The implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly prevalent in most organizational structures and systems.
AI is no longer a futuristic tool but a practical solution that can be utilized to boost productivity and even help software engineers and development teams design new AI-powered applications for a wide range of industries.
As a result, more and more organizations are leveraging gen AI to enhance their applications and manage data.
One such organization, MongoDB, an American software company specializing in developing scalable applications with data schemas has optimized artificial intelligence technology to build MongoDB AI Applications Program (MAAP).
This article provides a comprehensive overview of the MongoDB AI Applications Program (MAAP), covering its purpose, key features, and practical applications.
What is MAAP?
MongoDB AI Applications Program (MAAP) is essentially a software development tool that provides an easy developers solution to organizations, helping them rapidly construct and deploy modern applications backed with AI technology.
Many AI adopters observed that conventional, legacy applications struggled to handle multi-modal data structures needed to power AI applications. The challenge was further induced by a lack of in-house skills with organizations fearing the risk of integrating multiple components without support.
MAAP which officially launched mid-year (July 2024) aimed to help such organizations resolve their application and data challenges (regardless of use case). MongoDB carries out the solution through reference architectures, end-to-end technology stack, integrations with leading technology providers, and professional services, championing a unified support system.
It’s a first-of-a-kind program that has taken advantage of accelerating AI technologies, powering organizations with a library of resources to put AI applications into production.
MAAP offers organizations the right expertise and solutions for their use cases and removes integration risks. The MAAP ecosystem also seamlessly integrates many of the world’s leading AI and tech organizations—a real value-add for customers.
It’s only been a few months since MAAP officially launched but its ecosystem already includes well-known tech giants such as Accenture, AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. It also features organizations specializing in generative AI, such as Anthropic, Cohere, and LangChain.
Such a congregation of organizations will enable customers to build differentiated, production-ready AI applications while aiming to deliver substantial returns on investment.
How does MAAP work?
The MongoDB AI Applications Program (MAAP) framework leverages AI to create a central design for gen AI applications, pre-configured interactions, and professional services.
This not only helps organizations meet their requirements but also addresses data silos and helps overcome limited in-house technical expertise, easing the roles of developers and data analytics teams.
The framework provides flexibility for technical and non-technical teams alike, empowering them to leverage AI and company data for tasks specific to their department, no matter their preferred cloud environment or Large Language Model (LLM).
MAAP framework shows flexibility in terms of deployment and integration. It can function on any major cloud provider, on-premises, and at the edge, powering organizations with the freedom to choose among any major LLM providers. MAAP also seamlessly integrates with a variety of frameworks and systems, ensuring compatibility and flexibility in the development and deployment process.
“The ultimate aim of MAAP is to enable customers to get the most out of their data, and to ensure that they can confidently innovate with AI,” MongoDB stated.
MongoDB also offers gen AI tools, however, MAAP is a new solution introduced by the organization aimed at providing a comprehensive and end-to-end approach to resolving an organization’s AI execution challenges and data management.
The framework enables organizations to integrate with gen AI by providing expert, hands-on support and services. MAAP expert services combine the strengths of MongoDB Professional Services and top-led-gen AI consultancies to boost an organization’s AI innovations.
MAAP offers strategic guidance on roadmaps and skillsets, assists with data integration into advanced AI technologies, and can even develop production-ready applications. It goes beyond development, providing developer teams with best practices for securely integrating users’ data into scalable gen AI solutions, ensuring businesses are equipped to tackle future AI initiatives.
Key features of MAAP
MAAP’s primary objective is to provide organizations with the tools, resources, and support needed to develop AI models that can enhance their business operations. MAAP offers a comprehensive framework that guides organizations through the entire AI development process, from initial ideation to final deployment, including:
1. Goal setting
MongoDB provides strategic guidance and consulting services to help establish a clear roadmap. This is the first step as part of onboarding with MAAP with organizations using the framework to define their AI goals and objectives. The solution provides a professional services team that helps organizations define clear AI goals and objectives, thoroughly analyze unique needs, identify potential use cases, and set realistic expectations.
MAAP provides tools to track and measure the performance of AI models against predefined goals. Observing metrics allows the organization to assess whether their AI initiatives are delivering the desired outcomes. With a centralized focus on the development and deployment of assistive tools, MAAP enables organizations to experiment with different AI approaches and iterate on their models to achieve optimal results. This iterative process can help organizations refine their goals and adjust their strategies.
2. Customizable blueprints
MAAP leverages reference architectures by offering pre-designed blueprints to build AI-powered applications. Organizations can customize the blueprints as per their specific needs, enabling them to create and manage database structures. Essentially, they provide a reusable template that can be tailored to specific application requirements.
A blueprint is a JSON document defining the schema for a MongoDB collection that includes information about the fields, their data types, and any indexes or validation rules. These can be modified by adding or removing fields, changing data types, or adjusting indexes. When the user has created a satisfactory blueprint, they can apply to to create a new collection or update an existing one. These blueprints are valuable tools for MongoDB developers, offering a structured and efficient way to handle database schemas. They promote consistency, flexibility, and version control.
3. Tools for data management
MAAP is equipped with a variety of comprehensive tools and technologies to help manage data and develop models, deployment, and basic management. These tools can be used to build, train, and deploy the ultimate AI model in development. MAAP’s tools were developed for data management, model development, deployment, and management. These offer reference architectures, integrations with leading technology providers, and professional services to help organizations build and deploy AI applications effectively.
4. Integration
MAAP's ecosystem includes prominent technology companies like Accenture, AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. The partnership allows organizations to leverage the expertise and resources of these companies, as well as seamlessly integrate with their popular AI and technology tools. This integration can enhance the capabilities of MAAP and provide organizations with a more comprehensive and efficient AI development solution.
MAAP’s users can seamlessly connect its platform with a variety of other popular AI and technology tools, allowing organizations to leverage best practices for creating comprehensive AI applications. Some capabilities include pre-configured integrations with top cloud platforms, data management tools, and machine learning frameworks. It also provides flexibility to devise custom integrations, allowing organizations to connect MAAP to proprietary systems or tools that are not included in the pre-configured list.
MAAP leverages a well-defined API (Application Programming Interface) to facilitate integration, providing a standardized way for other applications to interact with MAAP. The feature makes it easier to exchange data and functionality, helping to avoid vendor lock-in and ensuring that organizations have the freedom to choose the tools that best match their needs.
5. Professional services
MAAP offers expert guidance, allowing organizations to consult with them for advice on AI development strategies such as data preparation, model selection, and deployment strategies. This ecosystem of experienced AI experts, data scientists, and engineers offers strategic consulting to help define goals and assist with data preparation such as cleaning, preprocessing, and feature engineering for quality data to devise efficient AI models. They also help build, train, deploy, and manage these AI models. By leveraging the expertise of MAAP's professionals, organizations can accelerate their AI initiatives, reduce risks, and achieve better results.
Essentially, MAAP's professional services team works closely with organizations to understand their specific needs and challenges. They provide tailored guidance and support throughout the entire AI development lifecycle.
6. Centralized support system
MAAP has a centralized support system staffed by a team of AI experts and technical support specialists to assist organizations with any queries or issues they may face. The benefits of the unified support system include access to documentation, FAQs, and a dedicated support team. This system provides a single point of contact for organizations to get assistance with all aspects of MAAP for a smoother user experience and gain the maximum benefit through a single point of contact for organizations to seek help.
The user can access the centralized support system by submitting a ticket, and requesting support by detailing the issue or query. The ticket is assigned to a relevant support specialist which is followed by a specialist investigation. The specialist provides guidance and solutions and follows up with the organization to ensure the issue is resolved.
Key benefits
1. Accelerate AI development
MongoDB AI Applications Program provides comprehensive solutions with direct industry-leading gen AI expert insights, hands-on support, and other services. These features allow organizations to rapidly create innovative new AI applications by leveraging MAAP’s strategic guidance on roadmaps and skill sets, assisting with data integration into advanced AI technologies, and developing production-ready applications.
MAAP goes beyond development, empowering teams with best practices for securely integrating your data into scalable gen AI solutions, ensuring organizations are equipped to tackle future AI initiatives.
2. Build high-performing gen AI applications.
MAAP enables organizations to design high-performing gen AI applications tackling industry-specific needs. The solution provides pre-designed architectures to provide organizations with repeatable, accelerated frameworks for building AI applications. These architectures are fully customizable and extendable to accommodate ever-evolving generative AI use cases, like retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) or advanced AI capabilities like Agentic AI and advanced RAG technique integrations.
3. Upskill users
MAAP’s users are given access to a wide range of learning materials so developers can quickly and repeatedly design modern AI applications. These learning materials include a dedicated MAAP GitHub library featuring integration code, demos, and a gen AI application prototype. The comprehensive resources are provided for developers to build intelligent, personalized applications faster while giving organizations the tools to expand their in-house AI expertise. With MAAP, customers have access to integration and development best practices that they can use for future gen AI projects.
Use cases
Anywhere Real Estate
Anywhere Real Estate, an American publicly owned real estate services organization, also the parent company of popular brands including Century 21, Coldwell Banker, and Sotheby’s International Realty partnered with MongoDB to push their digital transformation by tapping into MongoDB AI Applications Program (MAAP).
The organization aimed to fast-track its AI adoption by leveraging MongoDB’s expertise. Damian Ng, Senior Vice President of Technology at Anywhere says that the gen AI solution was a game changer for Anywhere and the organization is integrating it into their products
“MongoDB has been an invaluable partner, helping us rapidly explore and develop new approaches and opportunities. The journey ahead is exciting!”
ACI Worldwide
ACI Worldwide is a payment systems organization based in Miami, Florida that powers mission-critical real-time payment software solutions for thousands of organizations across the globe. Some of the world’s largest financial institutions rely on its capabilities to process and manage digital payments, power omni-commerce payments, and manage fraud and risk.
MongoDB along with Peerlslands, a service partner has been working with ACI Worldwide to modernize and transform the organization’s critical business applications. Abe Kuruvilla, CTO at ACI Worldwide says that the results in just the initial phase were impressive.
“By relying on MongoDB Atlas, and by leveraging MongoDB’s AI solutions, we’ve been able to speed up our modernization process and reduce the burden of database management faced by our developers, allowing them to focus on innovation. ACI Worldwide looks forward to continuing to work closely with MongoDB, PeerIslands, and MAAP partners through the new MongoDB AI Applications Program."
Solution Overview: MongoDB AI Applications Program (MAAP)
MongoDB AI Applications Program (MAAP) provides organizations with a comprehensive solution specifically designed for AI application development. In addition to technical AI tools, the platform also provides industry-led expert insights, advice, and guidance throughout the AI development lifecycle. MAAP’s features are all presented in a unified support system, making it easy for teams to access and use and helping them devise tailored solutions for their AI initiatives. This is why MongoDB has been awarded the Niche Player Badge.
About MongoDB
MongoDB is a NoSQL database developed by MongoDB Inc., an American software organization based in New York, also a member of the MACH alliance specialized. The software is built on a scale-out architecture beneficial for developers especially to help design scalable applications with evolving data schemas.
As a document database, MongoDB makes it easy for developers to store structured or unstructured data. It uses a JSON-like format to store documents.
