Azure Data Factory Offers Hosted ETL

Azure Data Factory is a Microsoft-hosted service that provides data access and transformation among on-premises SQL Server and Azure data services (such as HDInsight, which handles unstructured Big Data) and simplifies access to disparate data formats. The service could be useful for extract, transform, and load (ETL) and other processes that combine structured and unstructured data for business intelligence (BI), reporting, analysis, and other purposes. The service, which became available as a preview in Oct. 2014, demonstrates a strategic direction, but currently it connects only to Azure data services and on-premises SQL Server.

ETL and Data Monitoring as a Service

Organizations routinely create ETL workflows (either with an ETL tool or custom programming) to combine data from multiple sources. For example, ETL workflows might extract data from disparate systems in an organization (such as enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management, and e-commerce systems), transform the data into a standard format, and then load the data into a data warehouse for financial and demand analysis.