Navigating the New World of Data

Posted by Colette Stallbaumer
Director, Worldwide Marketing and Operations

Just ten years ago, most business data was locked up behind big applications.  We are now entering an era when unlocking this data and its potential to drive new knowledge and insights is becoming a key success factor for many ventures.  In a world where data increases tenfold every five years and 85% of that comes from new sources, how do our existing technologies to manage and analyze data stack up?  In his keynote at the O’Reilly Strata Conference yesterday, Microsoft's Dave Campbell answered this question, highlighting the innovative work being done both at Microsoft and with members of the Apache Hadoop community to help customers unleash the value of their data by allowing more users to derive insights, combining and refining data regardless of its scale and complexity.
 
“There is an amazing amount of innovation going on throughout the ecosystem in areas like stream processing, machine learning, advanced algorithms, as well as analytic languages and tools,” Campbell says.  Microsoft is working closely with members of this ecosystem to deliver an open and flexible platform that is compatible with Hadoop and works well with leading third party tools and technologies, enabling users of non-Microsoft technologies to also benefit from running their Hadoop based solutions on Windows Server and Windows Azure.
 
We have recently reached significant milestones in this journey, including the Community Technology Preview of Hadoop based service on Windows Azure and our first series of contributions to the Apache Hadoop projects.  Working with Hortonworks, we have submitted a proposal to the Apache Software Foundation for enhancements to Hadoop to run on Windows Server and are also in the process of submitting further proposals for a JavaScript framework and a Hive ODBC Driver.  In addition, we have also been working with several leading Big Data vendors like Karmasphere, Datameer and HStreaming and are excited to see them announce support for their Big Data solutions on our Hadoop based service on Windows Server and Windows Azure.

For more details on these milestones, check out the Port25 blog, as well as Microsoft's Big Data Roadmap.  Let us know in the comments what other developments you'd like to see from Microsoft to further support Big Data customers.