JuliaHub Blog: Insights & Updates

Julia on Microsoft Azure - JuliaPro Added to Windows Data Science Virtual Machine (DSVM)

Written by JuliaHub | Feb 09, 2018

Redmond, WA – Microsoft has added JuliaPro to Windows Data Science Virtual Machine (DSVM), making it available on Microsoft Azure.

Julia is now available for the first time on the two largest cloud environments, following the December 2016 launch of Julia on Amazon Web Services.

According to Viral Shah, CEO of Julia Computing, “We are thrilled to partner with Microsoft to make JuliaPro available to Microsoft Azure users via Windows Data Science Virtual Machine (DSVM). Now Julia users in finance, engineering, manufacturing, biomedical research and other areas of data science and scientific computing can access JuliaPro in both of the top two public cloud computing environments: Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.”

This latest version of JuliaPro launched in December 2016, and includes the Julia Compiler, Debugger, Profiler, Juno Integrated Development Environment, more than 100 curated packages, data visualization and plotting. Integration with Excel, customer support and indemnity are available with JuliaPro Enterprise and JuliaFin. JuliaFin also includes Bloomberg integration, advanced time series analytics and Miletus, a custom Julia package for developing and executing complex trading strategies.

About Julia Computing and Julia

Julia Computing (JuliaComputing.com) was founded in 2015 by the co-creators of the Julia language to provide support to businesses and researchers who use Julia.

Julia is the fastest modern high performance open source computing language for data and analytics. It combines the functionality and ease of use of R, Python, Matlab, SAS and Stata with the speed of Java and C++. Julia delivers dramatic improvements in simplicity, speed, capacity and productivity.

  1. Julia is lightning fast. Julia provides speed improvements up to 1,000x for insurance model estimation, 225x for parallel supercomputing image analysis and 11x for macroeconomic modeling.

  2. Julia is easy to learn. Julia’s flexible syntax is familiar and comfortable for users of Python, R and Matlab.

  3. Julia integrates well with existing code and platforms. Users of Python, R, Matlab and other languages can easily integrate their existing code into Julia.

  4. Elegant code. Julia was built from the ground up for mathematical, scientific and statistical computing, and has advanced libraries that make coding simple and fast, and dramatically reduce the number of lines of code required – in some cases, by 90% or more.

  5. Julia solves the two language problem. Because Julia combines the ease of use and familiar syntax of Python, R and Matlab with the speed of C, C++ or Java, programmers no longer need to estimate models in one language and reproduce them in a faster production language. This saves time and reduces error and cost.

Julia users and partners include: Amazon, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, DARPA, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), MIT Lincoln Labs, Moore Foundation, Nobel Laureate Thomas J. Sargent, Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY), Brazilian National Development Bank (BNDES), BlackRock, Conning, Berkery Noyes, BestX, Path BioAnalytics, Invenia, Gambit, Augmedics, Tangent Works, Voxel8, UC Berkeley Autonomous Race Car (BARC) and many of the world's largest investment banks, asset managers, fund managers, foreign exchange analysts, insurers, hedge funds and regulators. Julia is being used to analyze images of the universe and research dark matter, drive parallel computing on supercomputers, diagnose medical conditions, provide surgeons with real-time imagery using augmented reality, analyze cancer genomes, manage 3D printers, pilot self-driving racecars, build drones, improve air safety and provide analytics for foreign exchange trading, insurance, regulatory compliance, macroeconomic modeling, sports analytics, manufacturing and much, much more.

Employers looking to hire Julia programmers in 2017 include: Apple, Amazon, Facebook, BlackRock, Ford, Oracle, Comcast, Massachusetts General Hospital, Farmers Insurance, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.