Microsoft gobbles up big-data firm Equivio

Vendor to integrate machine-learning technology into its Office 365 products

Microsoft has snapped up Israeli big-data start-up Equivio as it looks to beef up the analytics and machine-learning capabilities of Office 365.

The newly acquired firm – which has offices in Israel and the US – provides businesses, particularly in the legal space, with technology to help them analyse and sort data in emails and other documents.

"Traditional techniques for finding relevant documents are falling behind as the growth of data outpaces people's ability to manually process it," said Rajesh Jha, Microsoft's corporate vice president for Office 365 and Outlook.

"Equivio's solution applies machine learning to help solve these problems, enabling users to explore large, unstructured sets of data and quickly find what is relevant. It uses advanced text analytics to perform multi-dimensional analyses of data collections, intelligently sorting documents into themes, grouping near-duplicates, isolating unique data, and helping users to quickly identify the documents they need."

Users of Equivio's tech are able to "train" their systems to identify relevant and useful documents, Microsoft said, adding that the product has enjoyed success among a number of US federal agencies and hundreds of law firms and other corporate customers.

The company's technology will be used to bolster the data-analysis capability of Office 365, Jha added.

"Microsoft is serious about providing customers with tools to manage the legal and compliance requirements that are key to responsible business practices," he said."Office 365 includes robust eDiscovery and information governance capabilities today, and we will use Equivio's machine-learning technology to make these vital tools even more intelligent and easy to use in the months ahead."