What is BonsAPPs doing for SMEs
Uptake of digital technologies has increased in recent years, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic1.
However, this uptake has not been the same for SMEs as it has been for large companies. Large companies have disproportionately adopted more complex, analytic systems such as Artificial Intelligence, while SMEs have focused primarily on simple tools such as websites2.
This is not a good trend for SMEs, as it widens the already large productivity gap between small and large enterprises3.
It’s not good for the European economy, either. 99% of the European economy is composed of SMEs. They employ around 100 million people, account for more than half of Europe’s GDP and play a key role in adding value in every sector of the economy4. They need to be able to keep up with the bigger players but without making the same expensive investment of time and money.
Enter BonsAPPs. This project, co-funded by the European Commission, is closing the gap by making AI available to SMEs in an easy, affordable way. Furthermore, the project seeks to transform AI development from a cloud-centric model, dominated by large internet companies, to an edge-device-centric model.
It does this through the Bonseyes AI Marketplace. At the Bonseyes Marketplace, developers can create their own AI Assets and offer them on the platform. SMEs can browse, select and integrate these AI Assets into their own businesses, either as stand-alone tools or in combination as complete AI Solutions.
Alternatively, SMEs can present a challenge they need to have solved, and developers can bid to create their own AI Assets in order to solve that challenge.
As opposed to the monolithic system design currently used in closed end-to-end solutions, Bonseyes focuses on an open architecture to enable an ecosystem of companies to collaborate in building complex, distributed “intelligent” systems. Thanks to the Bonseyes Marketplace, SMEs can: reduce development time by 50%; reduce the cost of ownership by a factor of 5 related to training of deep learning models; and reduce computational and memory by a factor of 10.
Browse existing AI Assets, create your own AI Asset or simply learn more by visiting the BonsAPPs project website at bonsapps.eu and the Bonseyes marketplace at beta.bonseyes.com.
1 https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/97a5bbfe-en/1/3/2/4/index.html?itemId=/content/publication/97a5bbfe-en&_csp_=d1fc5acec34e67180d5f3e84ef7e00e6&itemIGO=oecd&itemContentType=book#figure-d1e14955
2 https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/bdb9256a-en/index.html?itemId=/content/publication/bdb9256a-en
3 https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector/our-insights/unlocking-growth-in-small-and-medium-size-enterprises
4 https://single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu/smes_en#:~:text=Small%20and%20medium%2Dsized%20enterprises%20(SMEs)%20are%20the%20backbone,every%20sector%20of%20the%20economy
