Available Today: Windows Azure HDInsight Brings Hadoop Big Data to the Cloud

Posted by Amy Green
Director, Worldwide Marketing & Operations

After a successful public preview, today Microsoft released Windows Azure HDInsight, a cloud-based distribution of Apache Hadoop and a cornerstone of our strategy for helping customers realize value from big data.

Windows Azure HDInsight combines the best of Hadoop open source technology with the security, elasticity and manageability that enterprises require. We have built it to integrate with Excel and Power BI – our business intelligence offering that is part of Office 365 – allowing people to easily connect to data through HDInsight, then refine and do business analytics in a turnkey fashion. For developers, HDInsight also supports choice of languages: .NET, Java and more.

Microsoft recognizes Hadoop as an enterprise standard and we’ve invested in Hadoop, including projects like Tez, Stinger and Hive. We’re fortunate to have a strong partnership with Hortonworks, who will make HDP (Hortwonworks Data Platform) 2.0, an Apache Hadoop-based distribution for Windows Server, generally available next month.

Tomorrow at Strata + Hadoop World 2013, Microsoft’s Quentin Clark, Corporate Vice President of the Data Platform Group, will discuss how Microsoft’s broader strategy to bring big data to a billion people. You can watch his keynote live here at 9:35am (New York) tomorrow.

Check back on the blog next week when we’ll highlight HDInsight customers, like City of Barcelona and Virginia Tech, who are already using this combination of Hadoop and Windows Azure to harness the power of big data. To get the service today, go to the Windows Azure Big Data site.