AMIs are Amazon Machine Images, virtual appliance deployed on EC2. The AWS Deep Learning AMIs provide machine learning practitioners and researchers with the infrastructure and tools to accelerate deep learning in the cloud, at scale. Users can launch Amazon EC2 instances pre-installed with deep learning frameworks and interfaces such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, Apache MXNet, Chainer, Gluon, Horovod, and Keras to train sophisticated, custom AI models, experiment with new algorithms, or to learn new…
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Posit
Score 9.2 out of 10
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Posit, formerly RStudio, is a modular data science platform, combining open source and commercial products.
Amazon AMIs has been very useful for the quick setup and implementation of deep learning for data analysis which is something I have used the service for in my own research. We commonly use the service to enable students to run intensive deep learning algorithms for their assessments. This service works well in this scenario as it allows students to quickly set up a suitable environment and get started with little hassle. If you are looking to run simple, surface level deep learning algorithms (kind of contradictory statement I know) then AMI is more complicated than most will need. When it comes to teaching the basics of Machine Learning, this kind of system is unnecessary and there are other alternatives which can be used. That being said this service is a must if you are looking to run complex deep learning via the cloud.
In my humble opinion, if you are working on something related to Statistics, RStudio is your go-to tool. But if you are looking for something in Machine Learning, look out for Python. The beauty is that there are packages now by which you can write Python/SQL in R. Cross-platform functionality like such makes RStudio way ahead of its competition. A couple of chinks in RStudio armor are very small and can be considered as nagging just for the sake of argument. Other than completely based on programming language, I couldn't find significant drawbacks to using RStudio. It is one of the best free software available in the market at present.
The support is incredibly professional and helpful, and they often go out of their way to help me when something doesn't work.
The one-click publishing from RStudio Connect is absolutely amazing, and I really like the way that it deploys your exact package versions, because otherwise, you can get in a terrible mess.
Python doesn't feel quite as native as R at the moment but I have definitely deployed stuff in R and Python that works beautifully which is really nice indeed.
Python integration is newer and still can be rough, especially with when using virtual environments.
RStudio Connect pricing feels very department focused, not quite an enterprise perspective.
Some of the RStudio packages don't follow conventional development guidelines (API breaking changes with minor version numbers) which can make supporting larger projects over longer timeframes difficult.
There is no viable alternative right now. The toolset is good and the functionality is increasing with every release. It is backed by regular releases and ongoing development by the RStudio team. There is good engagement with RStudio directly when support is required. Also there's a strong and growing community of developers who provide additional support and sample code.
I think it's a quick and easy to use tool. The IDE is very intuitive and easy to adapt to. You do not need to learn a lot of things to use this tool. Any programmer and a person with knowledge or R can quick use this tool without issues.
RStudio is very available and cheap to use. It needs to be updated every once in a while, but the updates tend to be quick and they do not hinder my ability to make progress. I have not experienced any RStudio outages, and I have used the application quite a bit for a variety of statistical analyses
Since R is trendy among statisticians, you can find lots of help from the data science/ stats communities. If you need help with anything related to RStudio or R, google it or search on StackOverflow, you might easily find the solution that you are looking for.
Both of these services provide similar functionality and from my experience both are top class services which cover most of your needs. I think ultimately it comes down to what you need each service for. For example Amazon DL AMIs allows for clustering by default meaning I am able to run several clustering algorithms without a problem whereas IBM Watson Studio doesn't provide this functionality. They both provide a wide range of default packages such as Amazon providing caffe-2 and IBM providing sci-kitlearn. My main point is that both are very good services which have very similar functionality, you just need to think about the costs, suitability of features and integration with other services you are using.
RStudio was provided as the most customizable. It was also strictly the most feature-rich as far as enabling our organization to script, run, and make use of R open-source packages in our data analysis workstreams. It also provided some support for python, which was useful when we had R heavy code with some python threaded in. Overall we picked Rstudio for the features it provided for our data analysis needs and the ability to interface with our existing resources.
RStudio is very scalable as a product. The issue I have is that it doesn't necessarily fit in nicely with the mainly Microsoft environment that everybody else is using. Having RStudio for us means dedicated servers and recruiting staff who know how to manage the environment. This isn't a fault of the product at all, it's just part of the data science landscape that we all have to put up with. Having said that RStudio is absolutely great for running on low spec servers and there are loads of options to handle concurrency, memory use, etc.
Using it for data science in a very big and old company, the most positive impact, from my point of view, has been the ability of spreading data culture across the group. Shortening the path from data to value.
Still it's hard to quantify economic benefits, we are struggling and it's a great point of attention, since splitting out the contribution of the single aspects of a project (and getting the RStudio pie) is complicated.
What is sure is that, in the long run, RStudio is boosting productivity and making the process in which is embedded more efficient (cost reduction).
