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 is helping save lives with a system that alerts nearby drivers when a car is going the wrong way on the highway within milliseconds.

With the success our customers have experienced using cloud-native technologies on Azure, many are now trying to replicate that success in other environments. They want the best-in-class development and management experiences for their cloud-native workloads in Azure and in their on-premises environments, edge locations, and on other clouds like AWS and Google Cloud.

Azure application services: Run your apps anywhere

Today, we are announcing the preview capabilities of Azure application services to run on Kubernetes and anywhere across Azure, on-premises, AWS, and Google Cloud. Any Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF)-conformant Kubernetes cluster connected through Azure Arc is now a supported deployment target for Azure application services.

Azure’s application services are designed to work together and are highly optimized for developer productivity. These include:

• Azure App Service makes building and managing web applications and APIs easy with a fully managed platform and features like autoscaling, deployment slots, and integrated web authentication.
• Azure Functions makes event-driven programming simple, with state-of-the-art autoscaling, and triggers and bindings to integrate with other Azure services.
• Azure Logic Apps produces automated workflows for integrating apps, data, services, and backend systems with a library of more than 400 connectors.
• Azure Event Grid simplifies event-based applications with a single service for managing the routing of events from any source to any destination.
• Azure API Management provides a unified management experience and full observability across all internal and external APIs.

With these cloud-native application services, each deeply integrated with GitHub and Visual Studio Code, developers can build the application of the future on Azure today, with high velocity.

The productivity of application services with the control of Kubernetes

One of the challenges we continue to hear from customers is that despite the enhanced control and ecosystem benefits of Kubernetes, Kubernetes is difficult for developers to use directly. Developers must learn many advanced concepts and APIs, which can hurt their productivity.

With today’s announcement, developers no longer have to choose between the productivity of Azure application services and the control of Kubernetes.

How does it work? Create a new Azure Function using the normal developer workflow, use integrated features like storage queue triggers, target a Kubernetes cluster instead of an Azure region, then watch the Azure Functions pods show up in your Kubernetes monitoring dashboard alongside your other workloads. The same productive developer experiences on Azure now work on any Kubernetes cluster connected through Azure Arc. Learn more about application services running on Kubernetes. 

Run your apps anywhere with Azure Arc

As developers begin to target more environments on-premises, on the edge, or multicloud, they often need to build custom solutions for application hosting, data hosting, monitoring, security, and DevOps automation. Having to generate custom solutions that only exist due to hosting environment changes is unproductive and unreliable.

With today’s announcement, developers can save time building hybrid applications using the portable application services enabled by Azure Arc. When combined with the use of Arc-enabled data services like Azure PostgreSQL and Azure SQL, applications and their data can now run anywhere using fully managed cloud services—an industry first.

Interested in trying out the application services in Azure or through Azure Arc? Get started quickly with the new scenario-based accelerators on GitHub.

Manage apps consistently on-premises and in the cloud

To help customers manage and govern workloads across environments, we recently announced the general availability of Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes. By using the GitOps capabilities in Azure Arc, Siemens Healthineers can deploy and manage Kubernetes clusters in tens of thousands of locations to help maintain MRI scanners, CT scanners, X-ray machines, and ultrasound machines in hospitals in 70 countries across the globe. Azure Arc works with any CNCF-conformant Kubernetes cluster and provides a single pane of glass with central visibility through Azure Portal, and governance and compliance through Azure Policy.

For customers who are looking for a managed Kubernetes control plane, today we are announcing the general availability of Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) on Azure Stack HCI. With AKS on Azure Stack HCI, customers can easily deploy a Kubernetes cluster that is consistent with AKS, fully supported by Microsoft, and 100 percent compliant with the opensource ecosystem. Deploying AKS on Azure Stack HCI takes just a few clicks. The Azure Stack HCI cluster is Azure Arc-enabled out-of-the-box, providing built-in security, familiar management tools, and deep integration with Azure. Learn more about AKS on Azure Stack HCI.

It’s an exciting time to be a developer working on cloud-native technology. Watch my Microsoft Build 2021 Technical Session Build cloud-native applications that run anywhere to learn more about these announcements, and more innovations in the cloud-native space. We look forward to seeing what you build.

¹Data source: Arnal Dayaratna, PhD., IDC Analyst

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