IT implementors

As 2018 comes to an end, I look at the technology landscape. I look at the kinds of hybrid scenarios our customers are developing.

Earlier this year in July, we announced the public preview for Virtual Network Service Endpoints and Firewall rules for both Azure Event Hubs and Azure Service Bus. Today, we’re excited to announce that we are making these capabilities generally available to our customers.

There is a new Azure PowerShell module, built to harness the power of PowerShell Core and Cloud Shell, and maintain compatibility with Windows PowerShell 5.1. Its name is Az.

We are excited to share the auto-protection capability for SQL Server in Azure Virtual Machines (VM). This is a key addition to the public preview of Azure Backup for SQL Server on Azure VM, announced earlier this year.

KubeCon North America 2018: Serverless Kubernetes and community led innovation, Azure Monitor for containers now generally available, Microsoft previews neural network text-to-speech, and much more.

We are excited to announce the public preview of Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) with Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) support for Microsoft Azure SQL Database Managed Instance.

Applying the latest in deep learning innovation, Speech Service, part of Azure Cognitive Services now offers a neural network-powered text-to-speech capability. Access the preview available today.

Azure Functions is a serverless compute service that enables you to run code on-demand without having to explicitly provision or manage infrastructure. Using Azure Functions, you can run a script or piece of code in response to a variety of events.

We are excited to share that a new, automated way to configure high availability solutions for SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines (VMs) is now available using our SQL VM resource provider.

V3 is the latest upgrade for Microsoft Azure Backup Server (MABS). Azure Backup Server can now be installed on Windows Server 2019 with SQL 2017 as its database. MABS V3 brings key enhancements in the areas of storage and security.

For over three years, we have helped customers find devices that work with Azure IoT technology through the Azure Certified for IoT program and the Azure IoT device catalog.

Azure offers built-in disaster recovery (DR) solution for Azure Virtual Machines through Azure Site Recovery.