MICROSOFT AZURE

ANNOUNCING AZURE ARC: UNLOCKING NEW HYBRID SCENARIOS

As more business operations and applications expand to include edge devices and multiple clouds, hybrid capabilities must enable apps to run seamlessly across on-premises, multi-cloud, and edge devices, while providing consistent management and security across all distributed locations. Since its origin, Azure has been built to enable seamless hybrid capabilities. In November Azure took another step forward by announcing that Azure Arc is now available in preview!

Azure Arc is a set of technologies that unlocks new hybrid scenarios for customers by bringing Azure services and management to any infrastructure. The new service promises to enable customers to:

Run Azure data services anywhere

Benefit from expanded Azure Stack offerings for any edge

Extend Azure management and security to any infrastructure

Learn more about Azure Arc here!

Introducing Azure Arc.

NEW CONTENT GENERALLY AVAILABLE FOR MICROSOFT CLOUD ADOPTION FRAMEWORK FOR AZURE

Built with a modular approach, the Cloud Adoption Framework helps organisations break down their cloud migration journey into discrete stages with clear guidance for business decision makers, cloud architects, and IT professionals to undertake their cloud journey with confidence and control, aligning business priorities and expected outcomes with technology changes and investments.

Last month Microsoft announced the general availability of new content, including Innovate and Manage stages, and new resources and assessments to help organisations wherever they are in their journey.

Click here for an overview of each stage of the Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure.

The six stages to the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure.

ANNOUNCING AZURE SYNAPSE ANALYTICS

Up until now we were expected to maintain two types of analytical systems (data warehouses and data lakes) if we wanted to keep critical insights on business health, alongside important signals on customers, products, employees, and processes. That all changed in November when Microsoft announced Azure Synapse Analytics, a limitless analytics service that brings together enterprise data warehousing and Big Data analytics. Simply put, it’s the next evolution of Azure SQL Data Warehouse.

Azure Synapse Analytics offers:

Limitless scale

Powerful insights

Unified experience

Unmatched security

According to the announcement, businesses can continue running their existing data warehouse workloads in production today with generally available features on Azure Synapse. Interested? Get started with a free Azure Synapse Analytics account now.

Azure Synapse Analytics.

AZURE ANNOUNCES AZURE ACTIVE DIRECTORY (AD) ENHANCEMENTS

At Microsoft Ignite 2019 in Orlando Microsoft announced some exciting Azure AD enhancements designed around three core principles:

Start with industry-leading security

Deliver a simple, integrated and complete identity solution

Operate in an open and interoperable ecosystem

Enhancements include things like refreshed Azure AD Identity Protection, the option to enable Multi-Factor Authentication for free, the general availability of Azure AD entitlement management, and much more. Have a read of what’s new in Azure AD here.

GITHUB ACTIONS FOR AZURE IS NOW GENERALLY AVAILABLE

GitHub Actions make it possible to create simple yet powerful workflows to automate software compilation and delivery integrated with GitHub. These actions, defined in YAML files, allow you to trigger an automated workflow process on any GitHub event, such as code commits, creation of Pull Requests or new GitHub Releases, and more. Have a read of some of the key actions available here.

FORTINET’S FORTIGATE SECURE SD-WAN NOW INTEGRATED WITH AZURE VIRTUAL WAN (vWAN)

Introducing Fortinet Secure SD-WAN integration with Azure Virtual WAN (vWAN) which promises to be an ideal solution for customers looking to secure and optimise their cloud on-ramp connectivity. According to Fortinet’s product page ‘the Fortinet Secure SD-WAN for Azure vWAN offers customers the ideal combination of automated set-up, ease of use, security, QoE and visibility across their distributed infrastructure.’

Have a watch of their video or download their solution brief for more information!

FortiGate Secure SD-WAN for Microsoft Azure Virtual WAN.

AZURE ANNOUNCES RESERVATIONS FOR SIX MORE SERVICES

With reserved capacity, you get significant discounts over your on-demand costs by committing to long-term usage of a service. In November Azure shared reserved capacity offerings for the following additional services.

Blob Storage (GPv2) and Azure Data Lake Storage (Gen2).

Azure Database for MySQL.

Azure Database for PostgreSQL.

Azure Database for MariaDB.

Azure Data Explorer.

Premium SSD Managed Disks.

Have a read of the full announcement here.

PROJECT TELEPORT PROMISES TO DECREASE AZURE CONTAINER START-UP TIME

Introducing Project Teleport – a registry transport protocol which enables container layers to be teleported from the registry directly to a container host. The project was created to decrease the start-up time of containers on the Azure cloud platform and is currently being previewed with ACR Tasks.

Interested? The team are currently looking for customers who will work closely with the ACR engineering team as they round out a public preview. Just fill in this form and away you go.

IN OTHER NEWS:

Exciting enhancements and features are coming soon to all Azure DevOps services

Kubernetes-based event-driven autoscaling (KEDA) 1.0 release

Bringing confidential computing to Kubernetes

Announcing the general availability of the new Azure HPC Cache service