SQL Server 2012 has gone to general availability (GA)

SQL Server 2012 is now generally available from Microsoft.  Previously we covered the forthcoming SQL Server 2012 and its requirements.  SQL Server 2012 delivers with new capabilities for mission-critical workloads, business intelligence and hybrid IT across datacenters and public and private clouds as well. 

Some of the features include:

The latest version of SQL Server 2012 can be downloaded here.  Microsoft also has a listing of all things related to SQL Server 2012 in their Virtual Launch Event.  Content from this event is going to be available until June 30th, 2012.

Also Microsoft is announcing their second Preview of the Hadoop based service for Azure.  They have expanded the capacity of this service by 4x to accommodate high demand.  The preview provides "an elastic Hadoop Service" with more reliability through disaster recovery of the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) NameNode and advanced analytics via Hadoop projects such as Mahout.  It also is providing insights through tools like Office and Sharepoint.