Azure has offered a Windows-based version of the HDInsight Hadoop implementation since late 2013. Now you have the option of running HDInsight in a Linux implementation on Azure as well.

I like this idea. Nobody remembers how big data platform Hadoop got its name (it was for a soft toy elephant owned by one of the creators), so why not make it a recursive acronym?

Hadoop is the dominant platform for analysing big data, and as an open source project, it can run on a variety of operating systems. Whichever OS you choose, one core principle remains the same: your new big data systems are a complement to existing databases and analytics system, not a replacement for them.

Microsoft's Analytics Platform System -- a combination of its recently-released SQL Server 2014 platform with Hadoop and Power BI Excel-based tools for drilling into large data sets -- went into general availability today.