Today, Quentin Clark, corporate vice president of the Data Platform Group, announced that SQL Server 2014 has released to manufacturing and Windows Azure HDInsight supporting Hadoop 2.2 is now generally available. SQL Server 2014 delivers hybrid cloud enhancements that make it easy to extend your on-premises database environment to the cloud. HDInsight delivers incremental performance and data compression improvements while leveraging the power of YARN.

Windows Azure HDInsight is Microsoft’s 100 percent Apache Hadoop-based distribution forWindows Azure. It allows customers to dynamically provision Hadoop clusters to process data and leverage the elastic scale of Windows Azure. Customers can leverage their existing Windows Azure Blob storage or store data in the native Hadoop HDFS file system and dynamically provision Hadoop clusters to process data and leverage the elastic scale of Windows Azure.

Read the public preview announcement of Windows Azure HDInsight to learn what’s new including an order magnitude improvement to query response times (up to 40x) and data compression (up to 80%).

To get started with Windows Azure HDInsight with support for Hadoop 2.2, visit the documentation guide here.  We invite you to learn more through the following resources:

• Read Quentin Clark’s announcement blog
• Do you want to deploy Hadoop in the cloud? Try HDInsight. Read how to do this for Hadoop 2.2 here and watch this 10 part “how to” video series here.
  • Read CIO magazine’s Windows Azure HDInsight customer story spotlight
  • Read more about Microsoft’s involvement with Hadoop through Stinger and partnering with Hortonworks
  • Watch a Hortonworks and Microsoft webinar on the Hybrid Modern Data Architecture 
  • Read the HDP 2.0 for Windows Announcement
  • Hear more about Microsoft’s Hadoop offerings and strategy at Hadoop Summit EMEA and Hadoop Summit San Jose.

In addition to Windows Azure HDInsight, we also announced SQL Server 2014 is being released to manufacturing today. Customers will be able to download and purchase SQL Server 2014 when it is generally available, or subscribe to it as a virtual machine in Windows Azure on April 1, 2014.

SQL Server 2014 enables new hybrid scenarios for Windows Azure customers, including Backup to Windows Azure storage and the ability to set up a Windows Azure Virtual Machine as an AlwaysOn secondary, providing a cost-effective Cloud Disaster Recovery (DR) scenario with quick recovery time. An easy-to-use interface enables customers to automate Cloud Backup withManaged Backup to Windows Azure in SQL Server Management Studio. Managed Backup customizes a backup schedule based on database activity for maximum savings on storage and administration and minimum data loss.

We also announced that SQL Server Backup to Windows Azure Tool, a new tool that supports encrypted and compressed backups to Windows Azure for previous versions of SQL Server, will also be generally available April 1^st.

Since SQL Server 2014 will also be generally available in a Windows Azure virtual machine on April 1st, customers can get mission-critical performance and in-memory technology working in minutes in the cloud. SQL Server 2014 contains a wizard for deploying a SQL Server database to a Windows Azure Virtual Machine, helping customers to achieve business results faster.

Get ready for the new, hybrid cloud scenarios across SQL Server and Windows Azure coming on April 1st with these resources:

• Register here to be notified once SQL Server 2014 is generally available
• Learn more about SQL Server 2014 hybrid cloud scenarios
• Read the SQL Server 2014 Platform for Hybrid Cloud White Paper
• Find out how to get started with SQL Server Backup to Windows Azure

Eron Kelly

General Manager

Data Platform Group