Azure Weekly

Issue #401 - 15th January 2023

It's quite a monster of an edition as is spans the last 4 weeks of content. First off a few articles of interest: a dive into how Windows has been re-engineered to produce "OneCore" which allows multiple SKUs to be built on top of this, including Cloud Host, used to power Azure Host Nodes in the data center: Azure Host OS – Cloud Host. There's a useful guide to Migrating to Isolated Durable Functions, and an announcement that Azure Container Registry is the first cloud registry to support the OCI Specifications 1.1. Jon George finally concludes his 6-part series on migrating an application from Azure Function to Azure Container Apps, provides conclusions and a table of options of recommendations if you face a similar situation.

Obviously one of the big themes for 2023 is going to be the global economic downturn; many organisations are trying to "do more with less", reducing headcount and budgets. One of the biggest challenges facing organisations who have gone "all in on the cloud" is that their IT budget has moved from CapEx to OpEx; meaning that IT costs are now essentially a function of headcount rather than an investment. The downside of this is that traditional "downturn playbooks" of deferring hardware refreshes or pushing out new IT programmes don't really work, so execs are going to have to come up with new approaches. Combine this with the fact that cloud computing is more a function of energy costs than hardware costs to the providers; Microsoft estimates $800 million in extra energy costs. Add this to rising interest rates, and Azure pricing is going to increase: Consistent global pricing for the Microsoft Cloud. In summary: GBP: +9%, DKK, EUR and NOK: +11%, SEK: +15%. Organisations are going to have to work even harder, as their projected cost saving efforts might be wiped out by these price increases.

Fortunately a lot of thought leadership is being produced on this topic; The Azure FinOps Guide is a good place to start. Azure already has tools in place to help you Optimize Azure Cost with Azure Cost Management. There's a great series on Architectural Cost Optimisation – Practical Design Steps for Architects and Developers: Part 1, and Part 2, and Part 3. If you've either tried to improve the density of your compute by migrating applications in Virtual Machines in to Containers in Kubernetes, or have started your cloud adoption journey in a Cloud Native way, you can still reduce the total cost of ownership TCO of your Azure Kubernetes Service AKS cluster and Manage the Cost of Kubernetes. I imagine we'll see a lot more thought leadership in this space in 2023.