The Microsoft SQL Server team is not the only group looking to ​bring Big Data to the masses. Datameer has a desk top version of its eponymously titled 2.0 release that is shipping for $299 and a workgroup server for $2999. Unlike the MS solution this one doesn’t use Hive as the connector to the Hadoop MapReduce interface.

This now looks like Hadoop can scale in any direction. For more details check out the Big Data blog on ZDNet:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/big-data/hadoop-comes-to-the-desktop-with-datameer-20/522?tag=mantle_skin;content