Microsoft acquires Revolution Analytics for an undisclosed amount of money. That company is working on commercial software for R, an open source programming language for data analysis. With the acquisition, Microsoft wants to strengthen its position in the field of ‘big data’.
Microsoft announced its acquisition of Revolution Analytics in a blog post. In it, CEO Joseph Sirosh writes that the American software giant wants to introduce more companies to R with the acquisition. According to him, more and more companies are longing for powerful analytics applications to make decisions based on their growing data sets.
Revolution Analytics develops software for the R programming language, which has two million users worldwide. This concerns three versions of the so-called Revolution R, including an open source variant and two paid versions with respectively more functions and technical support. In addition, Revolution Analytics advises companies and institutions that want to analyze large data sets.
With the acquisition, Microsoft wants to make Revolution Analytics’ analysis software available to its customers. In this way, the company hopes that more companies will create and manage large data sets more easily and cheaper. Microsoft states that various multinationals worldwide use the services of Revolution Analytics, such as banks, pharmaceuticals and technology companies.
The software giant also says it will continue to support open source development of the R programming language. In addition, Microsoft will continue to support both the open source and paid versions of Revolution R Windows and Mac. With this, Microsoft says it is building on previous policy, in which it already supported open source projects such as Hive, YARN and REEF.