which technology is better

Hi Manu,

This question is like asking "Computers v/s Electronics" at my college time (15 years ago). Talking over the same context forward, Cloud Computing is the serving side, and Data Mining is the side being served. 

It's not that Data Mining can't be done without Cloud Computing, or Cloud Computing's only application is Data Mining. They are like cake and icing - too good together.

The data mining in Cloud Computing allows organizations to centralize the management of software and data storage, with assurance of efficient, reliable and secure services for their users.

Cloud computing relies on clusters of servers, maybe remotely located, to handle tasks. Data mining is the process of extracting structured information from unstructured or semi-structured web data sources.

Assume you have a billion records from a Retail Store database. You want to find out the products that should be recommended to the customers based on their preferences.

You realize you'll create some simple Collaborative Filtering model using some third-party tool. Hey you have no more than a couple of off-the-shelf computers. What will you do?

Do some POC or hands-on at Azure Portal (Free) , create a volume using S3, use Hadoop and you're done! That's how they relate.

Both are different, and both have really great scope. Find what interests you - managing Clusters of Servers, orchestrating them versus applying Statistical and Machine Learning approaches to massive amount of data.

At Last, I would suggest ' Microsoft Cloud Computing'

-DK