Azure HDInsight supports R for machine learning and new updates to Spark and Hadoop

We’ve made major investments in Azure HDInsight, the managed Hadoop-as-a-service offering from Microsoft. HDInsight can run 100 percent open-source R to do machine learning and has new updates on the latest Hadoop and Spark components from Hortonworks:

• R Server for HDInsight in Azure Data Lake provides the only 100 percent managed and scalable R solution in the cloud. This makes it easy for data scientists to use their most popular programming language for predictive modeling and machine learning to scale their analysis over any size of data by using Hadoop and Spark clusters in HDInsight.
• Spark for HDInsight in Data Lake, previously announced as a public preview, is available on the latest Apache Spark 1.6 edition. This greatly improves performance and introduces new data science functionality. With Spark for HDInsight, we offer customers a fully managed, enterprise-ready solution with a choice of compelling, interactive user experiences.
• HDInsight is available on Hortonworks Data Platform 2.4, giving customers the latest and greatest from the Apache Hadoop ecosystem.

R Server is part of a new premium offering in HDInsight. For more information about pricing, please visit the HDInsight pricing page.