A look at the Azure announcements from Microsoft Ignite 2020
This year’s digital edition of Microsoft Ignite has now wrapped up, but don’t worry if you missed it! The high-quality sessions and keynotes from across the two days are available to watch on-demand from the Session Catalogue on the official Ignite website.
2020’s instalment has brought us plenty of news and reveals, so just in case you missed it, let’s walk through some of the key Azure-centric announcements. If you’re looking for announcements on other topics, you can check the Microsoft Ignite 2020 Book of News, which details everything from across the two day stream.
Azure AI
- Azure Private Endpoints and Managed Identities
- New capabilities for Azure Cognitive Services – spanning Decision, Vision and Speech
- New capabilities for Azure Machine Learning – including Designer, Assisted Labelling and Azure ML Integration with mlflow
- Bot Framework Composer, an open source tool for visual bot development available on GitHub
You can learn more about these updates in the official blog post from Eric Boyd.
Azure Data
- Azure Cache for Redis now has two new product tiers in public preview: Enterprise and Enterprise Flash.
- Azure Cosmos DB now offers a serverless option for database operations.
- Flexible Server, a new deployment option now in preview for Azure Database for PostgreSQL and Azure Database for MySQL.
- New preview enhancements for Azure SQL, expected to be available later in September.
- Azure SQL Edge is now available.
- Synapse now automatically creates a materialized view optimized for Power BI users.
- The Photon-powered Delta Engine further accelerates Spark workloads running on Azure Databricks.
- Access-based time lifecycle management, a frequently requested customer feature, is now available in Azure Blob Storage.
Azure Dev and Ecosystem
- .NET 5 Release Candidate is now available
- Azure App Service updates include new cost-savings options, Windows Container support, GitHub Actions integration
- Azure Communication Services enables you to build rich communication experiences with the same secure platform as Microsoft Teams
- Azure-Datadog integration
- Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) updates include ability to easily pause clusters to save costs and enforce policies at scale
- Azure Spring Cloud now supports Steeltoe development framework
- Be productive while working from anywhere with GitHub Codespaces and the new support for Visual Studio
- Logic Apps updated with new hosting options, improved performance and developer workflows
- Private Azure Marketplace in public preview
Azure Hybrid, Azure Infra and Azure Migrate
- Run Azure services on any infrastructure with Azure Arc-enabled servers and Azure Arc-enabled data services
- Brand new Backup Center for unified experience of backup management at scale and Azure Backup capabilities being extended to new resources and applications
- New capabilities and enhancements for Azure Compute and Azure Disk Storage
- Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) on Azure Stack HCI now in public preview
- Azure Migrate announces new agentless software inventory and dependency mapping to simplify your migration
- Continuously optimize workload costs with new Azure Spot virtual machine capabilities and Azure Advisor Score
- New Azure Stack form factors and services extend powerful compute at the edge, unlocking advanced analytics
- Next-generation Azure VMware Solution now generally available
- Making Linux migration to Azure easier with new capabilities
- New innovations that deliver the best experience for Windows Server workloads, only on Azure
Azure IoT
- New Azure Certified Device program ensures compatibility, accelerates time to market
- AT&T brings first Azure Sphere cellular guardian device to market
…and more!
There were so many announcements during Microsoft Ignite 2020 that we can’t do justice to all of them here. If you want to see the full list of announcements, you can do so by visiting the Microsoft Ignite 2020 Book of News. This handy website contains everything you need to know from the event, on topics from Microsoft 365 to Security and Windows. Be sure to make use of the contents page, as there’s a lot to go through!
If you’re looking for Microsoft Teams news in particular, there’s a dedicated blog post that runs through all of the upcoming changes and features. It covers everything from meeting recaps to breakout rooms, and much more.
In case you missed it, there’s also a blog post written by Frank Shaw, Corporate Vice President at Microsoft, introducing this year’s Microsoft Ignite. It contains a lot of interesting information about what topic areas Ignite covers, so it’s a great starting point if you’re looking at exploring particular areas of the Microsoft ecosystem.
Useful Links
- Check out the brand new Microsoft Learn TV!
- Check out the sessions you might have missed in the official Ignite website
- Follow the conversation on the UK Twitter channels, @MSDevUK and @TechNetUK, as well as on the #MSIgnite hashtag!
- How to skill up while stuck at home
- I want to skill up – but what do I learn?
