“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

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

Over the past year, it’s become clear that businesses navigating these unprecedented times require a new level of agility. Core to this agility is achieving a level of software development excellence that was once thought unimaginable. When it comes to empowering all developers with limitless scale, choice, and possibilities, Microsoft Azure has their back.

Our commitment to developers is to make Azure the best cloud for developing intelligent applications that harness the power of data and AI. At Microsoft Build, we are announcing several exciting new capabilities and offers that make it easy and cost-effective for developers to get started with Azure data and AI services.

Innovate with Azure database services

We are announcing several new capabilities that empower developers to innovate with Azure’s database services. Azure SQL Database’s ledger capability, in preview, provides cryptographic verification for sensitive records. Customers like British Petroleum are already benefiting from this exciting feature. Azure Synapse Link for Microsoft Dataverse provides immediate insights from Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform applications, while Microsoft Power BI streaming dataflows remove any bottleneck from signals to insights. There are also several updates to Azure Cosmos DB to help developers build and modernize high-performance applications at any scale,

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

I’m announcing that Azure has achieved adherence to the EU Cloud Code of Conduct (EU Cloud CoC), developed for cloud providers to align with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The EU Cloud CoC is the first GDPR code of conduct that has received the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) positive opinion, which was followed by final approval led by the Belgian Data Protection Authority. The EU Cloud CoC also marks the 100th compliance offering for Azure, more than any other cloud provider, providing customers a high level of assurance through controls, evidence, and verification.

The EU Cloud CoC serves as a basis for implementing the requirements of Article 28 of the GDPR for cloud providers acting as business-to-business processors under the GDPR. Because the EU Cloud CoC is approved by the EDPB, Azure customers can use Azure’s adherence to help demonstrate their own GDPR compliance, as well as cite it as a risk mitigator in a GDPR Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA). Article 40 of the GDPR specifically encourages the creation of codes of conduct, so as “to contribute to the proper application of the regulation.” SCOPE Europe acts as the independent monitoring body of the EU Cloud CoC.

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This post was co-authored by Rohit Tatachar, Senior Program Manager.

With the ever-increasing adoption of cloud-based solutions, and the incredibly complex make-up of the application architectures; the ability to effectively manage, orchestrate, and monitor the scenarios for search, security, and operations are becoming very critical for the success of the businesses.

As part of Microsoft Azure’s commitment to empowering customers to migrate and modernize their applications and run in the cloud, we work with partners to achieve this vision. Today, we are announcing the preview release of the Elastic offering on Azure. We worked closely with Elastic, the company behind Elastic Search, Kibana and Logstash, which provides observability, search, and security tools for users to monitor and understand the health and performance of their applications across their cloud and on-premises environments.

Customers use Elastic Search in all industries, applying the search and monitoring functionality across their VM resources, machine data, and more. They use Elastic to retrieve service logs, metrics, and visualize the data in Kibana for better decision making.

Watch the video below to check out an overview of Elastic on Azure.

Configuring the Elastic stack on Azure can be a time-consuming process, which requires the knowledge and

Over the past year, Microsoft has teamed with Ball Aerospace to develop the prototype for the Commercially Augmented Space Inter Networked Operations (CASINO) Program Office, facilitated by the Defense Innovation Unit, demonstrating agile cloud processing capabilities in support of the United States Space Force.

The rising number of satellites proliferating in low earth orbit (LEO) presents a new data challenge for the ground segment of missions—a segment that is often overlooked. For increasingly distributed mission environments, Microsoft Azure delivers the processing power and analysis necessary for these large datasets.

The CASINO Program Office demonstrated fast, flexible, and extensible commercial capabilities for ground processing in support of defense missions. The project also confirmed the potential to transform the analysis of space data across a wide array of industries, including agriculture, ecological study, sustainability, and disaster response.

Microsoft-Ball Aerospace team demonstrates a new method of space analytics

This project represents a huge leap forward in reducing the time to actionable insight—if you are on the ground in a tactical edge vehicle or located at a command center, users can obtain necessary information accurately, quickly, and securely.

To execute the demonstrations, the team transmitted simulated overhead persistent infrared (OPIR) data through

Microsoft is participating in SUSECON Digital 2021 to bring the latest technical integrations and support to SUSE Linux users. In the three-day event, Microsoft will participate in several activities from keynotes and demo sessions to booths.

We will share the latest innovation that enables mission-critical SUSE workloads to migrate and operate in Azure during the event. We will cover the latest advancement of SAP on Azure with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, enabling high-performance computing for specialized workloads, the latest feature updates with SQL on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, running SUSE workloads in hybrid with Azure Arc, and automating management services with Azure Automanage.

On the main stage, Arpan Shah, our General Manager of Azure Infrastructure and Edge, will join Dr. Thomas Di Giacomo, Chief Technology and Product Officer of SUSE, for a keynote session, “Bridging mission-critical workloads across hybrid clouds with SUSE on Azure,” to discuss the latest innovations with SUSE. And we will also be featuring Kate Goldenring, our software engineer and contributor of Project Akri, in the edge world keynote to talk about the latest development of the connected edge with Kubernetes. 

Bridge workloads across hybrid clouds

Here’s a preview of what you will hear from us:

In

Azure Static Web Apps was first announced in preview in May 2020 and today we are happy to announce the general availability of Azure Static Web Apps, including a free plan for easy product exploration and a standard plan for advanced capabilities supported by an enterprise Service Level Agreement (SLA). The Azure Static Web Apps hosting service aligns with the growing demand from consumers and businesses to establish a web presence with global reach and minimal effort.

Modern web app design patterns leverage microservices best practices for performance, agility, and extensibility. Azure Static Web Apps is a turnkey service for these modern full-stack web apps with pre-built and pre-rendered static front-ends, and serverless API backends. Develop with popular front-end frameworks or static site generators, quickly build and test your apps locally, and deploy with a simple check-in. This enables you to focus on your app, while Azure takes care of the deployment and infrastructure.

With Azure Static Web Apps you can take advantage of features designed for high productivity:

Globally distributed content for production apps Tailored CI/CD workflows from code to cloud Auto-provisioned preview environments Custom domain configuration and free SSL certificates Built-in access to a variety of

Azure Health Bot empowers developers in healthcare organizations to build and deploy artificial intelligence (AI)-powered, compliant, conversational healthcare experiences at scale. It combines built-in medical intelligence with natural language capabilities to understand clinical terminology and can be easily customized to support clinical and operational use cases. The service enables healthcare organizations to comply with industry requirements, including HIPAA and HITRUST. For example, Trinity Health, one of the largest healthcare systems in the U.S., caring for more than 30 million people across 22 states, has effectively utilized Azure Health Bot to make it easier for patients to quickly connect to the care they need.

Today, we are bringing Azure Health Bot to eight new regions:

West U.S. 2 East U.S. 2 South Central U.S. UK South North Europe Southeast Asia Australia East India Central

In response to the surge of COVID-19 cases in India, we are also adding India Central to support the pandemic response efforts in the region. In addition to East U.S. and West Europe, these new regions bring the general availability of Azure Health Bot to a total of 10 regions across three continents.

Our customers have been using Azure Health Bot to drive engagement