August 10, 2011 – Use for big data processing continues to mount as Microsoft announced its support for Hadoop with SQL Server and Parallel Data Warehouse.
In the SQL Server Team blog this week, Microsoft announced intentions to add support for the Hadoop framework. The new Hadoop connectors – one for SQL Server and one for PDW – will be available “soon,” Microsoft stated in the blog.
As data volume and intricacy increases, data overload is an ongoing and growing problem. In IT infrastructures, Hadoop has become an open source favorite due to its capacity to handle clusters of data in high volume data processing environments.
Its popularity for pairing with vendors is growing. The Microsoft announcement comes on the tails of a similar announcement from Dell and Cloudera last week.
“Our customers have been asking us to help store, manage, and analyze both structured and unstructured data – in particular, data stored in Hadoop environments,” the SQL Team wrote in the blog.
In the same announcement, Microsoft said that it has released a second Appliance Update for PDW, including new connectors for BI and ETL. In addition, a Dell PDW has been made available, along with consulting for architectural design and implementation.
Microsoft’s announcement validates the emergence of Hadoop into mainstream enterprise computing, says David Menninger, Vice President & Research Director, Ventana Research. Ventana’s July research on Hadoop and information management shows that more than half the organizations dealing with big data are either using (34 percent) or evaluating (19 percent) Hadoop.
Additionally, Menninger notes that Microsoft is late to the game. “Most major database and data warehouse vendors began supporting Hadoop one or two years ago, but this has become Microsoft’s style,” he says. “They do not typically innovate. Instead they attempt to dominate very large markets that have already been proven.”
Valerie Valentine is senior editor for Information Management. You can follow her on Twitter at @va1va1entine or via email at valerie.valentine@sourcemedia.com.
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