Category Archives : Cloud Strategy

26

May

Cloud and edge computing are coming together as never before, leading to huge opportunities for developers and organizations around the world. Digital twins, mixed reality, and autonomous systems are at the core of a massive wave of innovation from which our customers already benefit.

From the outside, it’s not always apparent how this technology converges or the benefits that can be harnessed by bringing these capabilities together. This is why at Microsoft Build we talk about the possibilities this convergence creates, how customers are already benefitting, and our journey to making this technology easier to use and within reach of every developer and organization.

The possibilities of connected environments

Imagine taking any complex environment and applying the power of technology to create awe-inspiring experiences and reach new business heights that were previously unimaginable. The possibilities are endless: A retail store where the shopping experience is optimized in real-time and shelves are always stocked. A supply chain that tracks and reduces carbon emissions. A process manufacturing line that adjusts for variations in natural ingredients and automatically detects and compensates for operational bottlenecks. A city plan that simulates various growth proposals to ensure they’re making the best use of energy sources.

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26

May

“Tech companies born with an open-source mentality get it. It’s our ability to work together that makes our dreams believable, and ultimately achievable; we must learn to build on the ideas of others”—Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft

Microsoft has always been a developer-first organization, and we are striving to make our tools and platforms better to serve developers. In that spirit, Azure is designed to give developers control over their infrastructure and provide the greatest flexibility regardless of operating system, database, language, deployment tool, or methodology, and to extend those options on-premises and to the edge. Today, many of those systems are open source: Linux, Kubernetes, Spark, and Python—just some of the best-known examples. And so Azure has been built to run those technologies, either at the infrastructure as a service (IaaS) or platform as a service (PaaS) levels, through Linux running in virtual machines (VMs), or our Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) for cloud-native development, often in tandem with one of our managed services for popular open-source databases.

We are committed to open source at Microsoft. We contribute to Linux, Kubernetes, Visual Studio Code, and serving in open-source organizations like the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) or Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF). At

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25

May

The global population of developers is estimated to reach 71.5 million in 2030, an increase of 44.5 million developers from today1. Each new developer brings their ideas and innovations that they’d like to share with the world. It is our mission to empower this next generation of developers with world-class tools and cloud services that allow them to build the applications of the future.

These applications of the future will be intelligent, infused with AI to provide advanced insights. They will incorporate open-source technology and libraries from across the globe. They will be reliable under load and secure by design. And they will be built with tools that allow developers to move from idea to code to cloud, seamlessly.

We see customers on Microsoft Azure building these applications of the future today, by leveraging cloud-native technologies like containers, Kubernetes, microservices, serverless functions, and API-centric designs.

Mercedes Benz is improving the in-vehicle experience for their customers by delivering applications dynamically over the air, instead of requiring an in-person maintenance visit. PwC is helping ensure their clients are compliant with regulations using an AI-powered system that can mine and analyze documents in seconds instead of weeks. Bosch

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25

May

Java is one of the most popular programming languages, used by over seven million developers to create everything from enterprise applications to complex robots. Over the past several years we’ve seen an evolution in the Java ecosystem, with the accelerated growth of open-source tools and frameworks like Spring. Microservice architectures are becoming more prevalent, and developers are building more applications on cloud platforms using containers and managed services. The Java ecosystem is complex and running Java applications in the cloud at an enterprise scale can be challenging. Our customers are asking us to help them modernize their Java applications and run them on an enterprise-grade platform—Azure.

We’ve made substantial investments in Java to support a wide range of customer workloads, from the development of Azure Spring Cloud with VMware as a managed destination for Spring Boot applications to the acquisition of jClarity, and the creation of our Microsoft Java Engineering Group. The Microsoft Build of OpenJDK provides a new supported Java runtime option on Azure with the potential for Azure-tuned optimizations—now generally available. We now support the full range of Java EE and Jakarta EE application servers through collaborations with Red Hat, Oracle, and IBM, with newly released offers

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28

Apr

The ability to run Kubernetes anywhere, whether in the cloud or on-premises, has been a high priority for Azure customers looking to rapidly innovate, with increasing customer focus on the benefits of container-optimized workloads and operating systems, lean application modernization, easier operations, and platform resiliency.

To support this rapid evolution, we’re announcing that Microsoft has acquired Kinvolk GmbH.

Kinvolk’s founding mission statement is “to build and promote an enterprise-grade open cloud-native stack”—we think this fits perfectly with our growing customer needs and our ongoing investments in open source and Kubernetes.

Kinvolk has a rich, innovative history in open source cloud-native distributed computing, including Kubernetes, eBPF, community building, and container-optimized Linux, as well as critical early work with CoreOS (the company) on the rkt container runtime. Kinvolk ultimately went on to create Flatcar Container Linux, a popular alternative to CoreOS Container Linux, as well as the Lokomotive and Inspektor Gadget projects.

Microsoft is excited to bring the expertise of the Kinvolk team to Azure, where they will be key contributors to the engineering development of Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Azure Arc, and future projects that will expand Azure’s hybrid container platform capabilities and increase Microsoft’s upstream open source contributions in the Kubernetes and container space.

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27

Apr

Whether you’re a new student, a thriving startup, or the largest enterprise, you have financial constraints, and you need to know what you’re spending, where, and how to plan for the future. Nobody wants a surprise when it comes to the bill, and this is where Azure Cost Management and Billing comes in.

We’re always looking for ways to learn more about your challenges and how Azure Cost Management and Billing can help you better understand where you’re accruing costs in the cloud, identify and prevent bad spending patterns, and optimize costs to empower you to do more with less. Here are a few of the latest improvements and updates based on your feedback:

Get retail prices in non-USD currencies. New date picker in the cost analysis preview. What’s new in Cost Management Labs. Deploy key design principles with enterprise-scale architecture. Empowering operators on their cloud migration journey. New ways to save money with Azure. New videos and learning opportunities. Documentation updates.

Let’s dig into the details.

 

Get retail prices in non-USD currencies

In September 2020, you learned about the new Retail Prices API and how it gives

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26

Apr

Over the last year, there has been a significant uptake in digital skilling to fill the exponential rise in new tech jobs. In fact, the World Economic Forum is forecasting that nearly 150 million new tech jobs will be created in the next five years. Microsoft is committed to supporting learners interested in upskilling and building a more inclusive skills-based economy.

Today, we are announcing that Microsoft is collaborating with Coursera to bring new opportunities for skilling in Azure via three new Specializations: Azure Fundamentals, AI Fundamentals, and Data Fundamentals. Coursera is a leading learning platform, and we are delighted to bring on-demand Azure content to their roughly 80 million learners.

Fireside chat with Kim Akers, Microsoft Worldwide Learning Corporate Vice President,

and Jeff Maggioncalda, Coursera CEO

New opportunities for Azure skilling

The Azure Fundamentals Specialization gives learners the foundational understanding of Azure cloud services along with the knowledge to help build cloud solutions. Moreover, learners can expect to learn about Azure general security, network security, identity, governance, privacy, and compliance features, as well as pricing and support. This course helps learners gain a solid foundation in Azure and prepare for the Microsoft AZ-900 exam.

“Azure is just

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21

Apr

This post was co-authored by Gayle Sheppard, Corporate Vice President, Global Expansion and Transformation.

The UK Meteorological Office (Met Office) is working with Microsoft to deliver advanced supercomputing capabilities for weather and climate research, ensuring the continuation of the Met Office’s international leadership in this area.

Supercomputing is fundamental to the Met Office’s weather and climate science and services. Microsoft Azure’s supercomputing-as-a-service will enable the Met Office to leverage the best blend of dedicated and public cloud services to provide more accurate predictions to help citizens and businesses plan daily activities, better prepare for extreme weather, and address the challenges associated with climate change.

Microsoft Azure will integrate HPE Cray EX supercomputers from Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), plus a Microsoft high-performance active data archive system, and other Azure cloud technologies, along with an end-to-end managed service to deliver this market-leading supercomputing-as-a-service. The partnership will also include innovation services to support the Met Office in exploiting future technologies, such as AI, plus commercialization opportunities.

Work on the project starts immediately, with the supercomputing capability becoming operational starting July 2022. The supercomputer is built in four quadrants to optimize operational resilience for mission-critical supercomputing capability. Each quadrant will consist of an

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13

Apr

For operators, many challenges can be involved in their journey to the cloud, some more complex than others. Here, it is important to note that when it comes to operators’ path to cloud migration, there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution. Operators have unique needs for security, observability, resiliency, and performance.

As a result, Microsoft offers a level of support for operators that is far greater than simply taking existing cloud services and repackaging them. We understand that it is critically important to know exactly what operator workloads require—including what it takes to meet the demands imposed by operators as a result of their commitment to delivering fault-tolerant services to customers.

In this blog, we delve into one such example of Microsoft’s commitment to operators and to developing a hands-on product strategy born from years of research. This has led directly to solutions that we offer operators today as part of Azure of Operators.

Bringing a cellular packet core to the cloud

Several years ago, Microsoft started work on a research project aimed at determining the feasibility of implementing a cellular core network (EPC) on a hyperscale public cloud. What came from this work was a research

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08

Apr

In September 2020, we analyzed the major challenges that IT organizations face when managing current mission-critical infrastructures. Security issues, high costs, and difficulties in updating their environments were top of mind. Conversely, the move to the cloud has been helpful in addressing many of these hurdles. In fact, customers who completed the transition often cite the following benefits:

Improved security and compliance. Better performance and lower latency of mission-critical systems. Faster infrastructure implementation times. Greater agility (due to the opportunity to modernize existing systems while developing new capabilities).

Additionally, when organizations rely on the cloud to run their core business processes, they can capitalize on significant operational advantages. This is particularly true in a climate of uncertainty. That is also why the rate at which organizations continue to migrate their applications to the cloud is not slowing down, and that includes business-critical applications.

A broad range of business-critical applications

We have also observed how the spectrum of mission and business-critical applications has continued to broaden and evolve beyond traditional systems of record. We see this pattern across virtually every industry as they advance their digital transformation initiatives.

During the upcoming webinar miniseries Insights and Practices to Run

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