Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio Reviews

I use Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio primarily to develop small-scale machine learning models in the UI and later deploying them to the vendor for machine learning purposes.

I find Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio advantageous because it allows integration with Titan Scratch and offers an easy-to-use drag-and-drop menu for developing machine learning models. In my experience, I haven't identified any specific features that need improvement. I appreciate its simplicity and prefer it not to become overly complicated. For more sophisticated tasks, I would turn to other solutions like DataBricks, but for simplicity and ease of use, Azure Machine Learning Studio works well for me.

In future releases, I would like to see better integration with Power BI within Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio. This full integration would enhance the overall functionality and usability of the solution, creating a seamless experience for users.

I have been using Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio for the last six years. 

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate the stability a solid ten. From my personal perspective and experience, it has been extremely stable and reliable.

As for scalability, I would rate it a six. While it meets my current needs and expectations, there is room for improvement in terms of scalability for larger or more complex projects. However, considering that Azure Machine Learning Studio is designed as a compact and versatile tool, I don't have high expectations for extensive scalability beyond its current capabilities.

In general, Microsoft is responsive to community feedback, which is positive. However, their first-line support can be quite frustrating and is often considered a disaster. Dealing with the initial support team can be time-consuming and unproductive, as they often lack knowledge about the product or the specific issue being addressed Microsoft should implement better protocols to quickly escalate issues to higher-tier support with more expertise and knowledge about the product.

Neutral

The pricing for Microsoft products can be complex due to changes and being cloud-based, so it's not straightforward. I've been familiar with it for years, but sometimes details about product licenses and distribution can be unclear. For Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio specifically, I would rate the price a six out of ten.

I would recommend Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio, depending on the problem you're trying to solve. For our organization, we've seen benefits in marketing, particularly in calculating customer lifetime value. It's useful because it doesn't require much time to develop and provides immediate business results. I would rate it an eight out of ten.

Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio is easy to use and deploy. It has an efficient CI/CD tool.

The platform’s integration with Apache could be better.  

It is a highly stable platform. I rate its stability a nine out of ten.

It is a scalable product.

The platform’s technical support services are good.

Neutral

The initial setup is easy. I rate the process an eight out of ten. We have trained machine learning models for the installation. It requires two executives for deployment and three executives for maintenance.

The platform's price is low. I rate its pricing a four out of ten.

I rate Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio a seven out of ten.

This solution can be used for data pre-processing, interactive data analysis, automated training, and pre-processing pipelines.

The solution is easy to use and has good automation capabilities in conjunction with Azure DevOps.

In the solution, there is the concept of workspaces, and there is no means to share the computing infrastructure across those workspaces. This would be something that would be helpful. Additionally, a better version for traceability functionality regarding data would be beneficial.

I have been using this solution for approximately six months.

The solution is stable.

I have found Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio scalable.

We have approximately eight people using the solution in my organization.

I have previously used Databricks. We switched to this solution because it provides better automation capabilities, easier to use external code, and allows the use of other tools, such as Docker containers.

The installation is easy. However, there is a bit more to do than with the installation of Databricks. The time it takes for the installation is approximately one day with a two-person team.

We use one engineer for the implementation and maintenance of the solution.

There is a license required for this solution.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio a seven out of ten.

My primary use is for machine learning applications.

The AutoML is helpful when you're starting to explore the problem that you're trying to solve. It helps automate some of the applications of the algorithm.

The AutoML feature is very basic and they should improve it by using a more robust algorithm. It lacks deep learning type algorithms but works great for the basic classification and regression models.

I have been using the Azure Machine Learning Studio on and off, or a few months. I have not used it consistently for a significant period of time.

From my experience over the past few months, I've found it to be pretty stable. I don't know how stable it would be if operationalized.

From my experience, I think that it's scalable.

Technical support is pretty good at answering questions, and the documentation is pretty clear to understand.

Compared to their big competitor, it's much easier to set up.

I work with a data architect who does the setup. I have not personally had to do it.

We are in the process of deciding which machine learning solution we want to use. I have been dabbling with Azure and we're deciding whether to implement it versus another cloud platform.

I haven't done any research into what features they have on their roadmap.

Overall, I think that this is a comparable product.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

I use Azure Machine Learning Studio in my project to find solutions and build prototypes. It is mainly for fund management purposes and creating tools for specific cases.

The most valuable feature of Azure Machine Learning Studio for me is its convenience. I can quickly start using it without setting up the environment or buying a lot of devices.

Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio could improve in providing more efficient and cost-effective access to its tools for companies like mine.

I have been using Azure Machine Learning Studio for almost three years.

I would rate the stability of Azure Machine Learning Studio at around seven out of ten. Occasionally, there are minor hiccups, possibly related to bandwidth or server issues, but nothing significant.

The scalability of the solution is quite good and I would rate it as an eight out of ten. While it hasn't yet missed our requirements, we haven't pushed it to its limits. We don't deal with edge cases that demand extreme scalability.

Our clients typically include large multinational or state enterprises, as well as national companies in Indonesia.

Azure's setup feels friendlier and easier compared to AWS, making it simpler to understand and use. I would rate the easiness of the setup as an eight out of ten.

Deployment typically takes a few days to a few weeks to build prototypes and get familiar with available features. It is not too short to explore challenging cases, yet not too long to maintain efficiency.

I would rate the costliness of the solution as a nine out of ten.

I would recommend Azure Machine Learning Studio to others if they have enough resources to handle it. However, it is not a plug-and-play solution; there is a learning curve that needs to be addressed.

Overall, I would rate Azure Machine Learning Studio as an eight out of ten.

We primarily use this solution for data analytics and model building.

The interface is very intuitive.

It is very well organized and the components can be utilized through drag-and-drop.

The data preparation capabilities need to be improved. Using this product, I can not prepare the data very much and this is a bottleneck in machine learning.

There are some features that are not supported, so I have to use either Python or R to accomplish these tasks.

I have been working with the Azure Machine Learning Studio for between six and seven years.

Up to this point, we have not faced much in terms of issues with stability.

Scalability-wise, we have not had to deal with any limitations. The only problem is that when certain options are not there, we have to use Python or R to handle those tasks.

We have not faced any problems so I have not spoken with technical support.

The initial setup is very straightforward. It is not difficult to do.

I feel that this is a great solution. Even for people from the business side, this is a very good product. It is so intuitive that all of the information is there. The interface takes care of the most complex part, which has to do with the modeling. 

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We initially moved to this solution because our company needed to complete a system upgrade. We had to move the Db2 data to a AS400 system. 

Their web interface is good but the on-prem site interface is outdated. This solution could be improved if they could integrate the data pipeline scheduling part for their interface. When we are scheduling, they provide only one exclusion per day in the initial scheduling. We then have to configure it through the Linux front jobs if we want a high value job. It would help us and our customers if this was possible from the initial interface itself.

I have been using this solution for a few months. 

This is a stable solution. 

We have had limited engagement with the customer support team but when we have needed their help, they were helpful. 

Positive

The infrastructure and the software configuration part was done by one of my teammates. It was completed in two working days. We did experience some issues with the board communications which extended the time to complete the setup. This was only for the DataStage installation which is one of many components of this solution.

I would advise others to identify the communication between servers and the client tools correctly as well as the user allocation for those. If you are working from a client environment and connecting to the server, it is important that the configuration is done correctly.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. 

To create quick data analytic experiments, without incurring the time and cost of spinning up servers, setting up Hadoop, etc. 

Although MLS makes it very easy to deploy the resulting machine-learning models via REST API, I primarily use MLS as a means to quickly spin up experiments and create proof of concept models.

Not widely adopted at my old workplace, I only used this to create quick proofs of concept to try to convince management of the viability of a project.

MLS allows me to set up data experiments by running through various regression and other machine learning algorithms, with different data cleaning and treatment tools. All of this can be achieved via drag and drop, and a few clicks of the mouse.

The easy drag and drop can create simple data science experiments. Low barrier to entry allows large number of candidates get started.

The graphical nature of the output makes it very easy to create PowerPoint reports as well.

Enable creating ensemble models easier, adding more machine learning algorithms.

Out of about 150-plus MLS experiments I have done, maybe two or three bugged out. Interestingly enough, those are the ones I can’t delete out of the account.

Scalability, in terms of running experiments concurrently: Good. At max, I was able to run three different experiments concurrently.

Scalability in terms of deploying models: Unknown, I never deployed on Azure.  But I would guess REST API could probably easily handle a few K worth of hits per second, since that is how Microsoft is going to get paid.

Never used it.

The only other solution beyond this would be standard tools used by data scientists, like R, Python, etc. All of these would have a fairly high barrier to entry, requiring programming experience. The main selling point of MLS is the low barrier to entry, where even tech-savvy business people can use it.

Simple. Create MLS live account (preferably paid ones), open MLS, done.

Caveat: Different organizations have different attitudes towards cloud use, especially with sensitive data. At Bridgestone, the hardest part was getting corporate approval to allow me to upload heavily treated, sensitive data to a cloud platform.

To use MLS is fairly cheap. Even the paid account is something like $20/month,  unless you are provisioning large numbers of VMs for a Hadoop cluster.

The main MS makes money with this solution is forcing the user to deploy their model on REST API, and being charged each time the API is accessed. There are several pricing tiers for the API.

If you do not use the API, then value of MLS is to create rapid experiments ($20/month). The resulting model is not exportable to use, thus you’ll have to recreate the algorithms in either R or Python, which is what I did. MLS results gave me a direction to work with, the actual work is mostly done in R and Python outside of MLS.

R and Python.

Python + Pandas + scikit-learn: 

Pros: 

• scikit-learn offers better performance for extremely large data sets
• Large-data manipulation tools
• Fairly good set of ML algorithms

Cons:

• High barrier to entry, in terms of skill and knowledge
• Fairly labor intensive to create large number of experiments

R + caret:

Pros:

• Very good amount of ML algorithms (so many it may cause paralysis from too much choice, 200-plus algorithms)
• Good performance, unless the data set is extremely large

Cons:

• High barrier to entry
• Data manipulation is a pain, you probably want to use another tool to pre-treat the data before loading it into R dataframes

For data science professionals or programmers I would rate this solution a four out of 10. A major feature is missing: creating ensemble models. This can be achieved with the tool, but it's clumsy and slow.

For marketing or business professionals I would rate it an eight out of 10. It has a low barrier to entry, and can quickly create models that can be used for proof of concept and justify further investment in a full data science or Big Data project.

R and Python, in my mind, are still the way to go for a true data science/predictive analysis project. MLS's value is the ease of use and low barrier to entry. If one is not a programmer or statistician, MLS is a good way to get a project started, create a proof of concept.