Amazon Tensor Flow vs. Microsoft R Open / Revolution R Enterprise

A well-suited scenario for using AWS Tensor Flow is when having a project with a geographically dispersed team, a client overseas and large data to use for training. AWS Tensor Flow is less appropriate when working for clients in regions where it hasn't been allowed yet for use. Since smaller clients are in regions where AWS Tensor Flow hasn't been allowed for use, and those clients traditionally don't have enough hardware, this situation deters a wider use of the tool.

Incentivized

If you are a MS shop specifically, or have more generic data requirement needs from Microsoft sourced data this will work well. If you have a lot of disparate data across a number of unique platforms/cloud systems/3rd party hosted data warehouses then this product will have issues or a lack of documentation on the net. Performance-wise this product is equal to other R platforms out there.

Incentivized

• Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) allows resizable compute capacity in the cloud, providing the necessary elasticity to provide services for both, small and medium-sized businesses.
• Tensor Flow allows us to train our models much faster than in our on-premise equipment.
• Most of the pre-trained models are easy to adapt to our clients' needs.

Incentivized

• It allows distributed algorithm runs on Hadoop HDFS cluster
• It allows using different file formats such as SAS7BAT files or complex files in tab or comma delimited making data munging easier
• It provides scalable solutions by allowing users to re-use R scripts and distributing the computing over nodes through RHadoop

• SageMaker isn't available in all regions. This is complicated for some clients overseas.
• For larger instances, when using a GPU, it takes a while to talk to a customer service representative to ask for a limit increase. Given this, it's recommendable to ask in advance for a limit increase in more expensive and larger cases; otherwise, SageMaker will set the limit to zero by default.
• Since the data has to be stored in S3 and copied to training, it doesn't allow to test and debug locally. Therefore, we have to wait a lot to check everything after every trail.

Incentivized

• Very steep learning curve... for such a quick and useful tool the learning curve is unacceptable.
• Very dangerous in the wrong hands. Because most add-ons are pre-written, you have to trust the community that malicious script is not used.

Incentivized

In general, Revolution Analytics brings a lot of value to the organization. The renewal decision would be based on return on investment in terms of quantified actionable insights that are getting generated against the cost of the product. Additionally, market brand of the tool and reputation risk in terms of possible acquisition and its impact to overall organizational analytic strategy would be considered as well.

It is good, easy to use, improvements are being made to the product and more info being shared in the community. It just needs some more time to become more integrated to other platforms and tools/data out there.

Incentivized

Generally support comes through the forums and user generated channels which are helpful, easy to access, quickly turned around and provided by knowledgeable users. However the support channels are not employees and the channels are often used as a way to learn quick difficult elements of R. Better design, users interface and tutorial options would alleviate the need for this sort of interaction.

Incentivized

Microsoft Azure is better than Amazon Tensor Flow because it provides easier and pre-built capabilities such as Anomaly Detection, Recommendation, and Ranking. AWS is better than IBM Watson ML Studio because it has direct and prebuilt clustering capabilities AWS, like IBM Watson ML Studio, has powerful built-in algorithms, providing a stronger platform when comparing it with MS Azure ML Services and Google ML Engine.

Incentivized

The two are different products for different purposes. But for someone who has little or no experience in R programming, Power BI would be better for starting with. Having said that, Microsoft R is built on R, thus allowing for customization of complex calculations not typically available otherwise.

Incentivized

• Positive: It has allowed us to work with our overseas teams without any large hardware investing.
• Positive: Pre-trained models significantly reduce the time to develop solutions for our clients.
• Negative: Since it's a relatively new tool, you have to be careful about not paying for large errors while learning to use the tool.

Incentivized

• Helped save company money versus buying other stat software

Incentivized