Briefs

Microsoft hopes to challenge established powers SAS and SPSS for data mining and predictive analytic bragging rights

By Stephen Swoyer, 5/7/2008, Enterprise Systems

When it comes to data mining and predictive analytics, Microsoft Corp. might not be the first company that comes to mind.

That could change, however, especially if Donald Farmer, Redmond's principal program manager for SQL Server Data Mining, has his way.

Microsoft has come a long way in the data mining and predictive analytics segment, Farmer says, and with a game-changing Excel 2007 release under its belt -- and a promising SQL Server 2008 revision in the pipeline -- Redmond hopes to challenge established powers SAS Institute Inc. and SPSS Inc. for data mining and predictive analytic bragging rights.

"[We don't] have all the functionality of something like a SAS or an SPSS, because that's just not our market," he concedes. It comes down to a difference of scale, Farmer argues: SAS and SPSS typically target larger, more expensive deployments -- typically with users well-versed in the usage of their tools. Microsoft is targeting a different kind of data mining consumer: the Excel analyst, for example, who might not have much (if any) experience -- with data mining, predictive analytics, or statistical analysis for that matter.

Last year, Microsoft released a data mining and predictive analytic add-on for its Excel 2007 product . The add-on, which is similar to Microsoft's well-known SQL Server BI Accelerator products, integrates natively with Excel 2007. It introduces a new "Data Mining" tab that exposes several pre-built functions, including forecasting, accuracy charting, cross-validation, exception highlighting, category detection, key influencers, shopping basket analysis (the last is a SQL Server 2008-only function) and many others.

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