Azure HDInsight Overview
HDInsight is a cloud based implementation hosted in the Microsoft Azure cloud. It enables you to quickly create, expand and delete a Hadoop cluster installation as your project dictates. For organizations just beginning to see how Big Data could be leveraged to solve business problems. A HDInsight implementation gives you a flexible and quick method to prototype solutions as part of your enterprise architecture and business intelligence strategy.
Analytics with Excel
Users can leverage the data in HDInsight by leveraging the familiar environment of Excel. Data from the cloud can be combined with on-site hosted data or other data files as required by using Power Query or the MIcrosoft Hive ODBC Driver.
Further Reading
To learn general information about HDInsights see Introduction to HDInsights
Microsoft has provided a tutorial to get started using HDInsight – Start Using HDInsight
