I’ve already committed a detailed blog post about that some time ago, so I’m not going to repeat myself - if you’re interested in Apache Hadoop (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Hadoop) implementation “by Microsoft”, you should check their latest announcements (but don’t get too excited, it’s still in CTP phase) - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2012/10/24/getting-started-with-windows-azure-hdinsight-service.aspx Yes, you’ve got it right - HDInsight is dedicated for Windows Azure, BUT as you can find here (http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/solutions-technologies/business-intelligence/big-data.…