KNIME vs Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio comparison

KNIME is an open-source analytics software used for creating data science that is built on a GUI based workflow, eliminating the need to know code. The solution has an inherent modular workflow approach that documents and stores the analysis process in the same order it was conceived and implemented, while ensuring that intermediate results are always available. 

KNIME supports Windows, Linux, and Mac operating systems and is suitable for enterprises of all different sizes. With KNIME, you can perform functions ranging from basic I/O to data manipulations, transformations and data mining. It consolidates all the functions of the entire process into a single workflow. The solution covers all main data wrangling and machine learning techniques, and is based on visual programming.

KNIME Features

KNIME has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

• Scalability through data handling (intelligent automatic caching of data in the background while maximizing throughput performance)
• High extensibility via a well-defined API for plugin extensions
• Intuitive user interface
• Import/export of workflows
• Parallel execution on multi-core systems
• Command line version for "headless" batch executions
• Activity dashboard
• Reporting & statistics
• Third-party integrations
• Workflow management
• Local automation
• Metanode linking
• Tool blending
• Big Data extensions

KNIME Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing KNIME. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

• Integrated Deployment: KNIME’s integrated deployment moves both the selected model, and the entire data model preparation process into production simply and automatically, allowing for continuous optimization in production and also saving time because it eliminates error.

• Elastic and Hybrid Execution: KNIME’s elastic and hybrid executions helps you reduce costs while covering periods of high demand, dynamically.

• Metadata Mapping: KNIME enables complete metadata mapping of all aspects of your workflow. In addition, KNIME offers blueprint workflows for documenting the nodes, data sources, and libraries used, as well as runtime information.

• Guided Analytics: KNIME’s guided analytics applications can be customized based on reusable components.

• Powerful analytics, local automation, and workflow difference: KNIME uses advanced predictive and machine learning algorithms to provide you with the analytics you need. In combination with powerful analytics, KNIME’s automation capabilities and workflow difference prepare your organization with the tools you need to make better business decisions.

• Supports enterprise-wide data science practices: The deployment and management functionalities of KNIME make it easy to productionize data science applications and services, and deliver usable, reliable, and reproducible insights for the business.

• Helps you leverage insights gained from your data: Using KNIME ensures the data science process immediately reflects changing requirements or new insights.

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the KNIME solution.

An Emeritus Professor at a university says, “It can read many different file formats. It can very easily tidy up your data, deleting blank rows, and deleting rows where certain columns are missing. It allows you to make lots of changes internally, which you do using JavaScript to put in the conditional. It also has very good fundamental machine learning. It has decision trees, linear regression, and neural nets. It has a lot of text mining facilities as well. It's fairly fully-featured.”

Benedikt S., CEO at SMH - Schwaiger Management Holding GmbH, explains, “All of the features related to the ETL are fantastic. That includes the connectors to other programs, databases, and the meta node function. Technical support has been extremely responsive so far. The solution has a very strong and supportive community that shares information and helps each other troubleshoot. The solution is very stable. The initial setup is pretty simple and straightforward.”

Piotr Ś., Test Engineer at ProData Consult, says, “What I like the most is that it works almost out of the box with Random Forest and other Forest nodes.”

Azure Machine Learning is a cloud predictive analytics service that makes it possible to quickly create and deploy predictive models as analytics solutions.

It has everything you need to create complete predictive analytics solutions in the cloud, from a large algorithm library, to a studio for building models, to an easy way to deploy your model as a web service. Quickly create, test, operationalize, and manage predictive models.

Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Will Help You:

• Rapidly build and train models
• Operationalize at scale
• Deliver responsible solutions
• Innovate on a more secure hybrid platform

With Microsoft Azure Machine Learning You Can:

• Prepare data: Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio offers data labeling, data preparation, and datasets.
• Build and train models: Includes notebooks, Visual Studio Code and Github, Automated ML, Compute instance, a drag-and-drop designer, open-source libraries and frameworks, customizable dashboards, and experiments
• Validate and deploy: Manage endpoints, automate machine learning workflows (pipeline CI/CD), optimize models, access pre-built container images, share and track models and data, train and deploy models across multi-cloud and on-premises.
• Manage and monitor: Track, log, and analyze data, models, and resources; Detect drift and maintain model accuracy; Trace ML artifacts for compliance; Apply quota management and automatic shutdown; Leverage built-in and custom policies for compliance management; Utilize continuous monitoring with Azure Security Center.

Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Features:

• Easy & flexible building interface: Execute your machine learning development through the Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio using drag-and-drop components that minimize the code development and straightforward configuration of properties. By being so flexible, the solution also helps build, test ,and generate advanced analytics based on the data.
• Wide range of supported algorithms: Configuration is simple and easy because Microsoft Azure ML offers readily available well-known algorithms. There is also no limit in importing training data, and the solution enables you to fine-tune your data easily, saving money and time and helping you generate more revenue.
• Easy implementation of web services: Simply drag and drop your data sets and algorithms, and link them together to implement web services. It only requires one click to create and publish the web service, which can be used from any device by passing valid credentials.
• Great documentation: Microsoft Azure provides full stacks of documentation, such as tutorials, quick starts, references, and many other resources that help you understand how to easily build, manage, deploy, and access machine learning solutions effectively.

Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Benefits:

• It is fully integrated with Python and R SDKs.
• It has an updated drag-and-drop interface, generally known as Azure Machine Learning Designer.
• It supports MLPipelines, where you can build flexible and modular pipelines to automate workflows.
• It supports multiple model formats depending upon the job type.
• It has automated model training and hyperparameter tuning with code-first and no-code options.
• It supports data labeling projects.

Reviews from Real Users:

"The ability to do the templating and be able to transfer it so that I can easily do multiple types of models and data mining is a valuable aspect of this solution. You only have to set up the flows, the templates, and the data once and then you can make modifications and test different segmentations throughout.” - Channing S.l, Owner at Channing Stowell Associates

"The most valuable feature is the knowledge bank, which allows us to ask questions and the AI will automatically pull the pre-prescribed responses.” - Chris P., Tech Lead at a tech services company

"The UI is very user-friendly and the AI is easy to use.” - Mikayil B., CRM Consultant at a computer software company

"The solution is very fast and simple for a data science solution.” - Omar A., Big Data & Cloud Manager at a tech services company