Microsoft's SynapseML Will Streamline ML Development

In short: 

Microsoft announced a new component of Azure Synapse Analytics. Microsoft, called SynapseML, claims that this open source library will aid in ML development by offering "large-scale and intelligent" systems. SynapseML was known as MMLSpark during development and provides tools to simplify speech processing, domain management, text analytics, and more while creating ML models. A key component of Azure SynapseML is the scaling of AI development. Currently, it is difficult to create and manage ML fonts - even for experienced developers - by compiling code from multiple resources and managing groups which creates challenges for even the most experienced data scientists. Microsoft believes that with SynapseML, they can overcome these challenges by unifying machine learning frameworks into a single API. The platform also includes Microsoft's own algorithms and works across different languages, including Java and Python.

Why it matters:

 This announcement from Microsoft is the latest in a series of high-profile moves toward open source access. Developers using SynapseML can also access forms available on the Open Neural Network Exchange (ONNX), a collaborative framework created by Microsoft and Facebook.