Should Microsoft be your AI and machine learning platform? ZDNet

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella keeps saying that Microsoft's Azure cloud platform makes it easier for firms to exploit machine learning (ML). But how far is this marketing message borne out by the services available on Azure? Azure's suite of machine-learning offerings is fairly comprehensive, targeting everything from companies seeking simple, on-demand services through to those looking to train their own models using in-house data scientists. Every platform-as-a-service (PaaS) machine learning-related product and service that Microsoft offers is part of the Cortana Intelligence Suite. This bundles Microsoft's analytics and ML-focused offerings with Microsoft cloud-based data stores, capable of holding the vast amount of data needed to train machine learning models.