An interesting perspective on big data and Hadoop from a Microsoft VP in Microsoft: Hadoop ‘Cornerstone’ Of Big Data’s Future

“Microsoft is here [Hadoop Summit 2013] because we’re in this partnership with Hortonworks, with the community, deeply involved to help get Hadoop out, literally, to a billion users,” Clark said.

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This is the real democratization of “big data”, i.e., big data for the masses.