• by Tyler Loechner  @mp_tyler, January 23, 2015

Microsoft on Friday made a splash in the big data space, announcing it has acquired Revolution Analytics, a software firm for open-source R data analysis and modeling.

“R [is] the world’s most widely used programming language for statistical computing and predictive analytics,” asserted Joseph Sirosh, corporate vice president of machine learning at Microsoft in a blog post announcing the acquisition. “We are making this acquisition to help more companies use the power of R and data science to unlock big data insights with advanced analytics.”

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

David Smith, chief community officer of Revolution Analytics, wrote in his own blog post that Microsoft has been a “big user or R." For example, Microsoft used the language to develop the match-making algorithms used by Xbox online.

Smith wrote that Revolution Analytics would continue to develop and support its Revolution R suite of products, including those geared for non-Windows platforms. 

Per Sirosh, the acquisition will help Microsoft consumers use advanced analytics within data platforms and via Microsoft Azure. “I firmly believe that we are at the threshold of a revolution in information technology driven by the use of statistics and scientific analyses on big data,” wrote Sirosh.