Azure Weekly

Azure Weekly Issue 400: 18th December 2022

Welcome to issue 400 of Azure Weekly 🎉 It's quite mind-boggling that we've reached this milestone. When I published the first issue on 2nd Nov 2014, I had no idea it would still be going 8 years and 400 issues later; at a rough calculation that's around 1200 hours (50 days) of effort! This is also going to be the last issue of 2022. I hope you all have a relaxing festive break. See you again in January 2023!

First up, there are a number of announcements around Text To Speech; this service has made some impressive improvements this year. The latest are: Azure Custom Neural Voice introduces new emotional styles to support brand voices, which is now going to be used for the use-case I was investigating (adding audio version of our blogs): Listen to your favorite Microsoft Tech Community Blog articles, powered by Azure Speech Services. I was also impressed by this Mechanics episode - it's worth watching for the demos: Use Natural Language & Prompts with AI Models Azure OpenAIService.

There are a few announcements around Analytics: Azure Synapse Runtime for Apache Spark 3.3 is now in Public Preview, and Security Model in Lake Database within Azure Synapse Analytics. If you use B2C logins, this might be useful: Introducing enhanced company branding for sign-in experiences in Azure AD.

Two other worthwhile reads: Introduction to Comprehensive End-to-End Testing in Azure (first in a series), and Use an Azure Event Grid Custom Topic as a Message Broker, which talks about multi-tenant use cases. IMHO the lack of thought leadership (and features) around multi-tenancy for building SaaS products on Azure is one of the platforms major weaknesses. Finally, there's a Forrester study which finds 228 percent ROI when modernizing applications on Azure PaaS. PaaS has always been our preferred flavour of cloud services. It generally requires more software engineering effort, but the commercial payoff is vast.

AI + Machine Learning

Covering: Anomaly detector, Azure Bot Service, Azure Machine Learning, Azure Open Datasets, Bing APIs, Cognitive Services, Computer Vision, Content moderator, Custom vision, Data Science Virtual Machines, Face, Form Recogniser, Immersive Reader, Ink Recogniser, Language Understanding (LUIS), Machine Learning Studio, Microsoft Genomics, ML.NET, Personaliser, Project Cortex, QnA Maker, Speaker Recognition, Speech-to-Text, Speech translation, Text Analytics, Text to Speech , Translator Speech, Translator Text

Analytics

Covering: Apache Spark for HDInsight, Apache Storm for HDInsight, Azure Analysis Services, Azure Data Explorer, Azure Data Share, Azure Databricks, Azure Stream Analytics, Azure Synapse Analytics, Data Catalog, Data Factory, Data Lake Analytics, Event Hubs, HDInsight, .NET for Apache Spark, R Server for HDInsight, Azure Purview

Compute

Covering: Azure CycleCloud, Azure Dedicated Host, Azure Functions, Azure VMware Solution by CloudSimple, Batch, Cloud Services, Linux Virtual Machines, SAP HANA on Azure Large Instances, Service Fabric, Virtual Machines, Virtual Machine Scale Sets

Containers

Covering: Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Azure Red Hat OpenShift, CNAB, CNCF, Container Instances, Container Registry, Porter, WSL, Web App for Containers

Databases

Covering: Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Database for MariaDB, Azure Database for MySQL, Azure Database for PostgreSQL, Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Database Edge, Azure Cache for Redis, SQL Data Warehouse, SQL Server on virtual machines, SQL Server Stretch Database, Table storage

Developer Tools

Covering: App Configuration, Azure Lab Services, CLIs, Developer tool integrations, SDKs, Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio Online

DevOps

Covering: Azure Artifacts, Azure Boards, Azure DevOps, Azure Pipelines, Azure Repos, Azure Test Plans, Azure DevTest Labs, DevOps tool integrations

Internet of Things

Covering: Azure Digital Twins, Azure IoT Central, Azure IoT Edge, Azure IoT Hub, Azure IoT solution accelerators, Azure Maps, Azure Sphere, Azure Time Series Insights, IoT DevKit, WildernessLabs, Windows 10 IoT Core Services

Learning

Covering: Microsoft Certifications, Azure Certifications, Microsoft Learning Paths, Certification Pathway Information

Management and Governance

Covering: Automation, Azure Advisor, Azure Backup, Azure Blueprints, Azure Lighthouse, Azure Managed Applications, Azure mobile app, Azure Monitor, Azure Policy, Azure Resource Manager, Azure Service Health, Azure Site Recovery, Cloud Shell, Cost Management, Microsoft Azure portal, Scheduler, Azure Purview

Media

Covering: Azure Media Player, Content Protection, Encoding, Live and On-Demand Streaming, Media Analytics, Media Services, Video Indexer

Migration

Covering: Azure Database Migration Service, Azure Migrate, Data Box

Mobile

Covering: App Service (Mobile), Mobile apps, Notification Hubs, Visual Studio App Centre, Xamarin

Networking

Covering: Application Gateway, Azure Bastion, Azure DNS, Azure ExpressRoute, Azure Firewall, Azure Firewall Manager, Azure Front Door, Azure Internet Analyzer, Azure Private Link, Content Delivery Network, Load Balancer, Network Watcher, Traffic Manager, Virtual Network, Virtual WAN, VPN Gateway, Web Application Firewall

Security

Covering: Azure DDoS Protection, Azure Information Protection, Azure Sentinel, Key Vault, Security Center

Storage

Covering: Archive Storage, Avere vFXT for Azure, Azure Data Lake Store, Azure FXT Edge Filer, Azure HPC Cache, Azure NetApp Files, Blob Storage, Disk Storage, File Storage, Managed Disks, Queue Storage, Storage Accounts, Storage Explorer, StorSimple

Web

Covering: API apps, API Management, App Service (Web), Azure Cognitive Search, Azure SignalR Service, Azure Spring Cloud, Web apps

Azure Virtual Desktop

Covering: Azure Virtual Desktop

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