
Microsoft acquires Revolution Analytics - CurtHagenlocher
http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2015/01/revolution-acquired.html
======
smortaz
dear HN - my team at microsoft did the Python Tools for Visual Studio project
([http://pytools.codeplex.com](http://pytools.codeplex.com)).

i would love to know if there is any interest in us providing an "R Tools for
Visual Studio" product. think Project, Edit, intellisense, Debug, Deploy,
linux debug, etc. support for R in VS.

if we did this, it would be a fork of PTVS (and free + open source of course).

thx!

~~~
dxbydt
If you get it to run on Linux or OS X, there would be no shortage of buyers,
including the company I work at. R is our primary toolset. I spend 4-5 hours
per day in R studio, & it could certainly use some beefing up - handling large
dataframes without borking, simple Charts button rather than the ggplot2
ceremony, tighter integration with hadoop... My workflow currently is - run a
bunch of Scalding jobs to mapreduce few hundred GB on hadoop, then pull the
results into R, deep dive analysis, some ML ( CART & the like ) to see if we
can influence customer behavior & improve retention & conversion. If I could
fire up R in Visual Studio & do all this, I'd definitely spring for it.

~~~
100timesthis
honest question and I really don't want to start a language war, I just want
to understand more. Why do you use R when you can use Python? I tryed R and I
hate it because for me it feels like something all patched together, without a
principles behind. Is it like that for you as well but you need all those
libraries or it's just me?

~~~
jfolson
For me, productivity. For maintaining large projects or building applications,
I'd absolutely go with Scala or Python, but I cannot be as productive in other
languages. R has performance issues, but once you know it, you can avoid them
(see the recent dplyr benchmarks ~2x faster than pandas).

~~~
100timesthis
thanks for the reply. I'm really not bothered with performance, at the end the
difference is not that much anyway, what really horrify me is how is it
programmed. I remember I wanted to do a statistical test and I could get back
the sample size or the p-value calling the same function but with different
arguments. I am not a programmer (learned doing my job) but that really
disturbed me, even now, writing this. I guess it's just me, as it seems that R
is getting more and more attention.

~~~
hadley
In my opinion the majority of code in R is extremely well suited to its
domain. That means it does not look like the python code you are used to, and
I'd recommend learning more about why R works the way it does, e.g. at
[http://adv-r.had.co.nz](http://adv-r.had.co.nz)

------
ripberge
I thought Microsoft was kind of dead too:
[http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html)

However, in the past six months they continue to become more surprising,
interesting and relevant on many fronts every day. And the pace seems to be
accelerating. I might dare say they're the most exciting "big" tech company in
2015...

~~~
wdewind
The only part of Microsoft that was ever dying was their reputation in a very
small circle of programmers (ie: us). It's a little frustrating to read such
myopic views of MS (especially from PG) on an entrepreneurial website because
there's such a huge focus on their appeal to us, and not at all on their
actual success as a business, which has been huge. And yes, as much as we
don't like him, this includes the Ballmer years. There is absolutely zero
indication that Microsoft is actually dying:

[https://www.google.com/search?q=msft&oq=msft&aqs=chrome..69i...](https://www.google.com/search?q=msft&oq=msft&aqs=chrome..69i57l2j69i60j69i61l3.402j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=91&ie=UTF-8)

~~~
jahewson
Have you been to a Microsoft Store? The employees usually outnumber the
customers. Because it's not just developers they've lost, it's consumers.
Microsoft are great at enterprise, but their consumer ambitions are going to
be hard to realise.

~~~
LLWM
Consumers are overrated. Do you really think Sysco is going to go under
because the average guy on the street doesn't know or care about them?

~~~
dlp211
Not sure if you actually mean Sysco [1] or Cisco [2]. Your analogy actually
works for both, but this being a tech site I assume you mean the latter.

[1] [http://www.sysco.com/](http://www.sysco.com/) [2]
[http://www.cisco.com/](http://www.cisco.com/)

------
euroclydon
Got me thinking about what is means for SAS, and found:

R vs SAS, why is SAS preferred by private companies?

[http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/33780/r-vs-sas-
why-...](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/33780/r-vs-sas-why-is-sas-
preferred-by-private-companies)

~~~
IndianAstronaut
Code that was written for SAS in the 80s still runs today.

~~~
michaelhoffman
Code that was written for S in the 80s still runs on R today.

~~~
RockyMcNuts
If it has any loops, almost as slowly and uselessly as it did then :)

~~~
jfolson
Not really. All packages are bytecode compiled, so unless you doing something
stupid, for loops are much faster than they used to be in R.

~~~
RockyMcNuts
good to know...was doing something in 2013 that couldn't be vectorized (lots
of portfolio simulation calcs where each element in dataframe depended on
previous elements, ie portfolio value + market return - spending based on
moving average of portfolio value) and it was pretty horrible, trying to use
Rcpp and whatnot to speed it up!

------
baldeagle
Wow, jaw droppingly unexpected news. I mean, I knew they had done a lot of
work to make r on windows work as well and parallel as r on Linux, but wow. I
wonder if Apple is liking at R studio?

Also, congrats to the Revolution Analytics team!

~~~
edraferi
Yeah, very interested to see where this leaves R Studio. They don't seem like
a direct competitor to Revolution Analytics. R Studio focuses on front end
usability and ecosystem issues. Their R Studio IDE has great market share, and
they seem to be making progress with Shiny.

TIBCO is probably more concerned about this. Their TIBCO Enterprise Runtime
for R (TERR) [1] competes directly against Revolution R Enterprise.

The Microsoft acquisition positions Revolution Analytics in a much stronger
position against TIBCO. Specifically, it will allow them to integrate with
Microsoft's BI stack (Excel, PowerPivot, SharePoint) to compete against TIBCO
SpotFire.

[1] [http://spotfire.tibco.com/discover-spotfire/what-does-
spotfi...](http://spotfire.tibco.com/discover-spotfire/what-does-spotfire-
do/predictive-analytics/tibco-enterprise-runtime-for-r-terr)

~~~
blumkvist
This will make a lot of companies uncomfortable. The undisputed leaders in
analytics, SAS and IBM, most of all.

------
edraferi
Very interesting to see. Quite unexpected, but compelling when combined with
Azure Machine Learning.

I wonder if we'll see R support integrated with Office in the future. Native R
integration with Access and Excel could be pretty cool.

~~~
abetaha
Would be very interesting to see if they also integrate it in Visual Studio,
and have a similar development environment to R Studio

------
publicfig
This is very exciting and congratulations to the Revolution Analytics team!
Even a few months or so ago, this would have been more worrisome news but I
really (possibly just by a strong desire) do believe that Microsoft is moving
in a much better direction in regards to both open source and in fully
utilizing some of their more interesting R&D efforts (especially in
development).

------
baldfat
This is a BIG step forward in further support of a language bashed on by
certain people. I switched to R two years ago and it really has been a great
fit for me and my work. Excited for Revolution Analytics and what positive
things this could mean for R.

------
cweber
I double checked my calendar to make sure that today is not April 1st.

Wow.

I mean

WOW.

Congratulations! A bright movement for both companies.

------
taylorwc
TIL that MSFT used R to develop algorithms for xbox online matchmaking.
Awesome!

------
q2
May be better match for Redhat since both seems to be similar DNA. But new
microsoft may be ok.

Microsoft seems to be enhancing their products/services in enterprise while
applying free/low-price on consumer side to compete with Apple/Google,
balancing revenue and guidance to wallstreet. Search engine for Google is
similar to Enterprise sales for Microsoft while both compete in consumer
space.

It may make MS competitive to companies in data processing space like SAS/IBM
...etc.

------
malchow
What is with the "joining" euphemism? ("Revolution Analytics is joining
Microsoft," as the blog post puts it.) Is there some sort of growing unclean
perception when a company is acquired? More often than not, these acquisitions
are intelligently motivated and, aside from producing great economic outcomes
for the company being bought, seem to me a real encomium to the founders.

~~~
dragonwriter
Its not a "growing unclean perception". Euphemisms like X is joining Y, or X
is joining the Y family, etc., have been common in corporate mergers and
acquisitions for a long time.

The audience for the euphemism is mostly customers and employees, the
impression that is sought to be created is that existing customers interests
will continue to be served -- but even better by the new, bigger, stronger
team -- and that employees are becoming part of something that includes their
existing firm (and that they aren't going to be sacrificed.)

Of course, euphemisms alone can only do a limited amount to mitigate customer
and employee concerns, but their cheap, and everyone has used pretty much the
same ones for decades.

------
Splendor
Wow! Congrats to the Revolution Analytics Team. I'm excited to see what
they're able to accomplish with Microsoft's backing.

------
barbudorojo
Recently in this post (*) I was talking about an idea, openlag, I was
suggesting a similar model for microsoft and Revolutions Analytics, It seems I
nail it.

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/qilang/BPL-
iRweRpk](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/qilang/BPL-iRweRpk)

Microsoft loves linux, What about a new name: OpenWinds?

~~~
Hasu
Interesting, I've been thinking about something like "openlag" lately. It
_seems_ like an ideal compromise between the need to make money and the desire
to open source everything.

When I've been thinking about it, I was considering a much shorter period of
time than three years, though, something more like 3-6 month periods, so your
competitive edge comes from the newest features, and anything older is Open.

I feel like it would work really well with a premium SaaS model- open source
everything that's free to everyone, and have a reserved feature set that's
only for paying customers. Paying customers get new features first, and
_eventually_ , everyone gets them.

Of course, at some point, you might shoot yourself in the foot by making
enough of the app free and open source that no one will want to pay for
whatever you've been developing lately. You also, of course, have to always
have compelling new stuff coming out to keep subscribers.

I definitely don't think it's viable for every project, or even most projects,
but "openlag" definitely seems like it has a place.

------
hye
Cannot wait for this to be paired with Azure Machine Learning. The results
will be quite interesting, methinks.

~~~
baldfat
It already has happened.

Microsoft Cloud Platform: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?x-yt-
cl=84503534&v=z-lsheCYtug...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?x-yt-
cl=84503534&v=z-lsheCYtug&x-yt-ts=1421914688#t=12)

[http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2014/11/r-on-azure-
ml.ht...](http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2014/11/r-on-azure-ml.html)

------
elliott34
This is crazy and awesome. Can't wait to see what happens.

------
binoyxj
Microsoft's new-found love for open-source products/ services and Github is
disturbing. Looks like MSFT is about to acquire Github.

------
poppow
Exciting news. Wonder what Google will do? Contribute to Julia development ;-)

~~~
sukilot
Google prefers users upload data to the cloud for Google's custom software to
analyze

~~~
IndianAstronaut
>Google's custom software to analyze

So Google can analyse user's software too.

------
mmcclellan
Weird, this almost feels like a Mandela effect for me.

~~~
smeyer
I started googling around to find a definition for "Mandela effect" and came
across some people with some rather odd views on quantum mechanics. That was
bizarre.

------
AtmaScout
Congrats! Can't wait to see what happens.

------
reiichiroh
Are the RA team ex-Microsoft?

~~~
_delirium
I don't believe so, no. The initial team was comprised mostly of academics,
since it was founded as a spinoff from academia. The current CEO & CTO are
both ex-Accenture. The scientific team members have a variety of backgrounds,
including academia and other statistics and data companies (ex-SPSS, Netezza,
etc.).

------
akashtndn
This should be interesting.

------
waterloong
Microsoft definitely has the most vocal fanboys among all the tech companies.
I cant see this being a good news from any non-Microsoft perspective.

