Microsoft acquires Equivio for its big data crunching & Revolution Analytics for its R Language
Big data is becoming a big problem for larger corporations who are capable of collectiing huge amount of information but lack the resources to process that data to determine anything useful. Manual processing is useful but simply cannot keep up with the sheer volume of information being collected by business systems.
Microsoft Buys Equivio for an Undisclosed Sum
Equivio uses machine learning to solve problems such as these when dealing with big data. This has a value in the marketplace that Microsoft appreciates who itself also deal with increasing amounts of data as they go into cross-platform computing in a serious way. Recently Microsoft decided it was better to acquire Equivio to bring this ability in-house and went ahead with the business transaction.
Legal and Compliance Information is the Focus
Rather than looking as a general method to sift through reams of data, the Equivio software takes a closer look at the legal and compliance aspects of business management which need attention even in a constantly changing world.
Processing Unstructured Sets of Data Intelligently
Unstructured sets of data is what this company eats for breakfast. Intelligently processing data collections in a multi-dimensional way looking for near duplicate documents, running themes, unique data points, and the documents relating to the subject matter being searched on.
eDiscovery Tool Already a Big Success in Legal Circles
Each user can help to increase the intelligence of the Equivio software by training the system to identify relevant document from irrelevant documents for certain investigations or legal cases. This type of eDiscovery iterative approach ensures more accuracy with finding relevant information among the big data before a legal case enters court and is more accurate that straight keyword searches.
Equivio software is widely used in the legal profession to help locate relevant documents to busy lawyers who charge by the hour. Hundreds of law firms across the states already use the eDiscovery platform and several U.S. federal agencies as well.
Microsoft Acquires Revolution Analytics for Its Big Data R Language
Microsoft also felt the need to acquire Revolution Analytics which has its own R language to deal with advanced statistical computing analysis of big data. The company is one of the première providers of both software and services for the R language, the most widely used computer language for statistical analysis, which Microsoft use themselves to crunch data internally.
Robust Data Analysis Using R Language for Controlled Outcomes
Companies need more robust search solutions when dealing with the ever expanding amount of data available to them. Given that much of the data can be sensitive for a corporation, many feel the using the R language to develop in-house solutions to crunch the numbers is a safer way to go.
Two Million Users of R Products from Revolution Analytics
There are now over 2 million users who work with Revolution Analytics regularly including major banking institutions, consulting companies and big pharmaceutical companies too.
Azure ML Architecture To Be Used to Expand & Extend Capabilities
It is expected that Microsoft will use its successful cloud based Azure Machine Learning (ML) platform to provide a robust hosting solution to broaden the access to corporations who wish to use the R language for data analysis purposes. The company already uses the R language with its matchmaking services provided online via the Xbox Live subscriptions for gamers. Elsewhere, machine learning technology is used internally in the Office, Bing, Sales teams, Marketing and Finance departments at Microsoft. The acquisition is not yet closed.
Clearly Microsoft is taking big data serious in the software space as large and small corporations grapple with how to handle so much new data every data and how to make sense of it all.
