Microsoft snaps up big-data player Revolution Analytics

Microsoft acquires Revolution Analytics just days after it bought big-data firm Equivio

Microsoft has announced it has completed another acquisition, taking on board Revolution Analytics for an undisclosed sum.

Founded in 2007, Revolution Analytics delivers software and services to programming language R, which is used by statisticians to develop statistical software.

Joseph Sirosh, corporate vice president of machine learning at 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."

Revolution Analytics' solutions are compatible with Hadoop systems and are designed to help companies and people benefit from big data.

David Smith, chief community officer at Revolution Analytics, said the Microsoft acquisition will not greatly affect his firm's relationship with its customers.

"For our users and customers, nothing much will change with the acquisition. We'll continue to support and develop the Revolution R family of products – including non-Windows platforms like Mac and Linuxm," he commented.

"The free Revolution R Open project will continue to enhance open source R. We'll continue to offer expert technical support for R with Revolution R Plus subscriptions from the same team of R experts. We'll continue to advance the big data and enterprise integration capabilities of Revolution R Enterprise. And we'll continue to offer expert technical training and consulting services," he added.

News of the acquisition, which was announced on Friday, comes days after Microsoft snapped up Israeli big-data start-up firm Equivio.

In 2009, IBM acquired SPSS, a firm similar to Revolution Analytics, which delivers software for statistical data.