Microsoft joins the Hadoop movement

Mary-Jo Foley reports in her blog “All About Microsoft“:

Microsoft is going to be working with Hadoop core contributors from Yahoo Hadoop spinoff Hortonworks. Microsoft and Hortonworks are readying a CTP test build of their Hadoop-based service for Windows Azure for delivery before the end of calendar 2011 and a CTP of the Hadoop-based distribution for Windows Server some time in 2012. The new stacks will work with Microsoft’s business-intelligence tools, including Excel, PowerPivot and PowerView (the new data-analysis technology that is part of SQL Server 2012 and was formerly known by its codename “Crescent“).

Microsoft will make its contributions available to the Hadoop open-source community for possible inclusion in the core Hadoop platform to insure compatibility in the Apache codebase and trunk. Microsoft officials are not making any commitments as to when a final version of the Hadoop distributions for Windows Server or Windows Azure will be available.

Enjoy the ride!