Microsoft announced today that it has closed its acquisition of Revolution Analytics, the leading provider of commercial tools for the open source R programming language. The company, based in Mountain View, California, sells the Revolution R suite of tools, which make it possible to glean insights from large sets of data. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Revolution’s technology will be a boon to Microsoft’s offerings: Revolution R Open, the free, open source version of the company’s tools, is 2.5 times faster at executing a typical R benchmark compared to the standard open source R distribution. Microsoft will use the technology for a variety of big data purposes, including the addition of R to SQL Server to enable in-database analytics. In addition, Revolution’s scalable R (ScaleR) distribution will be added to Azure HDInsight and Azure Machine Learning.
As a part of the deal, Revolution CEO Dave Rich will become the general manager of advanced analytics at Microsoft.
David Smith, Revolution’s chief community officer, said in a blog post that the company will continue to develop its technology for Mac and Linux in addition to its work on Microsoft’s platforms.
It’s all a part of Microsoft’s continuing push to expand its big data offerings, something that CEO Satya Nadella has made a point of highlighting during his public appearances as a key part of Microsoft’s future strategy. As the internet of things, wearable technology and other integrated sensors become an increasing part of daily life, companies will have access to a ton of data, and it will be important for them to process and glean insights from all of it.