Microsoft moves ahead on cloud, data, AI fronts ZDNet

Microsoft has a tricky job in the data world. On the one hand, it has a 25-year legacy in the on-premises relational database business with SQL Server and needs to keep that lucrative business relevant and stable. On the other hand, as the company pivots toward the cloud, it needs to proffer relational OLTP, data warehouse, NoSQL, Big Data and machine learning technologies. And it need to make them credible and competitive against offerings from so many startups in the data and analytics world. And then there was Strata... Microsoft also needs to make all of this technology accessible to developers, including its core constituency of .NET developers, but also those working with Java, Node/JavaScript, Python and a slew of other programming platforms.