Machine learning for Dynamics, Part 1: Microsoft's ML packages in SQL and R Server

They are top tech, software and internet companies; yet officials from Amazon, Baidu, Facebook, Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Tesla have all recently stated they are becoming artificial intelligence (AI) companies. And this fad is no flash in the pan. AI is sweeping across the business world because computer power (especially GPU co-processor speeds) and the big data sets to train AI networks have both reached tipping-point levels. The speed of the first and the vast sizes of the second have enabled real-world applications of this previously theoretical and academic field of study.

For Dynamics ERP and CRM users, the upshot is that those same "smarts" which allow your smartphone (or smart home device like Amazon's Alexa) to understand your speech can also be put to use in your workflows at the office. Over this three-part series, MSDynamicsWorld will feature some top experts describing recent machine learning use cases in Dynamics applications or, in this case, SQL Server and R Server environments.

A smart time sheet for more accurate billing

Steven Borg is a cofounder and strategist at Northwest Cadence in Bellevue, Wash. He says SQL Server is an ideal engine for batch processing in particular - scheduled analytics that can run in the background or overnight and don't require much input or tweaking on the part of the user.

"The nice thing is, your data is already in SQL Server, so for [companies running applications with SQL Server] to do some kind of processing, they can do it without having to shuttle a bunch of data around," Borg says. "It's fast, it's efficient, and it's easy ...