Even over the holidays, Microsoft continued to ramp up its open source efforts, focusing on Windows Azure and then jumping into improvements and billing issues for its SQL Azure Database. The initial offering of the Windows Azure software development kit (SDK) has also excited many developers, as it includes language libraries for Node.JS.
Along with those open source tidbits, Microsoft has also been working on the delivery of an Apache Hadoop-based service for Azure which provides big data functionality. Developers will be eager to use the service in conjunction with frameworks and languages they are already familiar with.