Most modern applications are built using events – whether it is reacting to changes coming from IoT devices, responding to user clicks on mobile apps, or initiating business processes from customer requests. With the growth of event-based programming, there is an increased focus on serverless platforms, like Azure Functions, a serverless compute engine, and Azure Logic Apps, a serverless workflow orchestration engine. Both services enable you to focus on your application without worrying about any infrastructure, provisioning, or scaling.

Today, I am excited to announce that we are making event-based and serverless applications even easier to build on Azure. Azure Event Grid is a fully-managed event routing service and the first of its kind. Azure Event Grid greatly simplifies the development of event-based applications and simplifies the creation of serverless workflows. Using a single service, Azure Event Grid manages all routing of events from any source, to any destination, for any application.

Azure Event Grid is an innovative offering that makes an event a first-class object in Azure. With Azure Event Grid, you can subscribe to any event that is happening across your Azure resources and react using serverless platforms like Functions or Logic Apps. In addition to having built-in publishing support for events with services like Blob Storage and Resource Groups, Event Grid provides flexibility and allows you to create your own custom events to publish directly to the service. In addition to having a wide range of Azure services with built-in handlers for events, like Functions, Logic Apps, and Azure Automation, Event Grid allows flexibility in handling events, supporting custom web hooks to publish events to any service, even 3rd-party services outside of Azure. This flexibility creates endless application options and makes Azure Event Grid a truly unique service in the public cloud.

Here is how it works:

Here are some additional details of this new Azure service:

Events as first-class objects with intelligent filtering: Azure Event Grid enables direct event filtering using event type, prefix or suffix, so your application will only need to receive the events you care about. Whether you want to handle built-in Azure events, like a file being added to storage, or you want to produce your own custom events and event handlers, Event Grid enables this through the same underlying model. Thus, no matter the service or the use case, the intelligent routing and filtering capabilities apply to every event scenario and ensure that your apps can focus on the core business logic instead of worrying about routing events.

Azure Event Grid enables direct event filtering using event type, prefix or suffix, so your application will only need to receive the events you care about. Whether you want to handle built-in Azure events, like a file being added to storage, or you want to produce your own custom events and event handlers, Event Grid enables this through the same underlying model. Thus, no matter the service or the use case, the intelligent routing and filtering capabilities apply to every event scenario and ensure that your apps can focus on the core business logic instead of worrying about routing events. Built to scale: Azure Event Grid is designed to be highly available and to handle massive scale dynamically, ensuring consistent performance and reliability for your critical services.

Azure Event Grid is designed to be highly available and to handle massive scale dynamically, ensuring consistent performance and reliability for your critical services. Opens new serverless possibilities: By allowing serverless endpoints to react to new event sources, Azure Event Grid enables event-based scenarios to span new services with ease, increasing the possibilities for your serverless applications. Both code-focused applications in Functions and visual workflow applications in Logic Apps benefit from Azure Event Grid.

By allowing serverless endpoints to react to new event sources, Azure Event Grid enables event-based scenarios to span new services with ease, increasing the possibilities for your serverless applications. Both code-focused applications in Functions and visual workflow applications in Logic Apps benefit from Azure Event Grid. Lowers barriers to ops automation: The same unified event management interface enables simpler operational and security automation, including easier policy enforcement with built-in support for Azure Automation to react to VM creations or infrastructure changes.

Today, Azure Event Grid has built-in integration with the following services:

We are working to deliver many more event sources and destinations later this year, including Azure Active Directory, API Management, IoT Hub, Service Bus, Azure Data Lake Store, Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Data Factory, and Storage Queues.

Azure Event Grid has a pay-per-event pricing model, so you only pay for what you use. Additionally, to help you get started quickly, the first 100,000 operations per month are free. Beyond 100,000 per month, pricing is $0.30 per million operations (per-operation) during the preview. More details can be found on the pricing page.

Azure Event Grid completes the missing half of serverless applications. It simplifies event routing and event handling with unparalleled flexibility. I am excited about the endless possibilities!

Go ahead and give it a try. I can’t wait to see what you build. To learn more try the quick start.

See ya around,

Corey