Welcome to December’s edition of Azure News, collating the latest updates in the world of Azure. As always, if you need any further information on anything we share in this month’s newsletter, or if you have any Azure queries, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
THE BIG TRENDS DRIVING MIGRATION AND MODERNISATION
Microsoft has shared the results of its hotly-anticipated cloud migration and modernisation global survey. The report, based on the experiences of 1,200 IT decision makers, investigates the cloud’s trajectory and how enterprise strategies will adapt.
Three particular trends stood out and evidenced a clear appetite for doing less with more. Get a comprehensive overview below.
Six Azure Hybrid Cloud Use Cases that Benefit Every Business
Keeping some workloads in a data centre and migrating others to the Azure public cloud is many organisations’ most practical, efficient and effective digital transformation path. To understand where you could benefit most from an Azure Hybrid Cloud approach, check out six use cases below.
NEW AND IMPROVED SPEECH-TO-TEXT
Azure’s Cognitive Services for Speech just became even better. Four brand-new custom capabilities – focusing on phrase lists, plain text, structured text and audio – allow users to evaluate and improve speech-to-text accuracy for applications and products faster and more flexibly.
As part of the update, Azure Cognitive Services for Speech revealed how international fitness brand Peloton uses customisation to powerful effect.
BETTER-THAN-EVER COST CONTROL
Microsoft is always looking at how Microsoft Cost Management can help businesses meet their cloud budgeting challenges. This month, they have confirmed eight updates and improvements based on user feedback.
Click below to learn how the changes fine-tune your understanding of cost accrual and negative spending patterns.
AZURE FIREWALL ANNOUNCES NEW CAPABILITIES
Today’s advanced cyberthreats use tailored strategies and pervasive features to bypass traditional security measures. That means a centralised approach to network security is vital – precisely what Azure Firewall delivers.
And Microsoft’s cloud-native firewall is now even more robust following investment in resiliency capabilities. Find out which releases are generally available and in preview now.
AZURE VIRTUAL MACHINES THAT DO MORE WITH LESS
The Azure HPC team has announced a new series of innovative Virtual Machines. The VMs have been designed to maximise performance and minimise total HPC spending – which will be welcome news in the present cost-conscious economic climate.
With the new VMs optimised for advanced workloads, including computational fluid dynamics (CFD) finite element analysis and frontend and backend electronic design automation (EDA), the developments represent an exciting breakthrough.
ACCELERATE ECO PROGRESS WITH AZURE
Post-COP27, every organisation is considering their sustainability credentials. Sustainability is now a strategic imperative, and leaders are looking for operational solutions that minimise environmental impact – especially regarding energy-hungry IT.
To help accelerate sustainability progress, Azure has created new, data-backed guidance for improving energy and carbon efficiency as an Azure customer.
AZURE MONITOR MAKES CLOUD JOURNEYS SMOOTHER
Developers are working at pace to achieve digital transformation objectives and drive organisational competitiveness. To meet the brief, developers must reduce innovation time-to-market and project-to-profit cycles. As such, they need practical troubleshooting tools and monitoring solutions like Azure Monitor.
And this month, Azure Monitor has two new offerings – Azure Monitor managed service for Prometheus (preview) and Azure Managed Grafana.