Microsoft's Azure Machine Learning is and end-to-end data science and analytics solution that helps professional data scientists to prepare data, develop experiments, and deploy models in the cloud. It replaces the Azure Machine Learning Workbench.
$0
per month
Posit
Score 10.0 out of 10
N/A
Posit, formerly RStudio, is a modular data science platform, combining open source and commercial products.
The answer is quite simple: Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Workbench is the cheapest and most user friendly analytics tool I have ever seen! Unless you are running a team of data scientists, this is the tool to go. Most functions (marketing, sales, finance, supply chain, …
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.
User friendliness: This is by far the most user friendly tool I've seen in analytics. You don't need to know how to code at all! Just create a few blocks, connect a few lines and you are capable of running a boosted decision tree with a very high R squared!
Speed: Azure ML is a cloud based tool, so processing is not made with your computer, making the reliability and speed top notch!
Cost: If you don't know how to code, this is by far the cheapest machine learning tool out there. I believe it costs less than $15/month. If you know how to code, then R is free.
Connectivity: It is super easy to embed R or Python codes on Azure ML. So if you want to do more advanced stuff, or use a model that is not yet available on Azure ML, you can simply paste the code on R or Python there!
Microsoft environment: Many many companies rely on the Microsoft suite. And Azure ML connects perfectly with Excel, CSV and Access files.
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.
For someone who learns how to use the software and picks up on the "language" of R, it's very easy to use. For beginners, it can be hard and might require a course, as well as the appropriate statistical training to understand what packages to use and when
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.
It is easier to learn, it has a very cost effective license for use, it has native build and created for Azure cloud services, and that makes it perfect when compared against the alternatives. As a Microsoft tool, it has been built to contain many visual features and improved usability even for non-specialist users.
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.
Productivity: Instead of coding and recoding, Azure ML helped my organization to get to meaningful results faster;
Cost: Azure ML can save hundreds (or even thousands) of dollars for an organization, since the license costs around $15/month per seat.
Focus on insights and not on statistics: Since running a model is so easy, analysts can focus more on recommendations and insights, rather than statistical details
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).
