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Azure Weekly Issue 420: 28th May 2023

It's an absolute beast this week. Microsoft BUILD was as epic as expected. As usual a great condensed summary of announcements can be found in the Book of News, and I'd recommend it as your first stop.

The big keynote announcements were all focused on OpenAI and Copilot, and how they are being integrated into every aspect of the Microsoft Product Portfolio. Prompt Engineering was getting a lot of love, and Prompt Flow looks very interesting. Microsoft Fabric, a unification of data products and an evolution of Azure Synapse; it was also unveiled as "data is the fuel that powers AI", and Fabric lower the barrier to entry and time to value. Fabric is an important foundational element as many organisations can only dream of harnessing AI once they've sorted out the chaos that is their data estate.

There's too much to cover for an editorial, so I'm going to highlight two session that I found really interesting; Azure Innovations with Mark Russinovitch, there's so much goodness in this session from Project Forge (formerly Singularity) to Hyperlight a new MicroVM technology like Firecracker. I also enjoyed Building AI solutions with Semantic Kernel, and this is top of my list of things I want to play with. The new Semantic Kernel VS Code extensions look useful.

There's 6 hours of Microsoft Fabric content split across two days in the launch event; Day 1 and Day 2. If that's too much of a time commitment for you, we've been on the private preview of Microsoft Fabric for the last 6 months and have published some useful content to share our insights; A landing page linking all our content, a Azure Radar page giving a high-level overview including Pros & Cons, a 20 minute perspectives on Microsoft Fabric discussion, a 10 minute Tour around Microsoft Fabric, and then several blog posts: An Introduction to Fabric, a detailed Azure Synapse Analytics versus Microsoft Fabric: A Side by Side Comparison, and a view on one of the killer features: What is OneLake?. I'm hoping that this is the last "new" data platform announcement for at least 5 years, as organisations tend to move slowly, and operate on roadmaps that are in the 5-10 year span, want to invest in a platform and then build value on top of it, rather than constantly having to re-invest in upgrading / migrating.

I've picked a few highlights from this edition: Generative AI for Developers: Exploring New Tools and APIs in Azure OpenAI Service, a fascinating insight into What runs ChatGPT Inside Microsoft's AI supercomputer Featuring Mark Russinovich, a feature I've been waiting for: Introducing jobs for Azure Container Apps, and an impressive announcement that seems to have slipped under the radar: Introducing the Azure Linux container host for AKS.

I'd like to thank Liam Mooney for the help putting together this epic edition.

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

Identity

Covering: Azure Active Directory (AD), Azure Active Directory B2C, Azure Active Directory Domain Services

Integration

Covering: Azure API for FHIR, Event Grid, Logic Apps, Service Bus

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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