Big news from our Data Platform team–SQL Server 2014 ships on April 1

SQL Server 2014 will be generally available April 1

Wow – talk about technology innovations!  Hybrid scenarios spanning cloud and on-premises, in-memory transaction processing, Power BI for Office 365……

Windows Azure and SQL Server provide a continuum of capability and flexibility in deployment options for our customers – on-premises and in the cloud. Windows Azure also supports an important data workload – Windows Azure HDInsight, our Apache Hadoop-based solution in the cloud. Today, we’re announcing the general availability of Hadoop 2.2 support in Windows Azure HDInsight, which has been updated to take full advantage of the latest Hadoop 2.2 platform, including support for YARN and Stinger Phase 2.

I encourage you save the date and tune in for the event.