By Kenji Takeda, Microsoft Research

When people talk about big data, data science and streaming data from devices, it can seem pretty scary. It conjures up images of complex IT infrastructure, many different systems to be stitched together, and requiring expertise beyond most researchers’ comfort zone. You certainly need to think about what you’re trying to do, but with cloud computing you can create what you need easily through a web portal, script or program. For example, researchers at the University of Oxford have taken their machine learning prototype from the lab, processing data from smart water pumps, and are deploying it across thousands of pumps in Kenya using the cloud. The best way to find out if this will work for you is to try it out…

You can get your hands dirty by joining us at one of our free, cloud computing training courses in the UK and across Europe, custom-designed for you by Microsoft Research. Whether it's big data, machine learning, big compute (HPC), or analysing data streaming from devices for an IoT project, you’ll discover how easy it is using the open Microsoft Azure cloud platform to speed up your research.

Just sign up online:

• Monday 9th May, University College Dublin, Ireland - http://aka.ms/a4rdublin
• Wednesday 11th May, Leibniz Rechenzentrum, Munich, Germany - http://aka.ms/A4RGermany
• Friday 13th May, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands - http://aka.ms/a4r/amsterdam
• Monday 16th May, Microsoft Research Cambridge, UK - http://aka.ms/A4R/MSR-Cambridge

You can apply for up to 12 months of access to significant cloud computing resources through our Azure for Research Awards program too. At the courses you can talk to us about what makes a good proposal, and we can even help you with it. Apply by 15 June 2016 at the applications website (and every two months thereafter).

The course is specially designed for Faculty, researchers, and PhD students using any language, framework, or platform. This includes Linux, Python, R, MATLAB, Java, Hadoop, STORM, SPARK, and Microsoft technologies such as C#, F#, Microsoft .NET, Microsoft Azure SQL Database, and various Microsoft Azure services.

You will be able to access Microsoft Azure on you own laptop during the training, and will have access for evaluation purposes for up to one month after the event. You do not need to have the Microsoft Windows operating system installed on your laptop, as Microsoft Azure is accessed via Internet browser, Linux/Mac/Windows command-line and programming language APIs.

Feedback from researchers worldwide is that these courses and using the cloud have helped speed up their projects, and change how they think about computing. We hope to see you in Amsterdam, Cambridge, Dublin or Munich!