Azure Weekly Issue 58: 10th January 2016

You may have noticed a change in the design of the newsletter for this week's issue; now that have over 1000 subscribers, we carried out an analysis of email clients and decided simple was best and choose a template that worked across all the most common clients. Please let us know if you have any feedback about the decision.

This week there were several StorSimple announcements: the StorSimple Cloud Appliance 8020, locally pinned volumes for StorSimple 8000 Series, and the StorSimple Virtual Array Preview.

In response to customer interest, there was an update to Azure Blockchain as a Service as Microsoft prepare for the launch of the official category in the Azure Marketplace.

In the world of data, Azure Data Lake is now integrated with Azure Data Catalog, and DocumentDB now has support for paging with TOP and other query improvements.

Back in November at Future Decoded, endjin co-presented a session called "The 100 year start-up: embracing disruption in Financial Services" with Hymans Robertson about their journey to the cloud; we produced a booklet called "Embracing Disruption: Financial Services & the Microsoft Cloud" for attendees of the the talk, and have now made it available for download in digital form. If you would like a physical copy, please drop us a line!

This week's issue will be the last until next year as we take a break for the holidays. We wish all our subscribers a happy and healthy new year.

AI + Machine Learning

Covering: Azure Batch AI, Azure Bot Service, Microsoft Genomics, Machine Learning services, Machine Learning Studio, Cognitive Services, Bing APIs, Computer Vision API, Content moderator, Custom Services, Emotion API, Face API, Language Understanding (LUIS), Linguistic Analysis API, QnA Maker API, Speaker Recognition API, Text Analytics API, Translator Speech API, Translator Text API, Web Language Model API

Analytics

Covering: Azure Databricks, HDInsight, Data Factory, Stream Analytics, Data Lake Analytics, Event Hubs, Power BI, Azure Analysis Services, Apache Spark for HDInsight, Apache Storm for HDInsight, R Server for HDInsight, Data Catalog

• On the Xamarin blog, Mike James covers Adding Suggestions to Mobile Search with Azure Search
• On MSDN, 'brimit' talks about Event Hubs / Stream Analytics / AzureML / PowerBI End-to-End demo – Part III Enhancement and Visualization
• Also on MSDN, Mustafa Kasap talks about ML 04 – Develop and Consume Azure ML Experiment as a Web Service

Compute

Covering: Virtual Machines, Functions, Batch, Service Fabric, Virtual Machine Scale Sets, Cloud Services, Linux Virtual Machines, SAP HANA on Azure Large Instances

• On MSDN, Niall Moran - Ireland explains how to Go from Zero to Big Data in 15 Minutes with Azure Hortonworks Sandbox
• On TechNet, Bizspark Online discusses ScreenDy – Mobile App development reinvented
• Also on TechNet, Refaat Issa covers Download just Nano Server in a VHD Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 4

Containers

Covering: Container Registry, Container Instances, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Web App for Containers

Databases

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

Developer Tools

Covering: Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, SDKs, Developer tool integrations, CLIs, Blockchain Workbench

DevOps

Covering: Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS), Azure DevTest Labs, DevOps tool integrations, Azure DevOps Projects, Azure Lab Services

Identity

Covering: Azure Active Directory, Multi-factor Authentication, Azure Active Directory Domain Services, Azure Active Directory B2C

• On MSDN, AUTHOR delves into Introducing CREST and Graph API
• On TechNet, Harry Eagles covers Introducing Marcus Robinson – Enthusiastic, Practical and Technical
• Also on TechNet, Karel Klatovsk talks about Jak zahrnout Office365 ProPlus do koln image
• John Savill (@NTFAQGuy) explains How small glitches can cause big problems for complex cloud infrastructures

Integration

Covering: Service Bus, Logic Apps, Event Grid

• On TechNet, Kirill Kotlyarenko describes Microsoft Cloud OS Network Platform 2/2
• Also on TechNet, Sharon Bennett writes about Step-by-Step: Configuring QuickBooks for Azure Remote App in a Workgroup
• On the PaaS Mag site, Michael Kelley talks about Microsoft loves Linux: Deep dive blog series

Internet of Things

Covering: IoT Hub, IoT Suite, IoT Edge, IoT Central, IoT solution accelerators, Time Series Insights, Azure Maps, Azure Sphere

Management and Governance

Covering: Backup, Site Recovery, App Insights, Azure Advisor, Sceduler, Automation, Log Analytics, Azure Monitor, Security & Compliance, Protection & Recovery, Automation & Control, Insight & Analytics, Azure Service Health, Microsoft Azure portal, Azure Resource Manager, Cloud Shell, the Azure mobile app, Azure Policy, Cost Management, Azure Managed Applications

• On MSDN, Nicole Welch describes Monitoring Azure for Government MAG - Subscription Configuration
• On Code Project, Duncan Edwards Jones describes CQRS on Windows Azure - Event sourcing
• On the PaaS Mag site, Michael Curd announces Azure Storage Data Movement Library 0.2.0
• On the Azure blog, Michael Curd announces Azure Storage Data Movement Library 0.2.0

Media

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

Microsoft Azure Stack

Covering: Azure Stack

Migration

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

Mobile

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

Networking

Covering: ExpressRoute, Azure DNS, Virtual Network, Traffic Manager, Load Balancer, VPN Gateway, Application Gateway, Network Watcher

Security

Covering: Azure Information Protection, Key Vault, Security Center, Azure DDoS Protection, Azure Advanced Threat Protection

Storage

Covering: Storage, StorSimple, Data Lake Store, Blob Storage, Disk Storage, Managed Disks, Queue Storage, File Storage, Storage Explorer, Archive Storage

• On TechNet, J.C. Hornbeck describes Support Tip: Microsoft Azure Backup job fails with irrecoverable error 0x086C8
• On Code Project, 'levelnis' explains How to Access Blob Storage from an Azure Web Site

Web

Covering: App Service (Web), API Management, Content Delivery Network, Azure Search, Web apps, Azure SignalR Service

• On the Tech Radar site, Lily Prasuethsut writes about Hands-on review: Updated: Oculus Rift