Microsoft R Open and Revolution R Enterprise are big data R distribution for servers, Hadoop clusters, and data warehouses. Microsoft acquired original developer Revolution Analytics in 2016.
Microsoft R is available in two editions: Microsoft R Open (formerly Revolution R Open) and Revolution R Enterprise.
N/A
SAP Predictive Analytics
Score 7.0 out of 10
N/A
SAP Predictive Analytics is, as the name would suggest, a statistical analysis and data mining platform that can be deployed with SAP HANA.
(Couldn't pick R from the list nor Python packages)
Actually, I don't see SAP Predictive Analytics stacking up against other tools, but rather complementing them. On one side why would we use something "more complex" to solve a "business as usual" problem, when you can use tools …
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.
It's a great tool to merge actual data analysis (which Lumira doesn't do that well) with visualization (which Lumira does well) - so it can be seen as Lumira for data analysts. However, a lot of the 'predictive' side is hidden/black box which can be frustrating for those analysts, so you could argue it is too complex for casual users, but too 'black box' for analysts.
It doesn't require you to have a Ph.D. to build models!
You can use it to address a very large and wide dataset without worrying about sampling.
Automation is in the product DNA. You can prepare your data, ingest it into the "Kernel", then get insights about what was found, decide to publish it and schedule scoring tasks or model refresh in the same product.
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.
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.
The documentation provides an explanation about what features are available but not necessarily what's happening behind the scenes. On the other side, the "community" has grown since the acquisition and most questions are properly addressed by SAP folks. Since the "product maintenance" mode announcement was made, there wasn't much new content published except on the Smart Predict side (which is built by the SAP Predictive Analytics team)
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.
We have typically used Spotfire for data analysis but decided to move to SAP Business Objects due to its innate connection with SAP. I found Lumira to be good for visualizations but it is not meant for data analysis. Therefore, we have introduced Predictive Analytics to see if it can fill that gap. So far, it's been far less intuitive than Spotfire to get started, and as far as I am aware so far, it does not bring many additional capabilities. I do, however, like that it utilizes the Lumira look/feel and integrates very well.
