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Microsoft finalizes its Revolution Analytics acquisition

Microsoft plans to integrate Revolution's R programming language implementation and platform for statistical computing and analytics into SQL Server, Azure HDInsight and Azure Machine Learning.
Written by Mary Jo Foley, Senior Contributing Editor

On April 6, Microsoft officals announced the company had completed its acquisition of Revolution Analytics, the maker of a distribution of the R programming language for statistical computing and predictive analytics.

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Microsoft initially announced plans to acquire Revolution Analytics in January 2015 for an undisclosed amount. At that time, Microsoft officials said they planned to build R and Revolution's technology into its data platform products running on-premises, in the public cloud and/or in hybrid-cloud set-ups.

Microsoft is planning to build R into SQL Server, said Joseph Sirosh, Microsoft Corporate Vice President of Information Management and Machine Learning, enabling customers to deploy it in a datacenter, on Azure or in a hybrid configuration. Microsoft also will integrate Revolution's R distribution into Azure HDInsight and Azure Machine Learning to make it easier to analyze big data, he said.

Microsoft officials reiterated today that they remain committed to supporting the open-source evolution of R, Revolution's open-source projects and also the commercial distributions of Revolution's R across multiple platforms, including Linux, Teradata and Hadoop.

Revolution Analytics provided an "enterprise-class' platform for developing and deploying R-based analytic solutions that can work across large data warehouses and Hadoop systems, and which integrate with enterprise systems. Revolution R customers include banks, financial services organizations, pharmaceutical companies, consulting companies, and manufacturing and technology companies.

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