Microsoft buys Equivio to embed machine learning into Office 365

Microsoft announced the acquisition of Equivio, a provider of machine learning technology used to analyze documents for compliance and discovery. The company’s products have been used primarily in legal and regulated industries, and especially where large sets of documents need to be organized. As Rajesh Jha, Corporate Vice President, Outlook and Office 365, wrote,

Equivio’s solution applies machine learning to help solve these problems, enabling users to explore large, unstructured sets of data and quickly find what is relevant. It uses advanced text analytics to perform multi-dimensional analyses of data collections, intelligently sorting documents into themes, grouping near-duplicates, isolating unique data, and helping users quickly identify the documents they need. As part of this process, users train the system to identify documents relevant to a particular subject, such as a legal case or investigation. This iterative process is more accurate and cost effective than keyword searches and manual review of vast quantities of documents.

Equivio has penetrated the legal community, U.S. federal agencies, corporations and other organizations.

Microsoft plans to extend the use of the technology in Office 365, so that it is more broadly applicable.

Microsoft has not released the spend for the buy, but it is conjectured to be in the $150 million to $200 million range.

I’ve often wished for a smart tool to automatically organize my documents — and possibly generate better file names —  based on analysis of their contents. This has become even more of an issue as I have documents spread across Google Docs, Dropbox, and my hard drive. I’ve been expecting Google to build more into Google Drive in that regard, but so far: not much.

 

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