In Chapter 1, Why Big Data, we did various comparisons between on premises and cloud-based data centers. There are many companies in the race to provide better, secure, and low cost services for small to enterprise level companies, so that they can confidently start to utilize their services. Many offer pay as you go billing, helping avoid dealing with huge multi million startup costs.

In this chapter we will explore Microsoft Azure, formerly known as Windows Azure, which is provided by Microsoft, one of the market giants. It provides various services over cloud for all types of customers. It provides Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). It supports many different programming languages, frameworks and tools, including Microsoft proprietary and third-party as well as open...