It is based on COSMOS,[2] which is used to store and process data for applications such as Azure, AdCenter, Bing, MSN, Skype and Windows Live.

COSMOS features a SQL-like query engine called SCOPE upon which U-SQL was built.

Data Lake Analytics provides a distributed infrastructure that can dynamically allocate resources so that customers pay for only the services they use.

Data Lake Store supports any application that uses the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) interface.

In 2021, Microsoft announced the 2024 retirement of the original Azure Data Lake Storage, now called "Gen1".