Compete 366 supports adoption and optimisation of Azure OpenAI for Luminance
This case study explains how Compete366 worked with Luminance to advise, guide and assist on the adoption and optimisation of Azure OpenAI.
Background
Founded by AI experts from the University of Cambridge, Luminance is an end-to-end AI platform for the generation, negotiation and analysis of contracts. Built on a proprietary legal Large Language Model (LLM), Luminance brings AI to every touchpoint a business has with its documents, from taking a first pass review of any incoming contract to automatically identifying key data or areas of non-compliance in executed agreements.
Today, Luminance is used by over 600 organisations in 70 countries worldwide including a quarter of the world’s largest law firms, all of the ‘Big Four’ and multinational organisations such as Hitachi, Staples, AMD, LG Chem and BBC Studios.
The Business Challenge
The team at Luminance had developed their own proprietary AI technology to help lawyers optimise their work, delivered as a SaaS offering using AWS hosting, and had already achieved great success in providing this technology to leading organisations across the world.
Over the last year with the development of new generative AI, Luminance was looking to build deployments of this as an addition to the AI that was already available in its existing software products. They wanted to enhance the existing solution by adding a chatbot powered by generative AI and experimented with the GPT4 Large Language Models (LLMs) in OpenAI (NOT Azure OpenAI) to develop their chatbot.
As Simon Rodgers, CTO at Luminance, explains: “We could see the power of generative AI for our customers, but we knew lawyers would have significant concerns around the accuracy of the content that AI generated. Our approach has been all about combining our existing proprietary, analytical AI around classification techniques and then adding this generative layer on top, providing a more augmented approach. This results in an output which the lawyer can trust, rather than risking hallucinating the output.”
Luminance wanted an enterprise class service for hosting their LLMs. Given the nature of their clients’ work and potential concerns about data being held somewhere outside of the perimeter of their own organisation, finding a provider that could satisfy GDPR requirements and guarantee data privacy was crucial.
The Solution
Simon contacted Microsoft about Azure OpenAI and they introduced Compete366 as one of their Azure Data & AI specialists.
The Compete366 technical consultant explained that Microsoft Azure AI offered the same models for generative AI but with the additional layers of security, locality, and a focus on being a resource provider, all of which would resonate with Luminance customers.
The decision was made to appoint Compete366 to meet their needs for Azure. Compete366 was able to provide Luminance with their Azure consumption, and in return (and for no additional cost) also provided free ongoing expert Azure advice and guidance to help them get the most from their Azure subscription.
Solution Benefits
The benefits of this approach adopted by Luminance in choosing Azure were as follows:
Mixed Environment
Although the Luminance core infrastructure is hosted on AWS, they can still easily use the LLM in Azure via API calls.
Customer Adoption
New customers adoption rates are high as confidence in Azure AI as an enterprise platform is very strong.
Azure Security
- Azure AI has allowed Luminance to build more secure and trustworthy generative AI applications. Luminance has created its own version of the model so all data remains there in their own version of the model in their subscription.
- Luminance developers can leverage OpenAI models with proprietary data in ways that comply with internal organizational policies.
- Azure AI allows Luminance to maintain access rights for their clients without compromising security and data policies.
- Data residency – Luminance has control over which Azure region their model is deployed in.
Azure Scalability to meet customer requirements
- Azure is an enterprise class infrastructure offering that can be scaled across geographies as required by the client expansion being achieved by Luminance.
- Service availability— Azure services are backed by an SLA which means that Luminance can be confident that their SaaS offering will meet customer requirements.
Working with Compete366
So how was it working with the team from Compete366?
Simon explains: “We were looking for a partner who could help us to navigate Microsoft Azure. All of our SaaS offering is hosted on AWS so we are very familiar with that. We were looking for a partner to act as a sounding board and who could provide solid advice. From the outset, Compete366 impressed us – they demonstrated that they understood our problem, were genuinely interested in our business and offered open and honest advice.”
Future Plans
Luminance has recently secured $40m of Series B funding to support its further growth in the US and Europe.
As Simon explains: “Luminance is growing fast – that’s why we need a partner like Compete366 and Microsoft Azure that gives us the confidence that we can easily scale our solution in different regions and countries. We need to ensure that we have enough room for growth from our partners as we increase the access and scale of our SaaS AI offerings.”
Contact our Microsoft specialists
Phone or email us to find out more – or book a free, no-obligation call with our technical consultants using the contact form.
“It’s great to work with the Compete366 team, the team members are really knowledgeable, helpful and responsive. No question is too difficult for them. They have really helped us to manage our Azure costs and ensure we have the right environment. When we bring a new customer on-board we can scale up immediately via the Azure portal and quickly make environments available to our customers.”
“We also find that there’s never a heavy sales pitch from them – they are technically focused and recommend what’s right for us.”
“We had great support from the Compete366 AVD expert, who was really helpful, and guided me through options to tackle issues that arose.”
“The great thing about our AVD set up is that we have a custom set up for each project which Compete366 showed me how to do. And with the scalability and flexibility of AVD – we can meet clients’ expectations and get project users up and running more quickly.”
“We were immediately impressed with the advice that the Compete366 specialists in Azure Architecture were able to provide. This was all new to us and we really needed some external expertise that we could use to get our questions answered. The beauty of working with Compete366 is that we transferred our Azure consumption to them, and at the same time received all of their advice and guidance free of charge.”
“Working with Compete366 has been like extending our own team – they are extremely and easy to work with. Right from the outset, it was clear what was on offer – everything was presented to us in a straightforward and uncomplicated way. They also provided just the right level of challenge to our developers and saved us time and money by suggesting better ways to implement our infrastructure.”
“Compete366 were able to help us leverage some useful contacts in Microsoft. We really value the expert advice and guidance that they have offered us in setting up a highly scalable infrastructure. We are also setting in place a regular monthly meeting which will allow us to further refine our architecture and ensure we keep on track as our requirements grow and change.”
“I have been delighted with the migration, where my team worked very hard, supported by expert advice from Compete366, and achieved everything in the timescale we had set out. Compete 366 made sure that we didn’t make any expensive mistakes, and guided us through the process”
