HDInsight Roadmap

by
Andrew Snodgrass

by
Andrew Snodgrass

Andrew analyzes and writes about Microsoft's data management, business intelligence, and machine learning solutions, as well as aspects of licensing... more

Azure HDInsight is a Microsoft cloud database service based on Apache’s Hadoop open-source software framework, a popular solution for managing and analyzing unstructured data. It is a PaaS offering that closely resembles an on-premises environment, where the customer has control over the cluster configuration and component deployment. 

Product: HDInsight

Near and Long Term (2025 and beyond)

HDInsight has reached a critical point where customers should migrate away from the service. Although Microsoft has not announced HDInsight’s retirement, the company is no longer investing in HDInsight, has cancelled the next generation of the service (which was in preview), and is actively encouraging customers to migrate to a newer Microsoft solution, Fabric. (HDInsight’s stagnationis discussed in more detail in the Directions report “HDInsight Stagnates: Time to Migrate.”)

Lack of Investment

The investment in HDInsight has slowed to a trickle in recent years. Microsoft used to release a new major or minor version of the service every 12 to 18 months. However, the service has not been updated since early 2023 and there is currently only one HDInsight service version (5.1) that is supported.