Metaflow can drastically lower the threshold of using data science in organizations day-to-day operations and increase the efficiency of data science in helping organizations to offer even better products and services. For our customers, the results of this development are evident in even better user experience and content recommendations, to name a few”, says Brett Rose, Technical Program Manager for ML Infrastructure from Netflix.
“It has been truly exciting to work with Netflix on Metaflow which has a direct impact on millions of Netflix users worldwide. The co-operation was especially successful in meeting the needs of different use-cases and large-scale ML projects, as ease of use and speed was raised to a new level. Together with Netflix, we were able to revolutionize the work of data scientists and how organizations can get more value out of their data using data science with less engineering”, says Toni Piirainen, CEO of Codemate.
Although developed by Netflix, Metaflow has been an open-source product since 2019 and has been adopted by different organizations using data science.
