Everyone knows Siri. Well, at least those who own an iPhone do. Then again that amounts to almost everyone. So I guess everyone does know Siri. A couple years ago however, we were introduced to Cortana (named after Microsoft’s Halo game character) on Windows Phone. She soon found her way onto Windows 10 devices, and is now even made available for iOS and Android devices. Think of her as something of a primitive version of Scarlett Johansson’s character in Her, if I may. She is Microsoft’s own intelligent personal assistant, and I use her almost everyday.
But what I am going to introduce you to in this post is something bigger. Much much bigger. It’s called Cortana Intelligence Suite; Microsoft’s Azure-based analytics and intelligence platform. Don’t panic just yet! D-Day hasn’t begun, nor have the machines risen, but I bet you can well imagine what Microsoft must be aspiring when they named it that.
Cortana Intelligence Suite (CIS) is a platform and process for building end-to-end advanced analytical solutions. The platform is made up of various tools and services, mainly running on top of Azure. It is not necessary that all the tools that make up CIS be used for your solution, but it is important that you follow a certain process to get it done. This way you know what you are going to do in a methodical manner, and it would be easy to choose the right tools and services from the suite to get things done.
The process that CIS solutions follow is known as Cross Industry Standard Process for Data Mining (CRISP-DM), which is a long-used time-tested means of performing data mining (which is very closely related to analytics, and is often employed to perform analytics).
For a complete overview of CIS and how it can be used, this easy-to-understand video by Buck Woody would be the ideal choice. It also details the tools and services that are part of the CIS platform. Once you are done with the video, you would probably get the gist of how Cortana fits into the business intelligence and analytics vision of Microsoft. Enjoy!
[VIDEO: Cortana Intelligence Suite – Overview by Buck Woody]
Data Maul 