"Big data should provide answers for business, not complexity for IT," says David Campbell, technical fellow, Microsoft. "Providing Hadoop compatibility on Windows Server and Azure dramatically lowers the barriers to setup and deployment and enables customers to pull insights from any data, any size, on-premises or in the cloud."

One of the pain points experienced by just about any organization that seeks to deploy Hadoop is the shortage of Hadoop skills among the IT staff. Engineers and developers with Hadoop chops are difficult to come by. Gartner's Adrian is quick to note that HDInsight in either flavor won't eliminate that issue, but it will allow more people in the organization to benefit from big data faster.

"The shortage of skills continues to be a major impediment to adoption," Adrian says. "Microsoft's entry does not relieve the shortage of experienced Hadoop staff, but it does amplify their ability to deliver their solutions to a broad audience when their key foundation work has been done."

"It opens the world of data outside traditional data stores to commonly used business tools in a way that will accelerate adoption by today's business analysts-but not without the infrastructure creation that will still depend on the skills of technical professionals using Hadoop technologies," he adds.