REDMOND, Wash., Sept. 29, 2015 /CNW/ -- Tuesday at AzureCon,
Microsoft Corp. is announcing new solutions spanning containers,
security, infrastructure and the Internet of Things (IoT) that
enable organizations of all sizes to transform their business in
today's mobile-first, cloud-first world. Through these latest
advancements, Microsoft continues to showcase rapid innovation on
the Microsoft Azure cloud platform, while enabling choice and
simplicity for a growing list of customers of all sizes including
Alaska Airlines, Jet.com Inc. and the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP) in Nepal.
"We live in a connected world, and the intelligent cloud is
powering it all," said Scott
Guthrie, executive vice president of Microsoft's Cloud +
Enterprise Division. "As data and devices continue to proliferate,
there is vast opportunity for businesses to tap into their data to
make their applications more intelligent. Through our offerings
across applications, data and IoT, and cloud infrastructure, we are
enabling companies to innovate more easily and rapidly, using the
tools and platforms they know and love."
Modern applications:
driving innovation through
choice and simplicity
Applications
are at the heart of business growth and transformation, and
containerization is an increasingly popular way to maximize
application value. Furthering its commitment to container
technology and extending customer choice, Microsoft announced a new
Azure Container Service that will combine the openness of Apache
Mesos and Docker with the hyper-scale of Azure for container
orchestration and management. With the service, organizations using
Azure will now be able to easily deploy and configure Mesos to
cluster and schedule Dockerized applications across multiple
virtual hosts. Unlike many other container services in market
today, this offering is based on open source to enable customer
choice across the ecosystem and will support Windows Server
containers in the future. The service will be available for preview
by the end of the year.
"With large-scale production users like Airbnb, Twitter and
Apple, Apache Mesos is the most scalable and flexible container
orchestration platform available on the market today," said
Florian Leibert, co-founder and CEO,
Mesosphere. "At the same time, Microsoft continues its rapid growth
and enterprise cloud leadership, with more than 80 percent of the
Fortune 500 using Microsoft's cloud to power their businesses. The
partnership between Mesosphere and Microsoft will give customers
unmatched choice and flexibility in managing their container
investments, delivering a first-class implementation and enterprise
support experience on Azure."
Internet of Things and big data: transforming business
through data insights
The intelligent cloud is powered by
data — and innovation is limitless when that data can be shared,
gleaned for insights across connected assets, devices and systems.
To that end, Microsoft announced that its Azure IoT Suite is now
available for customers to purchase. The Azure IoT Suite integrates
with a company's existing processes, devices and systems to quickly
and easily build and scale IoT projects across their business using
preconfigured solutions. In addition, Microsoft announced the new
Microsoft Azure Certified for IoT program, an ecosystem of partners
whose offerings have been tested and certified so businesses can
take their next IoT project from testing to production, more
quickly. Current partners include BeagleBone, Freescale Intel
Corporation, Raspberry Pi, Resin.io, Seeed Technology Inc., and
Texas Instruments Inc.
To further enable customers to better manage their data
Microsoft yesterday announced the expansion of Azure Data Lake.
This includes Azure Data Lake Analytics, Azure Data Lake Store, a
new programming language U-SQL, and Azure HDInsight general
availability on Linux. Helping customers be productive from day
one, Azure Data Lake makes big data processing and analytics
simpler and more accessible for everyone.
Intelligent infrastructure: enabling innovation and trust at
hyper-scale
Demonstrating its commitment to delivering
trusted cloud services and infrastructure, on Tuesday Microsoft
announced the availability of Microsoft Azure services in
India. As the first global public
cloud provider in India, Microsoft
has opened three new regions — Central
India in Pune, South India in Chennai, and West
India in Mumbai — which
will provide local customers with data residency and replication in
multiple regions while fueling innovation and digital
transformation within India. With
24 Azure regions around the world — more than any other major cloud
provider — this latest expansion is further proof of Microsoft's
commitment to bring its cutting-edge cloud to as many customers as
possible. Azure services are available in India today, with Office 365 services slated
for availability in October, and Dynamics CRM Online services to
follow in the first half of 2016.
Security is often cited as a top concern when moving to the
cloud. Customers today are looking for greater control,
transparency and protection across their cloud infrastructure and
assets. To help meet this demand, on Tuesday Microsoft
announced Azure Security Center, a new integrated experience
that gives customers visibility and control of the security of
their Azure resources without impeding agility, and helps customers
stay ahead of threats even as they evolve.
This first-of-its-kind service integrates with security
solutions from companies such as Barracuda, Checkpoint, Cisco
Systems Inc., CloudFlare, F5 Networks, Imperva, Incapsula and Trend
Micro Inc. In addition to enabling integrated security, monitoring
and policy management, Azure Security Center also provides
invaluable recommendations. By analyzing information gathered from
customers' deployments and comparing with global threat
intelligence aggregated by Microsoft, the service introduces a
unique ability in the industry to detect threats while taking the
guesswork out of cloud security. Azure Security Center will be
broadly available for Azure customers by the end of the year.
Finally, continuing investments to deliver industry-leading
compute capacity, Microsoft is announcing the N-series, a new
family of Azure Virtual Machines (VMs) powered by NVIDIA GPUs. GPUs
have long been used for compute and graphics-intensive workloads.
Microsoft is the first hyper-scale provider to announce VMs
featuring NVIDIA Grid 2.0 technology and the industry-leading Tesla
Accelerated Computing Platform for professional graphics
applications, deep learning, high-performance computing and more. A
preview will be available in a few months.
Easy and affordable cloud innovation
As
demonstrated at AzureCon, Microsoft is committed to helping
customers manage their cloud investments easily and affordably,
with new troubleshooting tools, support resources and pricing
options. On Tuesday Microsoft announced the Azure Compute
Pre-Purchase Plan, a new pricing program designed for customers
with steady state, predictable workloads on Azure. With this new
offer, customers who pre-purchase Azure compute for one year can
realize cost savings of up to 63 percent. This plan will be
available globally starting Dec.
1.
More information on the innovations in this release and a full
list of the innovations Microsoft announced today can be found at
the AzureCon blog and by viewing the keynotes live or on demand at
AzureCon.
Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT" @microsoft) is the leading platform and
productivity company for the mobile-first, cloud-first world, and
its mission is to empower every person and every organization on
the planet to achieve more.
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SOURCE Microsoft Corp.