The Microsoft acquisition of Revolution Analytics is preparing the company for “Revolution R.” R refers to the widely used programming language for predictive analytics and statistical computing. According to Microsoft, Revolution Analytics is the leading provider of software and services for R.
On the company’s blog, Microsoft said, “We are making this acquisition to help more companies use the power of R and data science to unlock big data insights with advanced analytics.”
With this acquisition, Microsoft believes it is providing its customers with powerful analytics tools to make data-driven decisions. It is also an effort to reduce the data science and analytics skills gap inside organizations.
David Smith, chief community officer for Revolution Analytics, said it might not seem like an intuitive move, but it makes sense. “Now, Microsoft might seem like a strange bedfellow for an open-source company, but the company continues to make great strides in the open-source arena.”
Microsoft has made great strides in this arena by embracing Linus and partnering with Hortonworks to “extend open-source Hadoop for the enterprise,” Smith said. Hadoop is the leading framework for big data databases and analytics tools.
Microsoft said it is excited about the fact that, “Revolution Analytics provides an enterprise-class platform for the development and deployment of R-based analytic solutions that can scale across large data warehouses and Hadoop systems.”
Customers can now use advanced analytics within Microsoft data platforms in hybrid cloud environments on Microsoft Azure.
This means Revolution Analytics’ product will reach a broader customer base. Smith said that was one of the goals of the acquisition.
“We’re excited the work we’ve done with Revolution R will come to a wider audience through Microsoft,” he said. “Our combined teams will be able to help more users use advanced analytics within Microsoft data platform solutions, both on-premises and in the cloud.”
As of now, there are no details on the price of the acquisition.
