Ginger Grant explains why Azure Machine Learning Workbench exists:
Microsoft is looking for Azure Machine Learning Workbench for more than a tool to use for Machine Learning analysis. It is part of a system to manage and monitor the deployment of machine learning solutions with Azure Machine Learning Model Management. The management aspects are part of the application installation. To install the Azure Machine Learning Workbench, the application download is available only by creating an account in Microsoft’s Azure environment, where a Machine Learning Model Management resource will be created as part of the install. Within this resource, you will be directed to create a virtual environment in Azure where you will be deploying and managing Machine Learning models.
This migration into management of machine learning components is part of a pattern first seen on the on-premises version of data science functionality. First Microsoft helped companies manage the deployment of R code with SQL Server 2016 which includes the ability to move R code into SQL Server. Providing this capability decreased the time it took to implement a data science solution by providing a means for the code can be deployed easily without the need for the R code to be re-written or included in another application. SQL Server 2017 expanded on this idea by allowing Python code to be deployed into SQL Server as well. With the cloud service Model Management, Microsoft is hoping to centralize the implementation so that all Machine Learning services created can be managed in one place.
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