As highlighted at BUILD and TechEd NA, we continue to expand our cloud services, enabling customers move into today’s cloud-first world. As we bring new Microsoft Azure updates, services, and regions online, our goal is to create a world-class platform that enables customers to harness the power of the cloud, whether leveraging on-premises investments or building applications in the public cloud. Today, we are delighted to announce updates that continue that momentum with endorsement from industry analysts and customers.

Microsoft Azure Brazil South region

A few weeks ago we announced that the Microsoft Azure Brazil South region was in public preview. I am pleased to announce that today the region is moving into general availability. Continuing the momentum of our public preview, general availability allows us to offer customers in Brazil increased network redundancy, lower latency, and services equal to our other regions around the world. This means that any customer using the Brazil South Region will benefit from the same quality of services they have come to expect from Microsoft around the globe, surpassing local market standards.

Building off our announcements of general availability in Japan and China, today’s general availability in Brazil demonstrates our continued commitment to providing world-class, enterprise-grade cloud technologies to our customers around the world. For more information, read our post on the Official Microsoft Blog .

Service Updates

Building on the momentum of releasing services that span across Infrastructure and Platform services, we are also delighted to announce the release of the following services today:

1. Expanded support for Virtual Networks and Virtual Machines: Effective today, Virtual Networks can be configured to span an entire region enabling greater flexibility and expanded scenarios. A8 and A9 Virtual machines that offer faster processors, faster interconnect, and more virtual cores are also now available. This combination of features make these instances optimal for running compute and network intensive applications, including engineering design and simulation, genome research, or video encoding.
2. Expansion of Azure Mobile Services offline features to Xamarin: This feature in Mobile Services provides a lightweight, cross-platform way for applications to work with data even when they are offline or disconnected from the network. Extending our commitment to power apps on any platform, this feature is also available today for Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Android.

Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service

Last week Gartner released its closely watched Magic Quadrant report on cloud vendors.  Gartner placed Microsoft in the Leader Quadrant of the Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Gartner defines cloud compute IaaS as a virtual data center of compute, storage and network resources delivered as a service. This recognition, along with our existing placement as a leader in the enterprise Application Platform as a Service (aPAAS) Magic Quadrant makes Microsoft the only public cloud vendor to be named a Leader for both aPaaS and IaaS. This is a testament to our efforts to remove barriers for cloud adoption whether customers want to build with Infrastructure or Platform Services.

Finally, I encourage you to learn from other enterprises across the world that have successfully leveraged Microsoft Azure services. Learn about how Kordia in Australia is running mission critical SAP on Azure and how SK Telecom in South Korea is unlocking new business opportunity with a service built on Azure.

If you are already part of the Azure family, our sincere thanks and keep bringing your feedback to help us continually improve our services. If you are not, we encourage you to jump in and see how you move your business forward, faster with the cloud.