Cortana Analytics is Microsoft's way of bringing machine learning to the masses

Microsoft is announcing a new program called Cortana Analytics, which handles big data and transforms it into actionable information.

Cortana Analytics is Microsoft’s way of giving easy access to machine learning algorithms; earlier today we reported on the company’s plans to make machine learning more accessible to everyone. Cortana Analytics is part of that strategy.

The new service, which will become available in the following months with a subscription, gives access to some of Microsoft’s machine-learning tools – some of the same ones used to create Cortana, the company’s digital assistant.

It also the place that unifies and standardizes Microsoft’s continued work with machine learning and artificial intelligence. Things like security research, optical recognition, voice recognition, text analysis and so on are getting used together now. We’ve seen some of these features before, such as Project Oxford which was used to create the How Old and Twins or Not web apps.

Now, developers and business will be able to plug into these algorithms, or create their own over Microsoft’s foundation, and deploy them in their environments. For example, a hospital in New England is using Cortana Analytics to improve patient care by analyzing statistics and individual markers to determine the likelihood of re-admission and health outcomes for patients.

Microsoft is becoming a services-focused company and Cortana analytics fits in very well in this new environment. It’s also a potential future cash-cow and new revenue stream for Microsoft in the upcoming cloud and big data dominated world.

Cortana Analytics will be launching "this fall" with a monthly subscription though further info will be revealed in August.