Microsoft brings a “data culture” to the Internet of Things

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was in San Francisco today to talk about data and Microsoft's data platform. Nadella repeatedly spoke of Microsoft's "data culture"—using data and analytics to enable employees to get the information they need to understand their work, answer questions, and make decisions. At the event, he celebrated the recent launch of SQL Server 2014 and announced a pair of other products: a preview of Azure Intelligent Systems Service and general availability of Analytics Platform System.

SQL Server 2014 has been available to developers and others for a few weeks. Its headline feature is broad support for in-memory databases with an engine previously codenamed "Hekaton." As one would expect, in-memory databases are substantially faster than ones stored on-disk. The in-memory database engine is limited in terms of the programmatic features it offers, but when it can be used, it can make operations 10 to 30 times faster.

Microsoft said that SQL Server 2014 has been developed in a different way from prior versions of the database server. It was described as "born in the cloud," developed for Azure and the cloud first. It includes a range of Azure-related features, too, such as backups to Azure.

Analytics Platform System combines SQL Server 2012 Parallel Data Warehouse with HDInsight, Microsoft's Hadoop-powered Map-Reduce system. APS will be sold as appliances, combining hardware (from Dell, HP, or Quanta) with the relevant software. APS is meant to provide a one-stop shop for "Big Data" needs, allowing organizations to combine both structured, relational data, and semi-structured Hadoop data with querying that spans both.

Azure Intelligent Systems Service is a cloud service that's designed to slurp in data generated from the Internet of Things—the increasingly ubiquitous devices and sensors—and capture it to let it be processed and used in meaningful ways with tools such as HDInsight and Power BI. ISS is available as a limited preview that interested companies can request access to.