Earlier this year, we made a commitment to shift to 100 percent renewable energy supply in our buildings and datacenters by 2025. On this journey, we recognize that how we track our progress is just as important as how we get there. Today, we are announcing that Microsoft will be the first hyperscale cloud provider … Read more Achieving 100 percent renewable energy with 24/7 monitoring in Microsoft Sweden
A need for hybrid and multicloud strategies for financial services The financial services industry is a dynamic space that is constantly testing and pushing novel use cases of information technology. Many of its members must balance immense demands—from the pressures to unlock continuous innovation in a landscape with cloud-native entrants, to responding to unexpected surges … Read more Hybrid and multicloud strategies for financial services organizations
It is imperative to monitor the health of your virtual machine. But how much time do you spend reviewing each metric and alert to monitor the health of a virtual machine? We are announcing the preview of Azure Monitor for virtual machines guest health feature that monitors the health of your virtual machines and fires … Read more Guest health feature in Azure Monitor for virtual machines
If you have opted for Azure Database for PostgreSQL server, you are probably looking for a fully managed, intelligent, and flexible cloud database service that enables you to focus on building applications while offloading critical management tasks such as availability, scalability, and data protection to the service provider. However, some of these tasks—backup being a … Read more Azure Backup for Azure PostgreSQL long-term retention in preview
Lower your deployment cost, while improving client performance with Server Message Block (SMB) Multichannel on premium tier. Today, we are announcing the preview of Azure Files SMB Multichannel on premium tier. SMB 3.0 introduced the SMB Multichannel technology in Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 client. This feature allows SMB 3.x clients to establish multiple … Read more Boost your client performance with Azure Files SMB Multichannel
Coinciding with this week’s Kubecon and Open Azure Day virtual events, today we’re announcing the general availability of Azure Hybrid Benefit functionality for Linux customers, allowing you to bring both your on-premises Windows Server and SQL Server licenses, as well as Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) subscriptions to Azure. … Read more Azure Hybrid Benefit now generally available for Linux
Welcome to KubeCon North America! It seems only yesterday that we were together in San Diego. Though we’re farther apart physically this year, the Kubernetes community continues to go strong. Here in Azure, we’re thrilled to have seen how both our open-source efforts as well as the Azure Kubernetes Service have enabled people and companies like … Read more Empowering developer velocity and efficiency with Kubernetes
Customers around the world rely on Microsoft Azure to drive innovations related to our environment, public health, energy sustainability, weather modeling, economic growth, and more. Finding solutions to these important challenges requires huge amounts of focused computing power. Customers are increasingly finding the best way to access such high-performance computing (HPC) is through the agility, … Read more Azure high-performance computing at Supercomputing 2020
“Microsoft’s global network connects over 60 Azure regions, over 220 Azure data centers, over 170 edge sites, and spans the globe with more than 165,000 miles of terrestrial and subsea fiber. The global network connects to the rest of the internet via peering at our strategically placed edge points of presence (PoPs) around the world. … Read more Advancing global network reliability through intelligent software—part 2 of 2
As urbanization continues to take hold and cities face challenges to become more sustainable and livable, urban planning and operations strategies must adapt. The current pandemic has changed the way we live, accelerating cities’ future vision as a necessity of the present and what it means to live in a connected and resilient urban environment. … Read more Connecting urban environments with IoT and Digital Twins
The Linux and open-source landscapes are changing rapidly. With so many companies embracing remote work and operations this year, we’re seeing more organizations running large-scale, mission-critical Linux and open-source workloads than ever before. IT teams need technical resources that can keep up—now. Even organizations that had already begun moving to the cloud are now finding … Read more Open Azure Day: A VIP Linux and OSS speaker line-up in one event
In May, we announced a groundbreaking partnership with Redis Labs to bring their Redis Enterprise software to Azure as a part of Azure Cache for Redis. We were humbled by the level of excitement and interest we received. We are announcing that you can now use Redis to tackle new challenges while making your caches … Read more Meeting developer needs with powerful new features in Azure Cache for Redis
This post was co-authored by Adam Stuart, Technical Specialist, Azure Networking Custom DNS, DNS proxy, and FQDN filtering in network rules (for non-HTTP/S and non-MSSQL protocols) in Azure Firewall are now generally available. In this blog, we also share an example use-case on using DNS proxy with Private Link. Azure Firewall is a cloud-native firewall as … Read more New enhanced DNS features in Azure Firewall—now generally available
“Microsoft’s global network connects over 60 Azure regions, over 220 Azure data centers, over 170 edge sites, and spans the globe with more than 165,000 miles of terrestrial and subsea fiber. The global network connects to the rest of the internet via peering at our strategically placed edge points of presence (PoPs) around the world. … Read more Advancing global network reliability through intelligent software—part 1 of 2
In June 2020, we announced general availability of Azure general purpose and memory optimized Virtual Machines based on the 2nd generation Intel Xeon Platinum 8272CL (Cascade Lake) to deliver up to ~20 percent CPU performance improvement compared to their predecessors, the Dv3 and Ev3 VM, depending on the workload. Today, we are expanding our SAP HANA … Read more Reduce costs with new memory-optimized Azure Virtual Machines certified for SAP HANA
Microsoft Azure is a key enabler of the digital transformation journey of our customers today. Customers are using Azure to spur business innovation and realizing how running in Azure makes them more resilient, more agile, and more efficient. They are looking to migrate more and more of their existing portfolio of applications to Azure to … Read more At-scale migration automation support with Azure Migrate and Azure PowerShell
October 31 is World Cities Day, established to educate the public on issues of concern, to mobilize political will and resources to address global problems, and to celebrate and reinforce achievements of humanity. This year’s theme ‘Better City, Better Life: Valuing Our Communities and Cities’ is expected to greatly promote the international community’s interest in … Read more World Cities Day 2020: Committing to sustainable urban environments
Embracing digital transformation in Industrial IoT requires companies to rethink and shift business models and operations. Doing so, however, has become more difficult in the past six months due to production slowdowns, restrictions on employee movement with social distancing, and rapidly shifting market demands. Yet for many companies, the industry disruptions caused by COVID-19 have … Read more Microsoft named a Leader in the Gartner 2020 Magic Quadrant for Industrial IoT Platforms
As healthcare providers have faced unprecedented workloads (individually and institutionally) around the world, the pandemic response continues to cause seismic shifts in how, where, and when care is provided. Longer-term, it has revealed the need for fundamental shifts across the care continuum. As a physician, I have seen first-hand the challenges of not having the … Read more Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare: Unlocking the power of health data for better care
Whether you’re a new student, 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 … Read more Azure Cost Management and Billing updates – October 2020
It’s no secret that organizations consider data as one of their most valuable assets and are investing to build their capability for data-driven decision making. It is challenging to manage a flexible and cost-effective data estate on-premises, and we are seeing customers embrace Azure for its best-in-class analytics solutions rapidly. However, migrating analytics workloads can … Read more Migrate your Hadoop data lakes with WANDisco LiveData Platform for Azure
It is impossible to understate the profound impacts the events of 2020 have had on the real estate industry. Buildings of all kinds, from commercial offices to retail, hospitals, manufacturing plants, and more, remain in need of transformative solutions that will enable employees to return to work safely. In times of crisis, it is innovation … Read more Microsoft unlocks the full potential of the smart building ecosystem
Get started immediately on your first project with the new Knowledge center in the Azure Synapse Studio. To further accelerate time to insight in Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics, we are introducing the Knowledge center to simplify access to pre-loaded sample data and to streamline the getting started process for data professionals. You can now create … Read more Quickly get started with samples in Azure Synapse Analytics
We designed the Azure Modular Datacenter (MDC) for customers who need cloud computing capabilities in hybrid or challenging environments, including remote areas. This announcement is complemented by our Azure Space offerings and partnerships that can extend satellite connectivity anywhere in the world. Scenarios range from mobile command centers, humanitarian assistance, military mission needs, mineral exploration, … Read more Introducing the Microsoft Azure Modular Datacenter
Edge Compute Node protection profile (ECN PP)—now available—guides you to engineer, claim, evaluate, and consume device security for IoT. Internet of Things (IoT) solution builders these days are more likely to deploy IoT solutions with unsecured devices because they cannot verify device security claims from device makers. Solution builders could create secured devices themselves, however … Read more Solving IoT device security at scale through standards
Insights that are frequently sought after in an organization are often locked in business-critical systems. These systems power functions such as sales, marketing, finance, supply chain, and operations. While the data these applications produce can tell the complete business story, organizations struggle to coalesce the data and deliver valuable analytics on top of them. It … Read more Gain real-time insights on Oracle E-Business Suite data with Azure and Incorta
Between waves of pandemics, hurricanes, and wildfires, you don’t need cloud infrastructure adding to your list of worries this year. Fortunately, there has never been a better time to ensure your Azure deployments stay resilient. Availability zones are one of the best ways to mitigate risks from outages and disasters. With that in mind, we … Read more Zone Redundancy for Azure Cache for Redis now in preview
In Azure, your data is your data. Not only is it protected at rest and in transit, but Microsoft Azure extends that protection while in use with confidential computing. Azure was the first major public cloud to deliver confidential computing which opened up new levels of privacy and innovation for our customers. Today customers in … Read more Azure and Intel commit to delivering next generation confidential computing
Earlier this year, we empowered over 10,000 students from all over the world to learn the basics of machine learning over the course of four months. We are excited to announce the next stage of skilling with the availability of an advanced machine learning nanodegree on Udacity. Starting today, students can enroll for the Machine … Read more Announcing advanced Azure Machine Learning nanodegree program with Udacity
The last six months have seen an unprecedented acceleration in digital transformation. There has never been a more important time for database administrators (DBAs) and developers to prepare for an increasingly cloud-centric future. However, we’d like to make this interesting and fun. That’s why we’ve partnered with PASS, a worldwide community of over 300,000 data professionals, … Read more Compete. Learn. Win. Sign up for the Azure SQL Championship Today
We are excited to share that Microsoft has been named a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Full Life Cycle API Management 2020 based on the ability to execute and completeness of vision. Our placement is a testament to our continued innovation in enterprise API management capabilities and broad customer adoption of Azure API … Read more Microsoft is a Leader in the 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Full Life Cycle API Management
Around the world, customers are demonstrating the future of data-driven manufacturing. Dutch paint company AkzoNobel transformed from a manual operation to one focused on expanding a modern digital performance solution across its European factories. Swedish manufacturer Sandvik Coromant saw a 40 percent increase in engineering and operator productivity. How others can replicate data-driven manufacturing success … Read more Learn how the Azure nested edge securely unlocks value from manufacturing data
Around the world, customers are demonstrating the future of data-driven manufacturing. Dutch paint company AkzoNobel transformed from a manual operation to one focused on expanding a modern digital performance solution across its European factories. Swedish manufacturer Sandvik Coromant saw a 40 percent increase in engineering and operator productivity. How others can replicate data-driven manufacturing success … Read more Azure IoT Edge adds support for industrial environments to securely unlock value from manufacturing data
With the wrong architecture, APIs can be a bottleneck to not only your applications but to your entire business. Bottlenecks such as downtime, low performance, or high application complexity, can result in exaggerated infrastructure and organizational costs and lost revenue. Serverless APIs mitigate these bottlenecks with autoscaling capabilities and consumption-based pricing models. Once you start … Read more Three ways serverless APIs can accelerate enterprise innovation
Modern engineering practices, like Agile and DevOps, are redirecting the ownership of security, operations, and cost management from centralized teams to workload owners—catalyzing innovations at a higher velocity than in traditional data centers. In this new world, workload owners are expected to build, deploy, and manage cloud workloads that are secure, reliable, performant, and cost-effective. … Read more Optimize your Azure workloads with Azure Advisor Score
For the past several years, Microsoft and Red Hat have worked together to co-develop hybrid cloud solutions intended to enable greater customer innovation. In 2019, we launched Azure Red Hat OpenShift as a fully managed, jointly engineered implementation of Red Hat OpenShift running on Red Hat OpenShift 3.11 that is deeply integrated into the Azure … Read more Lower prices and more flexible purchase options for Azure Red Hat OpenShift
How the depth and breadth of the Microsoft Azure partner ecosystem enables thousands of organizations to bring their mission-critical applications to Azure. In the past few years, IT organizations have been realizing compelling benefits when they transitioned their business-critical applications to the cloud, enabling them to address the top challenges they face with running the … Read more Microsoft partners expand the range of mission-critical applications you can run on Azure
Organizations today are striving to build agility and resilience to the fast-changing environment we live in. AI and machine learning innovation can help tackle these emerging challenges and enable cost efficiencies. However, organizations still encounter barriers to adopting and deploying machine learning at scale. Recently at Microsoft Ignite, Azure Machine Learning made a number of … Read more Azure Machine Learning helps customers stay ahead of challenges
In June 2020, we announced the preview of the Live Video Analytics platform—a groundbreaking new set of capabilities in Azure Media Services that allows you to build workflows that capture and process video with real-time analytics from the intelligent edge to intelligent cloud. We continue to see customers across industries enthusiastically using Live Video Analytics … Read more Azure introduces new capabilities for live video analytics
Whether you’re a new student, 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 + Billing comes in. We’re always looking … Read more Azure Cost Management + Billing updates – September 2020
This post was co-authored by Anubhav Mehendru, Group Engineering Manager, Kaizala. Mobile-only workers depend on Microsoft Kaizala—a simple and secure work management and mobile messaging app—to get the work done. Since COVID-19 has forced many of us to work from home across the world, Kaizala usage has surged close to 3x from pre-COVID-19. While this … Read more Scaling Microsoft Kaizala on Azure
This blog post was co-authored by Chad Raynor, Principal Program Manager, Azure Maps. New and recent updates for Microsoft Azure Maps include support for Azure Maps integration with Azure Active Directory (generally available), integration with the Microsoft Power Apps platform, Search and Routing services enhancements, new Weather services REST APIs (in preview), and expanded coverage … Read more General availability of Azure Maps support for Azure Active Directory, Power Apps integration, and more
This post was co-authored by Sreekanth Thirthala Venkata, Principal Program Manager, Visual Studio and .NET. Microsoft Azure enables customers to migrate and modernize their applications to run in the cloud, in coordination with many partner solutions. One such partner is Datadog, which provides observability and security tools for users to understand the health and performance … Read more New Datadog integration with Azure offers a seamless configuration experience
The increasing demand for always-on connectivity, immersive experiences, secure collaboration, and remote human relationships is pushing networks to their limits, while the market is driving down price. The network infrastructure must ensure operators are able to optimize costs and gain efficiencies, while enabling the development of personalized and differentiated services. To address the requirements of … Read more Microsoft partners with the telecommunications industry to roll out 5G and more
Genomics is foundational to the development of targeted therapeutics and precision medicine. Advances in DNA sequencing technologies has driven a revolution in genomics-based research and is helping facilitate better understanding of human biology and disease conditions. This expanded knowledge is leading to the proliferation of personalized medicine strategies to prevent, diagnose, and treat diseases. The … Read more Accelerating genomics workflows and data analysis on Azure
Businesses around the world have been harnessing the Internet of Things (IoT) to reduce operational expenses, power breakthrough customer experiences, and create new revenue streams. Now, faced with the unprecedented challenges of our times, businesses are also harnessing IoT to create safer workplaces as employees return to work, reduce expenses to weather downturns, reduce environmental … Read more How Azure IoT enables business resilience
Mixed reality blends our physical and digital worlds to extend computing beyond the screen and fundamentally change how we work, learn, and play. Mixed Reality has evolved from promising technology to a thriving ecosystem of solutions that are having significant and quantifiable impact today. It plays a significant role in how we manufacture goods, how … Read more Mixed Reality Momentum: HoloLens 2 expands globally and new Azure service launches
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to be challenging to adjust your business strategies to maintain productive operations and processes. You need new ways to increase efficiencies, optimize costs, and adopt new technologies at a faster rate. Your digital transformation is more critical than ever in these trying times. Microsoft stands with you, our customers, moving quickly … Read more Designing your cloud strategy to maximize value on Azure
We live in demanding times, and change is happening faster than ever before. Data has always provided important insights into changing contexts, but to navigate the rapidly evolving landscape, adding layers of intelligence where AI advances decision making and applies predictive analytics at the edge to unlock new possibilities is pivotal. At Microsoft Ignite, we … Read more Achieve agility with Azure Data in a changing world
The global situation today has truly transformed how we communicate with each other. While we woke up one day and the world was different, business hasn’t stopped. Customers are still needing to connect with businesses. Whether it’s providing real-time virtual assistance or enabling curb side pickup we’ve had to rethink how we engage without physical … Read more Build rich communication experiences at scale with Azure Communication Services