I am attending the useR!2015 conference in Aalborg, where I gave a talk. The speaker who talked after me, works at Vesta, the Danish company which makes the wind turbines for electricity generation (they the leader of the market world-wide).

He told that they use only R. No other statistical software is allowed in the company, and what I found most interesting was his remark, which approximately went like this: “when we hire a data analysts we prefer a molecular biologist experienced in R than an engineer experienced in SPSS.”  This is very significant as most of the data analysis they do has to do with prediction of mechanical and electrical failures to schedule maintenance and minimize downtime.

RevolutionAnalytics, a company developing and supporting R for commercial use has been acquired by Microsoft and Microsoft is one of funders of a new consortium formed to further the development of R.