Deriving adoption strategies of deep learning open source framework through case studies

딥러닝 오픈소스 프레임워크의 사례연구를 통한 도입 전략 도출

Many companies on information and communication technology make public their own developed AI technology, for example, Google's TensorFlow, Facebook's PyTorch, Microsoft's CNTK. By releasing deep learning open source software to the public, the relationship with the developer community and the artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem can be strengthened, and users can perform experiment, implementation and improvement of it. Accordingly, the field of machine learning is growing rapidly, and developers are using and reproducing various learning algorithms in each field. Although various analysis of open source software has been made, there is a lack of studies to help develop or use deep learning open source software in the industry. This study thus attempts to derive a strategy for adopting the framework through case studies of a deep learning open source framework. Based on the technology-organization-environment (TOE) framework and literature review related to the adoption of open source software, we employed the case study framework that includes technological factors as perceived relative advantage, perceived compatibility, perceived complexity, and perceived trialability, organizational factors as management support and knowledge & expertise, and environmental factors as availability of technology skills and services, and platform long term viability. We conducted a case study analysis of three companies' adoption cases (two cases of success and one case of failure) and revealed that seven out of eight TOE factors and several factors regarding company, team and resource are significant for the adoption of deep learning open source framework. By organizing the case study analysis results, we provided five important success factors for adopting deep learning framework: the knowledge and expertise of developers in the team, hardware (GPU) environment, data enterprise cooperation system, deep learning framework platform, deep learning framework work tool service. In order for an organization to successfully adopt a deep learning open source framework, at the stage of using the framework, first, the hardware (GPU) environment for AI R&D group must support the knowledge and expertise of the developers in the team. Second, it is necessary to support the use of deep learning frameworks by research developers through collecting and managing data inside and outside the company with a data enterprise cooperation system. Third, deep learning research expertise must be supplemented through cooperation with researchers from academic institutions such as universities and research institutes. Satisfying three procedures in the stage of using the deep learning framework, companies will increase the number of deep learning research developers, the ability to use the deep learning framework, and the support of GPU resource. In the proliferation stage of the deep learning framework, fourth, a company makes the deep learning framework platform that improves the research efficiency and effectiveness of the developers, for example, the optimization of the hardware (GPU) environment automatically. Fifth, the deep learning framework tool service team complements the developers' expertise through sharing the information of the external deep learning open source framework community to the in-house community and activating developer retraining and seminars. To implement the identified five success factors, a step-by-step enterprise procedure for adoption of the deep learning framework was proposed: defining the project problem, confirming whether the deep learning methodology is the right method, confirming whether the deep learning framework is the right tool, using the deep learning framework by the enterprise, spreading the framework of the enterprise. The first three steps (i.e. defining the project problem, confirming whether the deep learning methodology is the right method, and confirming whether the deep learning framework is the right tool) are pre-considerations to adopt a deep learning open source framework. After the three pre-considerations steps are clear, next two steps (i.e. using the deep learning framework by the enterprise and spreading the framework of the enterprise) can be processed. In the fourth step, the knowledge and expertise of developers in the team are important in addition to hardware (GPU) environment and data enterprise cooperation system. In final step, five important factors are realized for a successful adoption of the deep learning open source framework. This study provides strategic implications for companies adopting or using deep learning framework according to the needs of each industry and business.

많은 정보통신기술 기업들은 자체적으로 개발한 인공지능 기술을 오픈소스로 공개하였다. 예를 들어, 구글의 TensorFlow, 페이스북의 PyTorch, 마이크로소프트의 CNTK 등 여러 기업들은 자신들의 인공지능 기술들을 공개하고 있다. 이처럼 대중에게 딥러닝 오픈소스 소프트웨어를 공개함으로써 개발자 커뮤니티와의 관계와 인공지능 생태계를 강화하고, 사용자들의 실험, 적용, 개선을 얻을 수 있다. 이에 따라 머신러닝 분야는 급속히 성장하고 있고, 개발자들 또한 여러가지 학습 알고리즘을 재생산하여 각 영역에 활용하고 있다. 하지만 오픈소스 소프트웨어에 대한 다양한 분석들이 이루어진 데 반해, 실제 산업현장에서 딥러닝 오픈소스 소프트웨어를 개발하거나 활용하는데 유용한 연구 결과는 미흡한 실정이다. 따라서 본 연구에서는 딥러닝 프레임워크 사례연구를 통해 해당 프레임워크의 도입 전략을 도출하고자 한다. 기술-조직-환경 프레임워크를 기반으로 기존의 오픈 소스 소프트웨어 도입과 관련된 연구들을 리뷰하고, 이를 바탕으로 두 기업의 성공 사례와 한 기업의 실패 사례를 포함한 총 3 가지 기업의 도입 사례 분석을 통해 딥러닝 프레임워크 도입을 위한 중요한 5가지 성공 요인을 도출하였다: 팀 내 개발자의 지식과 전문성, 하드웨어(GPU) 환경, 데이터 전사 협력 체계, 딥러닝 프레임워크 플랫폼, 딥러닝 프레임워크 도구 서비스. 그리고 도출한 성공 요인을 실현하기 위한 딥러닝 프레임워크의 단계적 도입 전략을 제안하였다: 프로젝트 문제 정의, 딥러닝 방법론이 적합한 기법인지 확인, 딥러닝 프레임워크가 적합한 도구인지 확인, 기업의 딥러닝 프레임워크 사용, 기업의 딥러닝 프레임워크 확산. 본 연구를 통해 각 산업과 사업의 니즈에 따라, 딥러닝 프레임워크를 개발하거나 활용하고자 하는 기업에게 전략적인 시사점을 제공할 수 있을 것이라 기대된다.