Updates Archives
Monthly updates for May 2019
.NET 5 arrives in 2020
.NET 5, the next major version of the .NET Platform, will have one Base Class Library containing APIs for building any type of application. All .NET workloads are supported with application frameworks, including cross-platform web development with ASP.NET, iOS and Android mobile development with Xamarin, Windows Desktop and cross-platform IoT. .NET 5 is set to release in 2020. <br> <a href="https://aka.ms/dotnet5" data-event="area-build-announcements-clicked-announcement">Read blog</a>
.NET Core 3.0 Preview 5
.NET Core 3.0 is the next major version of the .NET Core platform, an open-source, general-purpose development platform maintained by Microsoft and the .NET community on GitHub. .NET Core 3.0 now supports Windows desktop workloads. Preview 5 of .NET Core 3.0 includes the addition of full stack C# web development capabilities with ASP.NET Core Blazor. <br> <a href="https://aka.ms/dotnetcore3preview" data-event="area-build-announcements-clicked-announcement">Read blog</a>
ML.NET 1.0
ML.NET lets developers create models targeting scenarios based on ML tasks, such as classification, regression, clustering, ranking, recommendations and anomaly detection. It also provides integration with other deep-learning frameworks, such as TensorFlow, and it offers interoperability through ONNX. By using ML.NET, developers can accomplish those tasks without the need for high expertise in data science or machine learning. <br> <a href="https://aka.ms/ml-dotnet" data-event="area-build-announcements-clicked-announcement">Learn more</a>
Visual Studio IntelliCode
Visual Studio IntelliCode’s AI-assisted development capabilities, such as enhanced IntelliSense, save time by putting what you’re most likely to use at the top of your completion list. Those recommendations are based on thousands of open-source projects on GitHub – each with over 100 stars. When combined with the context of your code, that completion list is customised to promote common practices. <br> <a href="https://aka.ms/intellicode" data-event="area-build-announcements-clicked-announcement">Learn more</a>
Visual Studio App Center MBaaS integration
Visual Studio App Center is introducing support for Mobile Backend as a Service (MBaaS) capabilities on Azure, helping developers build applications faster without the need for managing infrastructure. These capabilities make it easier for App Center customers to leverage Azure App Service’s Mobile Apps capabilities for identity, push notifications and data synchronisation. <br> <a href="https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/app-center/" data-event="area-build-announcements-clicked-announcement">Learn more</a>
Azure SQL Database Edge
Azure SQL Database Edge is a small footprint database engine with built-in AI that is optimised for the intelligent edge . This new product combines data streaming and time series with in-database machine learning and a graph to unlock intelligence on the edge with a simplified architecture. <br> <a href="https://aka.ms/Build2019_IntelligentEdge" data-event="area-build-announcements-clicked-announcement">Read blog</a>
IoT Plug and Play
IoT Plug and Play offers a new, open modelling language to connect IoT devices to the cloud seamlessly. With IoT Plug and Play, developers can connect IoT devices to the cloud, without having to write a single line of embedded code. IoT Plug and Play also enables device manufactures to build smarter IoT devices that just work with the cloud. <br> <a href="https://aka.ms/Build2019_IntelligentEdge" data-event="area-build-announcements-clicked-announcement">Read blog</a>
HoloLens 2 Development Edition
The new HoloLens 2 Development Edition is designed to help developers quickly build mixed-reality apps and experiences. The development edition includes a HoloLens 2 device, USD 500 in Azure credits and a three-month free trial of Unity Pro and Unity PiXYZ Plugin for CAD data, starting at USD 3,500 or as low as USD 99 per month. The HoloLens 2 Development Edition will be available for preorder soon and will be delivered later this year. <br> <a href="https://aka.ms/Build2019_IntelligentEdge" data-event="area-build-announcements-clicked-announcement">Read blog</a>
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) virtual nodes
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) virtual nodes allow users to elastically provision additional pods in seconds in response to a spike in demand. With a few clicks in the Azure portal, users can turn on the virtual node feature and get the flexibility and portability of a serverless container experience in an AKS environment – and there’s no need to manage additional compute resources. <br> <a href="https://aka.ms/Build2019_AKS-Serverless" data-event="area-build-announcements-clicked-announcement">Read blog</a>
Azure Active Directory support in GitHub Enterprise
To support the needs of enterprise customers, GitHub Enterprise customers can now synchronise groups of GitHub users with Azure Active Directory (AAD) and thus enforce a secure workplace identity. AAD synchronisation allows GitHub customers to leverage their existing AAD solution for group membership so that their administrators and developers can focus on their application development. <br> <a href="https://aka.ms/Build2019_DevOps" data-event="area-build-announcements-clicked-announcement">Read blog</a>
GitHub Identity support for Azure
GitHub users can now sign in to Microsoft applications, including Azure Portal and Azure DevOps, using their GitHub account. This update enables developers to go from repository to deployment with just their GitHub account. The new login system will try to match a user’s GitHub account to an existing Microsoft identity with access to Azure. If the system can’t find one, it will create one for the user that’s keyed to their GitHub account, providing a seamless login experience. <br> <a href="https://aka.ms/Build2019_DevOps" data-event="area-build-announcements-clicked-announcement">Read blog</a>
Unified pipelines
Azure Pipelines offers the ability to create Continuous Integration Pipelines, called “Build Pipelines”, in a declarative way using a YAML file. We’re now extending support to Continuous Delivery Pipelines, called “Release Pipelines”, and defined via a YAML document. Additionally, the same YAML file can contain the definition for both CI and CD pipelines. <br> <a href="https://aka.ms/Build2019_DevOps" data-event="area-build-announcements-clicked-announcement">Read blog</a>
Azure Pipelines update for Kubernetes deployments
A new feature in Azure Pipelines makes it easier for developers to deploy to a Kubernetes environment on any public cloud or on-premises such as AKS and Red Hat OpenShift by offering an optimised, integrated solution with prebuilt templates and support for multiple deployment strategies. In addition, Azure Pipelines now gives the ability to monitor the state of deployments to Kubernetes clusters. <br> <a href="https://aka.ms/Build2019_DevOps" data-event="area-build-announcements-clicked-announcement">Read blog</a>
J.P. Morgan blockchain partnership
Microsoft has entered a memorandum of understanding to establish a strategic partnership with J.P. Morgan to accelerate the adoption of blockchain technology. Through this partnership, Quorum, the first fully managed ledger will be available in the new Azure Blockchain Service. Quorum customers can now rapidly expand their networks with lower costs, simplified deployment, built-in governance and extensible design. <br> <a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/digitizing-trust-azure-blockchain-service-simplifies-blockchain-development/" data-event="area-build-announcements-clicked-announcement">Read blog</a>
Blockchain and Microsoft Power Platform integration
Blockchain is coming to the Power Platform with a new Ethereum connector for Microsoft Flow and PowerApps, new flow templates for common scenarios and Visual Studio Code tooling to generate flows from smart contracts. The low-code approach to blockchain is unique to Microsoft and visionary. The connector provides the ability to deploy, create, interact with or respond to events from a blockchain through simple configuration. <br> <a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/digitizing-trust-azure-blockchain-service-simplifies-blockchain-development/" data-event="area-build-announcements-clicked-announcement">Read blog</a>
New knowledge mining capabilities in Azure Search
Cognitive search capability, the content-understanding feature within Azure Search, now offers a single mechanism to apply a series of prebuilt and custom AI models to data. In addition, a new knowledge store capability in cognitive search enables developers to further leverage the insights and metadata they extracted from the cognitive search pipeline. <br> <a href="https://aka.ms/Build2019_AI-ML" data-event="area-build-announcements-clicked-announcement">Read blog</a>
Innovations in Azure Machine Learning
New updates to Azure Machine Learning simplify the building, training and deployment of machine learning models for enterprises. These include new capabilities to simplify the development of machine learning models, operationalise models at scale and high-speed inferencing from cloud to edge. Azure Machine Learning helps data scientists and developers build and train AI models faster, then easily deploy those models to the cloud or the edge. <br> <a href="https://aka.ms/Build2019_AI-ML" data-event="area-build-announcements-clicked-announcement">Read blog</a>
Azure Data Factory enhancements
Feature enhancements to Azure Data Factory allow developers to be more productive by visually transforming their data at big-data scale without any code. The launch of Mapping Data Flows makes Azure Data Factory a full ETL/ELT (extract/transform/load and extract/load/transform) service. Additionally, Wrangling Data Flows offers a code-free way to visually discover and prepare data without writing code. <br> <a href="https://aka.ms/Build2019_Analytics" data-event="area-build-announcements-clicked-announcement">Read blog</a>
Azure Blockchain Service
Building with blockchain just got easier with Azure Blockchain Service, which simplifies the formation, management and governance of consortium blockchain networks, allowing businesses to focus on workflow logic and app development. Azure Blockchain Service enables developers to deploy a fully managed consortium network in a few simple clicks and leverage built-in governance to add new members, set permissions and authenticate user applications. <br> <a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/digitizing-trust-azure-blockchain-service-simplifies-blockchain-development/" data-event="area-build-announcements-clicked-announcement">Read blog</a>
Azure SQL Database Hyperscale support for single databases is now available
The new Hyperscale service tier for Azure SQL Database is highly scalable, enabling a database to grow as needed with support for up to 100 TB.
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