Expert Analysis: You Can Predict That R Will Succeed

Adoption by IBM SPSS, SAS and Information Builders can't hurt. But REvolution Computing may do for R what RedHat did for Linux

The following excerpt is from David Stodder's article in Intelligent Enterprise on March 3, 2010.

One vendor to watch in the R space is REvolution Computing. Providing software and support to statisticians, data analysts and others using R to develop models and analyze results, the company could become the "Red Hat" of the R community. As Red Hat did with Linux, REvolution Computing is quick to incorporate changes from the R project into its toolkit so that users do not have to monitor developments themselves. An important focus has been to enable developers and statisticians to use parallelism and take advantage of multiprocessor systems and networked computers.

REvolution Computing is also gathering industry strength and backing. At the conference, the company announced that C. Hadlai "Tex" Hull, one of the founders of SPSS, would be joining the company as a technical and business advisor. REvolution Computing's president and CEO is Norman Nie, who was also a co-founder of SPSS and thus is now reunited with his former colleague. The company's CTO is David Champagne, who served as principal architect and engineer for SPSS. And for R credentials, one of the foundational developers of R, Robert Gentleman, serves on the company's board. In addition to technical advice, Gentleman will help the company grow through connections in the pharmaceutical and bioengineering industry; he is a senior director of Bioinformatics at Genentech (now part of the Roche Group). Finally, REvolution Computing is bringing on board experienced software industry hands; the company announced on March 2 that Zack Urlocker, most recently executive VP of MySQL, has joined the board of directors.

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David Stodder is an independent analyst, writer and researcher focused on innovative uses of information to achieve business objectives. Along with heading up his own firm, Perceptive Information Strategies, he is a Research Fellow with Ventana Research

Link to Intelligent Enterprise article