Cloud computing is quickly gaining ground in the business world and Microsoft Azure is taking the lead. About 84% of enterprises had a multi-cloud strategy in 2019. Gartner’s Top Strategic Trends for 2021 has established that organizations require a strong AI strategy to make sure that their projects don’t stall.

With cloud computing showing no signs of reducing in its application and Microsoft taking a strong lead, it is important to examine what Azure Cloud is and how it impacts businesses and what Microsoft would be doing with it in the future.

What is Microsoft Azure?
Azure Cloud is a cloud platform that provides both low-level cloud solutions and high-level infrastructure. The infrastructure makes it possible for companies to run their applications in a scalable, elastic, and redundant environment hosted in the cloud.

Signing up on the Azure Cloud platform gives you access to over 200 products and cloud services that are designed to offer new solutions to your business operations. It is designed to solve modern business challenges and help build a future that would be unimaginable without cloud computing.

With Microsoft Azure, you can build, run and manage applications across multiple clouds, on-premises, and at the edge with great tools of your liking.

Why Azure Cloud holds the future of cloud services?
Virtually everything in the digital world has a connection with the cloud in some way. As tech giants focus on developing new ways of organizing, processing, and presenting data, cloud computing is slowly becoming part and parcel of our everyday lives.

In the recent past, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Amazon Web Services have provided cloud computing and cloud storage services. Newer entrants such as Vultr and Linode have also made inroads into the space.

What do you think is the future of cloud computing? How will it affect future business strategies, and to what extent? Concepts such as decentralized cloud computing and serverless cloud may start trickling into your mind.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
Azure today is synonymous with Infrastructure as a Service. IaaS is the primary low-level public cloud service used to provide instant computing infrastructure. It is managed over the internet.

IaaS is unique because it is less expensive and is a simple way of managing physical servers and data center infrastructure. It offers essential storage, computing, and networking resources on demand.

With all the amazing computing benefits that come with it, adopting an IaaS solution for your organization helps reduce maintenance of on-premises data centers, gain real-time business insights and save money that would have been spent purchasing and maintaining hardware.

Organizations are keen on the scalability of their business operations, and more emphasis will be put on this in the future. IaaS solutions give businesses the flexibility to scale their IT resources up or down as their needs change. They also have a provision for you to quickly introduce new applications, further increasing the reliability of your infrastructure.

With IaaS, you will not incur the costs of buying and managing physical servers and data center infrastructure. Besides, you only have to pay for the resources you need since each one of them is offered separately.

Azure Data and Analytics
Azure data and analytics provide unified data governance that helps organizations do away with data challenges and shape their future.

Azure Cloud makes the future look bright by offering the general availability of Azure Synapse Analytics, a limitless analytics service that provides business insights with an emphasis on enterprise data warehousing, Big Data, and data integration.

Azure Synapse Analytics combines various capabilities, among them, machine learning, business intelligence, and data engineering. Simply put, Azure Synapse Analytics securely and seamlessly unifies your company’s data in one location.

You can get started with Azure’s machine learning features in this guide from Iteration Insights.

Data Security
No other player in the tech industry beats Azure Cloud in offering secure cloud computing. Microsoft leverages several years of being a productivity solution provider and being an enterprise operating system to provide top-shelf security to all the information hosted in their cloud products.

Microsoft Azure has put together several resources to ensure organizations’ on-site data centers are secure. They update their systems on a regular basis to make their systems immune to external threats.

Once you have purchased Azure Cloud services, you will gain access to all elements related to the security of your information. All their customers have access to the latest threat detection and prevention technologies.

There is a range of security solutions and architecture that come with Azure Cloud. They include Information Protection which enables organizations to classify and protect specific information, documents, and emails by applying labels to them, and Advanced Threat Protection and Threat Intelligence.

Azure Cloud threat monitoring agents generate real-time security alerts and threat intelligence reports which provide insights into the attackers, their motives, and their tactics.

Improved business sustainability and scalability
Many businesses will be expanding their operations in the future. If they want to do so without major hiccups, they should adopt Microsoft Azure Cloud technology which provides scalability to businesses.

Under normal circumstances, it is quite costly and time-consuming to expand a business and provide it with new infrastructure. Azure Cloud guarantees the availability of services throughout the year, thanks to its many data centers the world over. As if that is not enough, Microsoft is planning to add even more servers.

Azure Cloud boasts of having a physical infrastructure in every continent. This allows for replication in the case where an organization would like to expand beyond the borders of one continent.

Final thoughts
There is no doubt that Azure Cloud is a game-changer in cloud computing. The public cloud service, IaaS, for instance, is making cloud computing very easy while providing a simple way of managing physical servers and data center infrastructure. If you picture the future of cloud computing, you are probably thinking serverless cloud, enhanced data security, improved business analytics, and business scalability. Azure Cloud provides it all. It holds the future of cloud computing in its hands – or in the cloud – so to speak!

Microsoft on Wednesday announced the acquisition of ReFirm Labs, a provider of security solutions for organizations using Internet of Things (IoT) and network edge devices.

Fulton, Md.-based ReFirm Labs was founded by former U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) hackers in 2017, producing security products for large enterprises and small-to-medium businesses. Its inception started earlier, in 2010, with the Binwalk Open Source project, designed to help security analysts extract firmware images from devices, according to a ReFirm Labs announcement.

ReFirm’s Web site is fairly upfront about its team coming from the NSA, per a company blurb:

Our team is composed of former offensive cyber professionals from the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), where we specialized in the weaponization of device vulnerabilities. When IoT adoption exploded across the commercial sector, we knew that more businesses than ever were exposing themselves to attacks — so we turned our offensive cyber innovations into proactive tools for corporate leaders.

Microsoft is buying ReFirm Labs “to enrich our firmware analysis and security capabilities across devices that form the intelligent edge, from servers to IoT,” according to David Weston, Microsoft’s director of enterprise and OS security, in the announcement. To that end, it’s adding ReFirm Lab’s Centrifuge firmware platform, he added.

Centrifuge was replaced with Binwalk Enterprise, an analysis product designed for use by larger organizations such as telcos and device manufacturers, according to a January ReFirm Labs announcement. Binwalk Teams is the company’s other product for small and midsize organizations. The product differences have to do with things like the availability of policy and compliance reporting capabilities, and more, as described in this product comparison sheet (PDF).

It’s not clear from the company announcements whether ReFirm Labs’ products will continue to be sold. Microsoft’s announcement suggested they will be folded into Microsoft products. The deal’s terms weren’t described.

Weston described the ReFirm Labs acquisition as being synergistic to Microsoft’s earlier acquisition a year ago of CyberX, which built security solutions for both IoT devices and the operational technology used in industrial systems. Microsoft was a partner with CyberX before acquiring the company, and CyberX’s technology was later added to Microsoft’s Azure Defender for IoT security solution.

The ReFirm Labs acquisition will be used to help both builders of IoT and Edge devices and their customers, Microsoft contended. It offered the following illustration to that effect:

Microsoft explained in a video that IoT device builders are unintentionally shipping devices with software exposed to “known threats” that then get sold to businesses. Those businesses also are unaware of the flaws, mostly because it’s difficult to detect vulnerabilities at the firmware level. The ReFirm Labs addition will bolster Azure Defender for IoT to detect the problems, adding “firmware protection, certificates and device updates” capabilities. Device builders can address vulnerabilities early on by uploading their firmware for analysis in Microsoft’s cloud.

The acquisition adds to Microsoft’s general efforts to address security issues at the firmware level. Other efforts along those lines, according to the announcement, include Microsoft’s Pluton security processor, Secured-core PCs and Microsoft’s emerging Windows Server 2022 Secured-core server approach.

Microsoft announced last week that the ability to use Azure Monitor to monitor Windows Virtual Desktop environments is now at the “general availability” commercial-release stage.

Windows Virtual Desktop is Microsoft’s virtual desktop infrastructure service, commercially launched in September 2019. It houses the operating systems (Windows 7 and Windows 10) and apps on Microsoft’s servers for remote access by end users. While Windows Virtual Desktop lets organizations have a more centralized management control over Windows apps and devices, which can even be thin-client devices, it possibly comes with complexities.

However, an “insights” capability in Azure Monitor at least promises better monitoring of Window Virtual Desktop service health.

“With Azure Monitor for Windows Virtual Desktop, you can find and troubleshoot problems in the deployment, view the status and health of host pools, diagnose user feedback and understand resource utilization,” Microsoft’s announcement indicated.

The new Azure Monitor capability brings improved data collection. Cost estimates are said to be better optimized. The user interface for Windows Virtual Desktop setups is said to be easier, including when setting up virtual machines and Windows Event Logs. Warnings now appear at the top of the Host Diagnostics page, as well.

Microsoft warned preview users of the Azure Monitor for Windows Virtual Desktop solution that they will have to go through some manual configuration steps in order to optimally switch to the general availability release version. Those steps are needed to “help reduce your Azure Monitor Log Analytics cost,” Microsoft explained in this March 25 announcement.

The use of Azure Monitor comes with its own complex cost structure, which is outlined at this Microsoft pricing page. Organizations pay for what they use, but there are various charges associated with Azure Monitor use, which are broken down in detail on the pricing page.

Organizations using Azure Monitor for Windows Virtual Desktop will need to have an Azure Log Analytics account for the data storage aspects.

“To start, we recommend you choose the pay-as-you-go model and adjust as you scale your deployment and take in more data,” Microsoft indicated in this document on Azure Monitor for Windows Virtual Desktop regarding the Log Analytics account that’s needed.

Azure Monitor for Windows Virtual Desktop doesn’t appear to support complex virtual desktop infrastructure environments right now.

“Windows Virtual Desktop currently only supports monitoring one subscription, resource group, and host pool at a time,” Microsoft’s document explained in a note.

To use Azure Monitor for Windows Virtual Desktop, organizations will need to be using “the latest release of Windows Virtual Desktop that’s compatible with Azure Resource Manager,” the document indicated, without naming the version. Organizations also need a Log Analytics workspace where data collection is enabled for Windows Virtual Desktop diagnostics and performance. Some read-access permissions also need to be turned on.

Microsoft also recommends using “Windows Events Logs from your Windows Virtual desktop session hosts” with Azure Monitor for Windows Virtual Desktop.

London, United Kingdom & Redmond, Wash., United States:
Schlumberger and Microsoft announced an expanded strategic partnership to accelerate new technologies for the energy industry. The first offering, the Schlumberger Enterprise Data Management Solution for the OSDU Data Platform—a new industry standard for energy data—is available today. Energy companies will now benefit from an OSDU-compliant solution, and the ability to seamlessly connect to the DELFI* cognitive E&P environment from Schlumberger. The Enterprise Data Management Solution is ready for global customers to deploy on Microsoft Azure, Schlumberger’s preferred global public cloud platform for OSDU-compatible solutions.

The companies’ mutual contributions to the first commercial release of the OSDU Data Platform establish the foundation of the Schlumberger Enterprise Data Management Solution. Through this partnership they will enhance the Enterprise Data Management Solution, tighten integration with OSDU and develop new scalable data ingestion capabilities, unified AI templates and domain services. These new joint solutions will be built using industry focused cloud, data and AI innovations and domain expertise from Microsoft and Schlumberger. The companies will work together to bring these new products to market, including sales, service and support.

“Introducing a global cloud-based data solution, built by Schlumberger and Microsoft, means the energy industry can fully embrace their digital transformation with confidence. By working together, we have opened access to data and AI, unlocking significant potential for productivity increases and performance gains across all domains,” comments Hinda Gharbi, executive vice president Services and Equipment, Schlumberger. “These new possibilities and opportunities have become a reality today; our joint solution is available for deployment on Azure across the globe. Our industry can now quicken the pace of innovation to accelerate the digital future of energy.”

“Our expanded partnership with Schlumberger underscores the vision we share to help the energy industry’s digital transformation,” said Scott Guthrie, executive vice president, Cloud + AI, Microsoft. “By harnessing AI technologies, companies can simplify their data to gain valuable insights and streamline workflows. Built on Azure, and open and interoperable by design, these new solutions and platforms will enable every customer and partner in the energy industry to compete and thrive.”

Schlumberger

Schlumberger (SLB: NYSE) is a technology company that partners with customers to access energy. Our people, representing over 160 nationalities, are providing leading digital solutions and deploying innovative technologies to enable performance and sustainability for the global energy industry. With expertise in more than 120 countries, we collaborate to create technology that unlocks access to energy for the benefit of all.

NEW YORK, March 18, 2021 /CNW/ — QuerySurge today announced the availability of its enterprise data validation & testing solution in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, an online store providing applications and services for use in the Azure cloud. QuerySurge customers can now take advantage of the productive and trusted Azure platform, with streamlined deployment & management and pay-as-you-go pricing.

“We are excited to release QuerySurge in the Azure marketplace as a pay-as-you-go solution,” said Bill Hayduk, CEO of RTTS and leader of the QuerySurge software division. “Microsoft Azure solves some of the biggest challenges that our customers face - procuring the optimal environment with flexible scalability, full disaster recovery capabilities and enterprise-level security. And the new pay-as-you-go pricing, where customers pay only for what they use each month, provides great financial flexibility.”

QuerySurge automates the data validation and testing of data warehouses, big data lakes, data migration projects, BI reports and enterprise applications with full Azure DevOps functionality for continuous testing of customers’ data pipeline.

Integration with Microsoft Azure DevOps

QuerySurge now provides an extension for Azure DevOps, Microsoft’s toolchain for developing and deploying software.

“The QuerySurge integration with Azure DevOps allows users to automate the data validation in their DevOps CI/CD pipelines,” said Hayduk. “Implementing QuerySurge throughout the development cycle ensures that data changes, whether during data migrations from on-prem to the cloud or full in-cloud data warehouse testing, load as expected throughout the current DevOps cycle and corresponding releases.”

QuerySurge

Launched in 2012, QuerySurge ensures that data extracted from data sources remains intact in the target data store by analyzing and pinpointing any differences quickly. With over 150 customers in 30+ countries and a partner ecosystem that includes 70+ leading technology vendors, systems integrators and consulting organizations, QuerySurge is at the forefront of the data quality movement.

QuerySurge is the software division of RTTS, the premier pure-play QA & testing organization that specializes in test automation. Headquartered in New York, RTTS has had 1,000+ successful engagements at over 700 corporations since 1996. RTTS is a Microsoft Gold DevOps Partner and has been part of the Microsoft partner ecosystem since 2005.

In a bid to ramp up its cloud portfolio in China, Microsoft is planning to open a new Azure region in the country through its local operating partner, 21Vianet.

The move comes amid growing demand for cloud services in China.

This expansion is expected to effectively double the capacity of Microsoft’s intelligent cloud portfolio in China in the coming years, which includes Azure, Microsoft Office 365, Dynamics 365, and Power Platform operated by 21Vianet, Microsoft said in a blog post on Friday.

According to the white paper, China Cloud Industry Development1, the cloud market in China is expected to reach 300 billion yuan (approximately $46 billion) in 2023.

In response to the pandemic, 63 per cent of organisations in China are leveraging cloud-related innovations to accelerate digitisation in their products, payments, e-commerce, automation, and more.

“This unveils a big opportunity. Microsoft Cloud operated by 21Vianet was the first international public cloud compliantly launched in China through a local operating partner,” Alain Crozier, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft Greater China Region (GCR), said in a statement.

“The upcoming region will reinforce the capabilities to help further nurture local talents, stimulate local innovation, grow local technology ecosystems, and empower businesses in a wide range of industries to achieve more,” Crozier said.

Microsoft has been collaborating with 21Vianet to run its cloud services in China since 2014 as foreign cloud service providers are prohibited from owning and operating their own datacentres in the country.

In accordance with Chinese regulatory requirements, Azure regions operated by 21Vianet in China are physically separated instances from Microsoft’s global cloud but are built on the same cloud technical base as its global peers.

The consistent architecture across China and global markets makes it easy for multinational companies to transplant their IT systems and business applications to China or vice versa.

“Announced in 2012, and officially launched in March 2014 with two initial regions, Microsoft Azure operated by 21Vianet was the first international public cloud service to become generally available in the China market,” Omar Khan, General Manager, Microsoft Azure, wrote in the blog post.

“Following Azure, Microsoft Office 365, Dynamics 365, and Power Platform operated by 21Vianet successively launched in China in 2014, 2019, and 2020.”

The biggest challenge we face, is the lack of our ability to come together. Because of this, the technology industry has seen a major shift toward cloud computing. Defined as a web-based computing model, cloud computing allows users to share information with other devices and computers instantly. This can allow multiple people to access the same files and data with minimal effort and can also give users the option to easily store large amounts of data.

The way the cloud works is quite simple and very cost-effective. Rather than investing in expensive hardware or renting that hardware from an enterprise data center, you pay to access the huge pool of cloud resources available from, in this case, Microsoft. These resources allow your business to host email and web servers, store files and data, create virtual machines and applications, and much more.

As your business grows and you require more resources, you simply purchase more from the cloud. No need to upgrade or maintain existing hardware or increase floor space and electricity costs. Everything in the cloud is done remotely, from basic email hosting to running applications and complex data analysis, which means the demands on your local computers and network are significantly reduced. All you need to be able to do on-premise is run your cloud platform from a reliable internet connection – the platform itself will handle everything else, leaving you free to focus on critical business activities.

These days, many businesses take advantage of the convenience offered through cloud platforms. The second-largest cloud service provider is Microsoft Azure. As a computing platform, it also functions as an online portal that can be used to manage and access various services and resources that Microsoft offers. With over 200 products and cloud services, MS Azure can help your business to build, run and manage applications across multiple locations and on-premises through the cloud, customized to your business needs. This huge range of cloud services for every type of business to streamline and scale their operations, without the need for physical infrastructure, maintenance or upfront costs. Instead, you have full control of the price and pay only for what you use. Microsoft Azure puts your cloud services in your hands and gives you the tools you need to manage, grow and improve your business from anywhere.

Retire your local servers when you move all your server functions to the cloud with less physical infrastructure to manage.

Pay only for what you use so your company can scale and grow without any large capital investments. You have total control over your costs each month with predictable monthly fees and can easily adjust your usage and capacity on demand to suit your budget. Azure can spin-up or spin-down services as needed, so you are not paying for resources when not in use, like your line of business applications and file access (weekends/evenings, etc.). The key is the set-up from your IT Provider. With Azure, you can save up to 25% when you prepay.

With all your key business applications and data in the cloud, you minimize your risk of downtime and you are spontaneously protected when disaster strikes. Downtime is limited to a matter of hours, not days, and your staff and remote users have permanent access no matter what.

Build, monitor and maintain your Azure cloud solution to ensure optimal performance continuously with ongoing monitoring and support from your Microsoft Azure Specialist. You can rest easy knowing your IT infrastructure is in expert hands while you focus on what is important for your business.

Cost, security, speed, scalability and productivity are the main benefits of using cloud computing through Microsoft Azure.

Microsoft Azure offers a range of flexible pricing options to suit businesses and cloud environments of every size. There are no upfront costs – in fact, you can get started with Microsoft Azure for free for 30 days in certain circumstances, then pay only for what you consume.

Products and services are priced individually, making it easy for your IT team or Provider to pick and choose the resources you need and scale up as your business grows. You will want to carefully analyze and select the right plans for performance (CPU), redundancy, memory, hard drive type (solid state for performance-disk access), and storage capacity.

Together with a team of more than 3,500 Microsoft Azure cybersecurity experts working to protect your business assets and data, you can also continually monitor your security and get deeper insights from Microsoft Azure’s built-in Security Center. Here you can get a consolidated view of your cloud health, apply policies to comply with security standards and best practices, fix common misconfigurations, and analyze security data to ensure you are ahead of any threats.

Microsoft Azure also gives you the ability to secure your resources with identity management and security features such as multi-factor authentication, identity protection, access review, conditional access, and a key vault to encrypt and store passwords, keys and other confidential information.

Build, monitor and maintain your Azure cloud solution to ensure optimal performance continuously with ongoing monitoring and support from your Microsoft Azure Specialist. You can rest easy knowing your IT infrastructure is in expert hands while you focus on what is important for your business.

The latest market report Global Database as a Service Market report is a detailed research and statistical analysis given by IMR Research to offer a comprehensive and an in-depth study over the market with the help of regional demand estimation forecast, drivers, challenges, opportunities, threats, opportunities, etc. The report also contains Pre-Commodity pricing volatility where our experts composes a detailed study of the market in order to draw the inference that are in the market and deduce them to estimate the forthcoming market. The primary purpose of the report is to help the client know the Database as a Service market thoroughly with every aspect that our analysts at Introspective Market Research provides such as the niche segment analysis, market potential, DROCs, and challenges.

Two major factors for the growth of this industry are the modern lifestyle adopted by most of the consumers across the globe. Due to the modern lifestyle by the corporate individuals and the social media trends followed by the millennials across the globe, there is a heavy demand for this industry. For which, the analysis is provided in the Introspective Market Research report. In this Database as a Service market report, there is an in-depth analysis done by our analyst at IMR for the products strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and the threats developed by the Database as a Service market. Segmentation and the competitive analysis are done for the major key players in the global industry with the detailed analysis of their manufacturing, production and revenue for the base, history and the forecast period. Major key trends, drivers, restraints and Five Porter’s analysis is done for each segment and region wise.

Due to the quick spread of the covid-19 and the restrictions on the business have impacted a lot of industries across the globe. Now most of the industries with now running the market online has changed the business scenario after the pandemic hit the world. Most companies have continuity and contingency plans after the COVID-19 impact with new business strategies and development for the industry. During the lockdown that was observed in most of the countries, many people diverted their attention to having the rapid growing businesses to heavy demand by the consumers for the same which is boosting the industry for the favorable future.

Competitive evaluation of top market participants with the detailed analysis of each of their competitor industry players is shown in the report statistically and with the help of infographics. This Database as a Service market report provides the business profile of market participants together with specifications, strategies, future and growth strategies. Our team at IMR provides a regional demand estimation with the key players and a detailed analysis on them. We utilize the knowledge for the Database as a Service market to draw a forecast with the historical data for the niche areas. Additionally, an evaluation of flaws and their strengths gives a competitive edge, enhanced productivity which will be beneficial to the organization’s efficiency to further analyze the market and the competition. Detailed chapter wise analysis is shown by our experts in the report for the Database as a Service market. Strong market players analysis is given in detail and the statistics for their revenue is given with the utmost accuracy.

Market Synopsis, definition, scope and premises are explained for each of the segment in the first chapter with the Methodology. Further, the snapshot of each segment region and company wise are explained in the report for the Database as a Service market. Indicative Metrics and the market by Insights and Trends are given in the report with detailed statistics and the info graphics. Further, for the major participant’s detailed analysis of the company overview, strategic initiatives, financial performance and technology insights are shared in the report.

Global Database as a Service Market Segmented by Product Type:
On Cloud, On Premises

Global Database as a Service Market Segmented by Application:
Application A, Application B, Application C

Global Database as a Service Market Segmented by Region:
North America (U.S.; Canada; Mexico), Europe (Germany; U.K.; France; Italy; Russia; Spain etc.), Asia-Pacific (China; India; Japan; Southeast Asia etc.), South America (Brazil; Argentina etc.), Middle East & Africa (Saudi Arabia; South Africa etc.)

The Database as a Service market report is a combination of intelligence research exploring almost every component of the insights from the market. Market participants may utilize this report to find out about the competition and the competitive environment in the industry. With the help of utmost accurate data that IMR provides could be utilize to gain the monopoly in the market to build a platform for the unparalleled usage of the commodities. Our team at IMR inspects the competition in the industry for the Database as a Service market which will aid our client to meet the customers need and have a promising growth. The report is in detail with the statistics so that players can prepare themselves to gain market share. This report study provides a complete description of the advancement and the major markets. The user is provided with facts and figures related to the industry and significant factors like consumption, production, earnings CAGR and the fluctuations in market size. The report shares volume growth, market share, attractive index, value and gross margins.

Key Insights covered in This Report:
• Performance of the global Database as a Service Market in recent years and its likely growth rate in the coming years
• Key regional markets in the global Database as a Service industry
• Strategies of merchandise offerings and important players
• Various stages in the value chain of the Database as a Service market
• Key driving factors and challenges in the Database as a Service Market
• Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the industry
• Niche and Potential segments or areas exhibiting promising expansion
• Existing key players in the industry, along with their SWOT analysis and the market size in the forecast period.

Introspective Market Research (introspectivemarketresearch.com) is a visionary research consulting firm dedicated to assist our clients grow and have a successful impact on the market. Our team at IMR is ready to assist our clients flourish their business by offering strategies to gain success and monopoly in their respective fields. We are a global market research company, specialized in using big data and advanced analytics to show the bigger picture of the market trends. We help our clients to think differently and build better tomorrow for all of us. We are a technology-driven research company, we analyse extremely large sets of data to discover deeper insights and provide conclusive consulting. We not only provide intelligence solutions, but we help our clients in how they can achieve their goals.

Microsoft this week described a few security products that have reached “general availability” (GA) or commercial-release status, while also touting its overall security-market position.

Reaching GA are some Azure Security Center capabilities, Azure Defender for IoT and Application Guard for Office. These releases were announced on Wednesday. On Tuesday, Microsoft’s security-business prowess was highlighted in the company’s fiscal-year 2021 Q2 earning report given by Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO. He noted that Microsoft’s security solutions revenue recently surpassed $10 billion.
A transcript was needed since a near-eight-minute gap occurred during the Tuesday presentation.

Microsoft’s $10 billion security revenue figure was enough for researchers at analyst and consulting firm Forrester to declare that “Microsoft is now a cybersecurity behemoth.”
Security Stats
Microsoft security stats were touted in a Wednesday announcement by Vasu Jakkal, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for security, compliance and identity. She offered the following security highlights:

Microsoft Defender blocked “almost six billion malware threats” in 2020.
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 blocked “more than 30 billion email threats” in 2020.
Azure Active Directory processes “more than 30 billion authentications” per day.
Azure Sentinel “analyzes over 4 petabytes of data each month.”
Microsoft solutions are protecting “more than 400,000 customers across 120 countries.”
Jakkal suggested that no other software company was handing “security, compliance, identity, and management as an interdependent whole.”

“Microsoft’s security organization is an intense, massive collaboration that drives services, intelligence, technologies, and people — all coming together as one humming machine with a singular mission,” she added.

Application Guard for Office GA
Application Guard for Office is Microsoft’s more improved approach for dealing with malicious files found on Web sites and in e-mail attachments. The product reached GA status, Microsoft announced on Wednesday. It had been at the preview stage back in August.

Microsoft has long had a Protected View security mechanism that mainly just acts as a precaution when users attempt to open documents attached in e-mails. Protected View permits end users to turn on editing in the documents, which can also enable attacks. With Application Guard for Office, these files get opened in a virtual machine “sandbox” environment, namely a “Hyper-V-enabled container,” which is isolated and prevents any malware from spreading into systems.

Despite the product’s name, Application Guard for Office is just for subscribers to the Office 365 service. Additionally, organizations can only get Application Guard for Office when they subscribe to E5-type plans, a top pricing option. Microsoft’s announcement also noted that “Application Guard works in conjunction with Microsoft Defender for Office 365,” a security solution that’s part of the newly renamed Microsoft Defender product line. Other security components in Microsoft Defender for Office 365 include “Safe Attachments, Safe Links, and Safe Documents,” the announcement explained.

Microsoft’s announcement affirmed that Application Guard for Office won’t be turned on by default for licensees:

Azure Security Center Enhancements
The Azure Security Center portal now has multicloud management capabilities, with the ability to work with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) reaching GA status, Microsoft announced on Wednesday.

It seems that just some capabilities are at GA in Azure Security Center, though. Microsoft specifically pointed to the ability to show AWS and GCP misconfigurations in its “Secure Score Model and Regulatory Compliance” features as being available.

Microsoft additionally turned on “Azure Security Benchmark as the default security policy for Azure Security Center,” which is conceived as bolstering its recommended policy settings.

Also at GA is the ability to use Azure Defender for Servers with Microsoft’s Azure Arc product to “simplify the on-boarding and security of virtual machines running in AWS, GCP and hybrid clouds.” Azure Arc is Microsoft’s multicloud management portal that also supports on-premises implementations, per a Microsoft “Overview” document. Azure Defender for Servers appears to be a component of the Microsoft Defender for Endpoint security solution. It’s tersely described in this Microsoft document as adding “threat detection and advanced defenses for your Windows and Linux machines.”

In response to customer feedback, Microsoft now lets organizations “exempt resources” from Secure Score “at a subscription level and now at a management group level.” Secure Score is Microsoft’s security assessment service. Some organizations apparently requested this exemption because they are using “third-party technology” (non-Microsoft solutions) for their security-posture assessments.

Azure Defender for IoT GA
Microsoft also announced on Wednesday that Azure Defender for IoT, its agentless security solution for unmanaged “Internet of things” devices and so-called “operational technology endpoints,” has reached GA status. It had been at the public preview stage back in October. The solution is designed to work with devices that use “specialized industrial protocols such as Modbus, DNP3, and BACnet.”

Azure Defender for IoT works with Microsoft recently acquired CyberX technologies to discover devices, find vulnerabilities and perform continuous device monitoring. Governance details are handled, too, when the service is used with a security information and event management solution, such as Microsoft’s Azure Sentinel. It also works with “Splunk, IBM QRadar and ServiceNow” solutions.

Azure Defender for IoT can be used on a customer’s site, or it can be tapped as an Azure service. The latter approach lets organizations connect Azure Defender for IoT with Microsoft’s Azure Defender security services. Alternatively, there’s a “hybrid” deployment possibility, “where security monitoring is performed on-premises but selected alerts are forwarded to a cloud-based SIEM like Azure Sentinel,” the announcement explained.

Microsoft is seeing a re-acceleration of growth in its Azure cloud platform, which helped drive results that blew past Wall Street expectations for the company’s latest quarter.

The Redmond, Wash.-based company on Tuesday reported that revenue for Azure spiked 50 percent during its fiscal second quarter of 2021, ended Dec. 31, compared to the same period a year earlier. That’s even faster growth than during Microsoft’s previous quarter sequentially, when Azure revenue had climbed 48 percent year-over-year.
In total, the company reported revenue of $43.08 billion for its fiscal Q2. That’s up 16.7 percent from $36.91 billion during the same quarter a year ago, and well above the Wall Street consensus estimate for the quarter of $40.18 billion.

“These were blowout numbers that will be another feather in the cap for the tech sector as the cloud growth party is just getting started in our opinion led by MSFT,” wrote Daniel Ives, managing director for equity research at Wedbush Securities, in a note to investors on Tuesday.
The Azure results propelled 23-percent revenue growth in Microsoft’s intelligent cloud segment, which reached $14.6 billion during the quarter.

“With Azure, some of the core differentiation we have [is] when it comes to our hybrid leadership, some of the new data products that are highly differentiated and competitive in the marketplace–as well as the integration with every other layer of our stack,” CEO Satya Nadella said during Microsoft’s quarterly earnings call with analysts Tuesday.

Those factors–paired with industry solutions the company now offers in healthcare and retail verticals–“are all leading to that time to value, the price differentiation and cost advantage to customers–and most importantly, [to] agility in their ability to build their own digital capability,” Nadella said. “So that’s what you see in the acceleration around Azure.”

Perficient, No. 55 on CRN’s Solution Provider 500 for 2020, “is seeing rapid growth across several Microsoft technologies” including Azure, said Jeffrey Davis, chairman and CEO of the St. Louis-based solution provider, in comments provided by email to CRN.

“Azure continues to expand in multiple directions across several industries. COVID forced businesses to be nimble, which placed a high priority on real-time access to data to make critical business decisions,” Davis said. “We’re seeing increased client investment in foundational infrastructure, governance, open source and automation technologies such as Terraform and Azure DevOps.”

Meanwhile, “clients are also exploring the full suite of Azure Data Services as workloads are targeted for cloud migration and platform innovation,” he told CRN. “We’re currently supporting several new Azure enterprise customers with wholesale app modernization targeting Azure as well.”

Microsoft’s other commercial cloud businesses also had a strong showing during the company’s fiscal second quarter. Office 365 commercial revenue climbed 21 percent from the same period the year before, while Dynamics 365 revenue grew 39 percent.

Office 365 includes the popular Teams collaboration app, which is continuing to create new growth opportunities for solution providers, Davis told CRN.

“Now that they’ve established a foundation with Teams, many businesses are starting to look at Teams governance as a means to operationalize their Teams deployments and push the platform forward,” he said.

During Microsoft’s quarterly call on Tuesday, Nadella said that Teams is resonating so well with businesses because it “is the first product”—even more so than Outlook was in the past—that can “integrate communications, collaboration and business process.”

The company’s personal computing segment ended up being its largest business during the quarter, pulling in revenue of $15.12 billion–up 14.5 percent from the same quarter a year earlier.

Xbox content and services revenue surged 40 percent during the quarter, while revenue from Windows commercial products and cloud services increased 10 percent and sales of Surface devices grew 3 percent. Windows OEM revenue was up 1 percent during the quarter, year-over-year–though that was a reversal from the previous quarter sequentially, when the Windows OEM revenue fell 5 percent.

Meanwhile, during the call with analysts on Tuesday, Nadella also mentioned the widespread cyberattack stemming from the breach of SolarWinds Orion, which federal officials have attributed to Russian intelligence efforts. Microsoft is among the companies that have been ensnared in the attacks.

“The recent SolarWinds attacks are a stark reminder of how critical security is to our customers,” Nadella said.

During the past 12 months, Microsoft’s security business revenue has grown by more than 40 percent to surpass $10 billion, he said.

“This milestone is a testament to the deep trust organizations place in us, and we will continue to invest in new capabilities across all our products and services to protect our customers,” Nadella said.

In other indicators of Microsoft’s strong quarter, the company’s net income during the period jumped to $15.46 billion, or $2.03 per diluted share, up from $11.65 billion, or $1.51 per diluted share, during the same quarter a year earlier.

Ultimately, customer demand is staying strong for work involving Microsoft technologies even amid uncertain economic conditions, Davis told CRN.

“Our Microsoft customers have expressed great determination to proceed with projects. Current clients are pursuing more development opportunities and new business activity is strong,” Davis said. “In many ways, the uncertainty illuminated the need for additional cloud adoption and the flexibility of cloud services. As this exceptional situation became the new normal, IT leaders recognized preexisting gaps in infrastructure, resilience, and solution delivery – gaps that Azure is perfectly positioned to address.”

And, “as organizations implement Azure for the first time, kicking off large migration efforts or embracing the simplicity of managed services, this renewed wave of transformation is driving tremendous demand for Azure services,” Davis said.

In many ways, the DevOps movement is about removing complexity in the development process to increase release velocity and efficiency. While those abstractions may increase simplicity and narrow focus for developers, the pressure to adopt new tools and processes increases the complexity of securing DevOps infrastructure. Furthermore, DevOps culture empowers developers with a focus on increasing agility and removing roadblocks. However, when done without proper security precautions, this also opens the door to new risks.

Challenges to Security
While there are many tools to identify source code vulnerabilities and protect applications in runtime, securing the development pipeline infrastructure itself is largely an unmet need. The biggest infrastructure security challenge is the source control management (SCM) system. This seems validated by the constant headlines about source code leakage or theft. The list of companies having leaked code recently is a who’s-who of software development: Microsoft, Nintendo, Apple, Tesla, YouTube and more. Even GitHub themselves had a code leak in early November 2020.

Git has made collaboration between developers and teams more streamlined than ever. Yet, several industry trends are increasing the complexity of securing SCMs including: multiple SCMs, often centralized for legacy apps and Git for modern apps; public and private repositories; microservices architectures driving rapid proliferation of repositories; and geographically distributed teams.

The difficulty securing SCMs tends to increase in direct proportion to the size and age of the development organization; the phrase, “Nothing ever really goes away in IT,” contains a grain of truth, despite being cliché. Legacy apps are still run on centralized SCMs like Subversion, Perforce, CVS, etc., while modern apps are in Git-based SCMs like GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket or Azure DevOps. Managing access controls across individual repositories and between cloud and enterprise versions of the same SCM is difficult enough, but establishing and enforcing consistent policy across multiple SCMs is nearly impossible.

Identifying Threats
The key threats to consider are insider vs. outsider and theft vs. accidental leakage. After creating an inventory of the SCM (users, teams, repos, policies, etc.), to prevent theft from insiders and outsiders, software development organizations must apply a “least privilege” access policy, enforce multifactor authentication, investigate all repository forks/clones to ensure they are necessary and monitor public repositories and other sites for the organization’s source code.

While insider and outsider threats are scary enough, inadvertent mistakes are a far more common cause of source code leakage. In addition to the steps taken to prevent theft, organizations should also disable private repositories from being forked/cloned with public access to prevent inadvertent source code leaks.

For organizations developing software, source code is their most valuable asset – it’s what drives user growth and adoption. Far more than plans or trade secrets, source code is, quite literally, a software company’s intellectual property. Repositories are being used to manage configurations for downstream continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines and infrastructure as code. Not only does this further validate the critical necessity of securing SCMs, it also means we must begin to think beyond securing just source code, as we rocket into the era of everything as code.

Change is the Only Constant
Nowadays, every company is a software company, and the source code itself, and the SCMs, grow every day. Challenges exist in terms of the amount of code that needs to be protected, and also in the battle for development and security talent. Constantly changing teams require ongoing updates to access control rules, and the difficulty of finding and retaining security talent exacerbates the inherent SCM challenges to protecting source code while accelerating release schedules and making them more efficient. Much like the focus of IT security has recently shifted from the firewall to the identity and access management (IAM) provider, we expect everything as code will shift the focuse of application security from runtime protection and testing to the SCM itself.

The company says India is one of the world’s largest and fastest-growing auto insurance markets, relies largely on traditional ways to renew policies and process repair claims, which usually required inspectors to physically look over vehicles and assess damages. This leads to a delay in the process of inspection, resulting in keeping the cars and policyholders off the road for longer. To mitigate this challenge, Reliance General Insurance collaborated with Celebal Technologies, a Microsoft partner, to create the new AI solution, which allows customers to buy or renew policies anytime, anywhere.

The new technology uses AI to identify damage from the vehicle image feeds and procures the correct assessment which gets instantly delivered to consumers. In this process, right from the accident spot, the insured can access Reliance Selfi app to intimate the claim, upload the photos and documents to get the claim registered. Once the claim is generated, the AI tool starts processing and almost instantly generates a provisional repair work order for the customer. It also gives an option to the customer to opt for on-the-spot settlement which can be credited in customers’ account immediately.

The insurance company says Rapid brings down the process of claims intimation to claims settlement period, to complete in less than an hour, from an otherwise time-consuming and hassled process that took an average period of 10 to 12 days.

Rakesh Jain, CEO, Reliance General Insurance said, “Introducing this AI-based solution, makes the entire vehicle claims process completely superfast and hassle-free for our customers. This technology brings the much-needed acceleration to more than 60% of claims we receive for our passenger vehicles which have just peripheral damages. With the use of Rapid, a significant decrease in the claim processing time is achieved, which will result in an enhanced customer service experience. This initiative connects well with our brand philosophy ‘Tech + Heart’, offering tech solutions with human touch.”

Venkat Krishnan, executive director, Commercial Partners, Microsoft India said, “Microsoft’s goal is to amplify human ingenuity by making the benefits of AI accessible and valuable to everyone. We are pleased to collaborate with Reliance General Insurance to bring the power of artificial intelligence and its transformative impact to reimagine the experience for their customers. We thank our partner Celebal Technologies for creating the solution, which makes the both the renewal and claims processes agile and more efficient, in a secure and scalable manner.”

Microsoft is reportedly designing Arm-based chips for Azure servers and some Surface PCs, signaling the computer giant’s increasing willingness to lower its reliance on Intel.

Bloomberg reported Friday that the Redmond, Wash.-based company is working on in-house processor designs for its own servers that run Azure, mirroring an effort by Amazon Web Services, which has already began offering cloud instances using its own Arm-based server CPUs, Graviton.

The news organization, which cited unnamed sources familiar with the plans, said Microsoft is also exploring its own chip designs for some Surface PCs, which already include models with chips co-designed with Qualcomm and AMD separately.

In a statement to CRN, Frank Shaw, corporate vice president of communications at Microsoft, confirmed that the company is investing in its own chip design capabilities.

Because silicon is a foundational building block for technology, we’re continuing to invest in our own capabilities in areas like design, manufacturing and tools, while also fostering and strengthening partnerships with a wide range of chip providers,” he said.

Intel did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Arm, which licenses chip designs to companies that make their own processors, has been making a bigger push into the data center over the past few years with its Neoverse platform. In September, the company revealed its V1 and N2 core designs, both of which Arm said significantly outperform CPUs made by Intel and AMD while also having high energy efficiency.

“The emergence of Arm in the data center is being powered by many factors: customization, efficiency, ecosystem diversity, but all of that builds on top of performance,” Chris Bergey, senior vice president and general manager of Arm’s infrastructure business, said in September. “If Neoverse wasn’t delivering a significant measurable value proposition you would not see the market adoption and momentum that we are achieving.”

But Arm has also been finding more success with client computers in recent times, most notably with Apple’s Arm-based M1 processor, which is now available in a few Mac models. Apple has said that the M1 can outperform competing processors by up to two times.

Adding to the intrigue is the fact that Nvidia, a semiconductor company that primarily makes GPUs but is also starting to built its own server systems, is in the process of acquiring Arm from its current owner, SoftBank, for US$40 billion.

That this year has been an interesting one for us in IT is an understatement. It’s been a very good year for public cloud though, with record growth in AWS and Azure. And for many businesses, the “digital transformation” journey towards the cloud has been highly accelerated. Maybe last year’s small proof-of-concept Azure deployments have grown into full-scale production resources. Or the inability to access your co-lo datacenter servers due to COVID-19 restrictions has forced a migration of VMs to public cloud.

Whatever the reason, you may find yourself responsible for a lot more cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) resources and now taking stock of the security posture of all of it.

This article will look at the comprehensive guidance Microsoft offers for “how to do security” in Azure and how to use the tool that brings it all together: Azure Security Center (ASC).

Cloud Adoption Framework

The CAF is a good place to start, at any stage in your cloud journey, particularly for larger businesses. Based on cloud adoption best practices from Microsoft, partners and customers, it has guidance and tools to shape technology, people and processes for cloud success. It covers strategy and planning, migration, governing, management, organization and innovation. Here we’re going to focus on the security strategy, part which covers conceptS such as securing your cloud resources as well as using cloud technology to transform how you do security, along with the shared responsibility model.

Moving to the cloud means that some parts of security (physical hosts/network/datacenters) are now the responsibility of the provider, whereas other parts stay with you (data, endpoint devices, accounts and identities). Further, with IaaS you still have to secure the OS and applications in your VMs, apply network controls and manage your identity directory (Azure Active Directory — AAD). Using PaaS services shifts some of these responsibilities to the cloud provider, depending on the service you’re using. This is one reason that you should look to modernize your applications away from IaaS towards PaaS as there’s less for you to secure, but new features to understand to ensure a good security resilience.

The CAF also covers different admin security roles involved in managing cyberrisk and how they change when you’re in the cloud. More direct guidance is also on offer through a set of recommendations and a reference implementation.
The Well-Architected Framework, on the other hand, is a set of assessments building on these five pillars:

Cost Optimization
Operational Excellence
Performance Efficiency
Reliability
Security
The assessments ascertain where you’re at today, and then spits out a set of curated guidance to improve your approach.

CloudKnox Security extended support for serverless functions on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). The enhancement adds serverless functions to a substantial list of permissions management capabilities, including users, bots, service accounts, access keys, and other resources.

The company also announced an integration with ServiceNow, the next step of many towards realizing CloudKnox’s next gen cloud security and permissions management vision.

Together, the support for serverless functions and ServiceNow integration underscore CloudKnox’s market lead with the most comprehensive support offering in the cloud infrastructure entitlement management (CIEM) segment.

With this extension, CloudKnox customers gain remediation for multi-cloud serverless functions, allowing security and infrastructure teams to generate a right-sized permissions policy based on activity of roles associated with the serverless function.

In a recent assessment within CloudKnox’s customer base, the company discovered that by categorizing serverless function as non-human identities, the ratio of human to non-human identities jumped from 1 in 5 to 1 in 10.

Given the industry shift from cloud native architecture to microservices, this ratio is expected to continue growing and has led to a need for a holistic permissions management platform. As such, it is critical that organizations take proactive control over managing resources and identities permissions.

“The ephemeral nature of serverless functions leads people to believe that over provisioning for serverless functions is harmless. But the reality is that serverless functions are full-fledged machine—non-human—identities, meaning they can access your infrastructure in the same way a human user can,” said Raj Mallempati, Chief Operating Officer, CloudKnox.

“If a serverless function is over-permissioned, it can cause the same costly damage—either accidentally or maliciously—to an enterprise’s infrastructure that a human user can. As with all identities, serverless functions must be monitored and right-sized when necessary.”

To manage the exponential increase in identities, many companies use information technology service management (ITSM) tools for permissions management and security incident tracking. By integrating with ITSM tools, such as ServiceNow, CloudKnox makes permission automation and permissions on demand possible.

Rather than granting always-on “standing permissions,” organizations can enable access to permissions and resources that are needed for specific tasks for a predefined time, at which point the permissions are rescinded automatically. Plus, by prioritizing such integrations, CloudKnox can fit into any customer’s existing technology ecosystem—no matter the tools they have deployed.

“We’re working with our customers and partners to mitigate the risk of permissions abuse by eliminating the permissions or entitlements gap, thereby preventing unauthorized access to sensitive data,” said Mallempati.

“We take pride in assisting our clients with the monumental challenge of securing their hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructures by identifying their Cloud Permissions Gap risk and successfully implementing the principle of least privilege (PoLP) and Zero Trust access to address it.”

As CloudKnox continues to maintain their industry-leading market position, the company will be introducing more product features in the coming months, including support for container workloads on Kubernetes.

The Cloud Permissions Management Platform was recently named among CRN’s Top 10 Hottest Cloud Startups of 2020 and offers a free Cloud Identity Risk Assessment to help enterprises understand their cloud identity and resource risk profile.

Microsoft on Thursday announced the general availability of its Azure Hybrid Benefit solution for Linux customers in India.

Azure Hybrid Benefit is a licensing benefit that helps organisations to cut the costs of running workloads in the cloud, Microsoft said.

It helps customers “seamlessly” migrate to on-premises Windows Server and SQL Server licenses, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) virtual machines (VMs) to Microsoft Azure.

The solution enables significant reduction in cost of running workloads on-the-cloud by converting existing PAYG (pay-as-you-go) virtual machines (VMs) to bring-your-own-subscription (BYOS) billing, Microsoft said.

The solution gains significance in view of the fact that businesses face challenges in migrating workload to public cloud due to regulatory and data sovereignty related issues.

This is common in highly regulated industries such as financial services, healthcare, and government.

Also, some workloads, especially those related to edge, require low latency.

Additionally, many organisations have significant on-premises investments that they want to maximise so they choose to modernise on-location datacenters and traditional apps.

This includes in on-premises licenses and subscriptions, and the inability to migrate them to cloud often affects the return on investment and total cost of ownership.

Azure solves this by acknowledging this investment and not charging for subscriptions or licenses again when customers move to the cloud, Microsoft said.

Globally, over 1,500 Linux virtual machines were migrated during the preview period to Azure using the new Azure Hybrid Benefit capabilities, enabling significant cost reduction for enterprise running Linux workloads in Azure, the company added.

SAP and Microsoft announced today an expanded partnership to enable customers to design and operate intelligent digital supply chain and Industry 4.0 solutions in the cloud and at the edge.

The partnership, which includes a collaborative approach to standards, consortia, and open source, will shape the future of supply chain and manufacturing.

SAP Digital Supply Chain and Industry 4.0 Solutions Run on Microsoft Azure
As a result of this partnership, organizations will be able to use a comprehensive set of SAP Digital Supply Chain solutions on Microsoft Azure, including SAP solutions for digital manufacturing, SAP Intelligent Asset Management solutions, SAP Integrated Business Planning, and SAP Logistics Business Network.

SAP will use Microsoft Azure to run these solutions in a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model that can help reduce the customer’s need to manage the software and underlying infrastructure while accelerating time to value of supply chain applications. Customers will be able to scale globally by leveraging Azure which offers enterprise-grade compute, storage, and network services to support mission-critical performance and business continuity to run SAP Digital Supply Chain solutions.

SAP Manufacturing Suite, SAP Intelligent Asset Management, supply chain networks solutions from SAP, and the SAP Internet of Things (SAP IoT) solution are already available on Microsoft Azure in Europe and the United States today.

SAP and Microsoft Collaborating to Bring Business Processes to the Edge
Historically, enterprises have been reluctant to migrate mission-critical factory applications to the public cloud, primarily due to security, regulatory requirements, and availability concerns.

In addition, when managing a global, distributed supply chain and manufacturing environment, companies face challenges with constrained bandwidth, latency, and massive volumes of data that can adversely affect execution and quality scenarios. Here, the solution lies in edge computing.

Think of edge computing as a form of distributed computing where data, applications, and business processes are run near the source of generated data. The ability to extend and run business processes at the edge enables organizations with factories, plants, warehouses or remote operations, to fully automate and run their operations independently – enabling faster processing and support for data residency requirements. Customers have the choice to only send data to the cloud that is relevant for additional analysis or an aggregated view across many edges to save costs.

SAP and Microsoft are also collaborating to make SAP solutions available on Microsoft Azure Stack Edge, starting with SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud. This helps manufacturers process data locally across machines and control systems to address latency or connectivity restraints.

Customers are empowered to choose what business process to run in the cloud or at the edge based on business need; they can deploy specific business processes and relevant business data to specific edge nodes using SAP Edge Services. According to IDC research, ‘70% of IoT deployments by 2023 will include edge-based decision-making to support organizations’ operational and strategic agendas.’ The report also states that by ‘2023, 70% of enterprises will run varying levels of data processing at the IoT edge. In tandem, organizations will spend over $16 billion on IoT edge infrastructure in that time.’

Customers have a choice to use either Microsoft Azure IoT or SAP IoT to bring their time series data to the cloud. Time series data collected from machines or devices at the edge and sent to the cloud is of little value on its own. Companies need to put time series data into business context by augmenting it with information stored in business applications for materials, products, customers, inventory, assets, and more. Combining business semantics and time series data using the SAP IoT solution creates business relevance, leading organizations to improved business outcomes and better decision-making.

‘The expansion of the partnership between SAP and Microsoft provides our mutual customers with the ability to leverage SAP Digital Supply Chain and manufacturing solutions in the cloud to gain better business insights and accelerate the time-to-value as they roll out their applications on a global scale. By extending SAP Digital Supply Chain solutions and the Azure cloud capabilities to the edge with Azure Stack Edge, businesses will also be able to manage SAP solutions locally across their factories and warehouses to drive immediate decision-making and actions where they are needed,’ said Ulrich Homann, corporate vice president of Cloud + AI at Microsoft.

Companies Will Provide Reference Architecture as Guidance to Their Customers
The partnership in supply chain and manufacturing will be further enhanced with reference architectures to provide customers guidance on deploying SAP Digital Supply Chain on Azure and the integration of SAP and Microsoft products and services, building on previously developed architecture blueprints.

For example, customers have a choice to use either Microsoft Azure IoT or SAP IoT to bring their time series data to the cloud. Time series data collected from machines or devices at the edge, and sent to the cloud, may be of little value on its own. Companies need to put time series data into business context by augmenting it with information stored in business applications for materials, products, customers, inventory, assets, and more. Combining business semantics and time series data using the SAP IoT solution creates business relevance, leading organizations to improved business outcomes and better decision-making.

SAP and Microsoft Shape the Future of Industry 4.0 with Open Standards
With software development and standards, the benefits of aligned reference architectures and common semantics are obvious. Adopting industrial standards and creating shared asset models in industrial IT are as significant to digital supply chain as a dictionary is to literacy. Business partners who wish to succeed in this space need to endorse open standards, open consortia, and open source.

As part of this partnership, SAP and Microsoft will work together to drive compatibility and interoperability across industrial machines, software, and services as members of consortia like the Open Manufacturing Platform and the Open Industry 4.0 Alliance – to aid in the accelerated path to value of supply chain and Industry 4.0-related solutions based on open standards.

Microsoft on Dec. 7 announced Azure Government Top Secret, a new cloud for Top Secret classified data, and outlined new features of Azure Government and the expansion of Azure Government Secret as part of its annual Government Leaders Summit.

In a Microsoft Azure blog, Tom Keane, corporate vice president of Azure global, said Azure Government Top Secret, which has been undergoing federal accreditation, is designed to provide the same capabilities as the commercial version of Azure, Azure Government and Azure Government Secret, “enabling a continuum of compute from mission cloud to tactical edge.”

New features of Azure Government Secret, which is authorized by both Department of Defense impact level 6 and intelligence community directive 503, address needs of application developers and security analysts. The new Azure Kubernetes Service and Azure Container Instances will allow developers to better deploy and manage containerized applications. With Azure Sentinel and Azure Security Center analysts can collect, analyze, and act on telemetry data from their Azure and on-premises environments to deliver unified security and proactive threat management.

For the Azure Government cloud, Availability Zones give users redundancy and logical isolation of data center services, assuring that critical customer services and workloads are available anywhere 24/7. Additionally Windows Virtual Desktop in Azure Government recently became available, accredited at the high level by the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program.

To address needs of users working on the tactical edge, Microsoft announced rugged hardware to that supports low-latency data processing, making it easier for agencies to deploy artificial intelligence and machine learning to the network edge or access satellite data in disconnected environments. The Azure Modular Data Center — available at impact levels 5 and 6 – was announced in October, but now has a high availability power module and a network high availability module that provides network resiliency through multiple satellite communication partners in different orbits.

The ruggedized versions of Azure Stack Hub, Azure Stack Edge Pro R and the portable Azure Stack Edge Mini R are now generally available for customers in Azure Government and Azure Government Secret.

Microsoft made these government cloud announcements as part of its annual Government Leaders Summit.

With the $10 billion Department of Defense JEDI cloud contract still in court, Microsoft launched a new cloud on Monday to serve government agencies with highly sensitive and classified data: the Azure Government Top Secret cloud.

Tom Keane, corporate vice president for Microsoft Azure Global, said Microsoft has completed the buildout of new Azure Government Top Secret regions targeting the government’s most sensitive and classified workloads. The news comes as Microsoft and Amazon Web Services are tied up in a court battle regarding the U.S. Defense Department’s (DOD) estimated $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud contract.

The contract has been awarded to Microsoft on two occasions. In September, the DOD reaffirmed that Microsoft won the JEDI contract.

However, this month, the DOD said the JEDI contract requires commercial parity, which Microsoft said on Monday it is providing with Azure Government Top Secret.

“We are working with the US Government on accreditation,” said Keane in a blog post on Monday. “As part of our ongoing commitment to commercial parity driven by government mission requirements, Azure Government Top Secret regions are designed to provide the same capabilities as Azure (commercial), Azure Government, and Azure Government Secret, enabling a continuum of compute from mission cloud to tactical edge.”

Keane said the broad range of services offered in Azure Government Top Secret regions will meet the demand for greater agility in the classified space, including the need to gain deeper insights from data sourced from any location as well as the need to enable the rapid expansion of remote work.

“Mission owners will benefit from greater choice in modernizing legacy systems, with a secure cloud platform that works on open standards and open frameworks with tools that work across a wide range of skill levels, from business analysts to developers to data scientists,” said Keane.

The contentious and ongoing litigation process surrounding the JEDI contract has been raging on for well over a year.

In late 2019, the DOD awarded the JEDI cloud contract to Microsoft, but AWS filed a suit challenging the award. AWS has argued that President Donald Trump’s political interference in the contact stemming from his antipathy toward Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos has corrupted the selection process.

The military initiated its 120-day review period in March after a federal judge identified at least one shortcoming in the vendor evaluation process that delivered the lucrative JEDI contract to Microsoft over its rival. That process has been delayed.

In May, Microsoft urged Amazon to “stand down on its litigation” opposing the JEDI contract, arguing the ongoing legal and administrative challenges were keeping the best tools out of the hands of U.S. warfighters.

Contentious legal battles — first between Oracle and AWS even before the JEDI contract was awarded, followed by AWS and Microsoft — have drastically delayed the U.S. military’s ambitious and expensive plan to modernize IT resources across all branches of the armed forces.

Microsoft’s implementation of products and services for the JEDI contract still have to wait for an injunction imposed by a federal court in February to be lifted

Microsoft on December 3 introduced a preview of a cloud-based data governance service, called Azure Purview, to help organizations understand and manage their data.

Free until January 1, Azure Purview automates the discovery and cataloging of data on-premises, in the cloud, and in SaaS applications. Information needed to govern data and assess compliance risks is gathered.

Microsoft said the service enables the creation of a holistic, up-to-date map of the company’s entire data landscape. Billed as the next generation of the data catalog, Azure Purview purports to reduce costs on multiple fronts, including reducing efforts to discover and classify data while eliminating hidden and explicit costs of maintaining homegrown systems and Excel-based solutions.

Capabilities of Azure Purview include:

Automated data discovery.
Sensitive data classification, with data labeled across SQL Server, Azure, Microsoft 365, and Power BI.
End-to-end data lineage.
Finding of valuable, trustworthy data by data consumers.
Integration of data systems using Apache Atlas APIs.
Semantic search and data discovery using business or technical terms.
Creation of a map of data across hybrid sources, with metadata management provided.
Extraction of metadata, lineage, and classifications from existing data stores.
AI-based data classifiers help identify data exposures and out-of-compliance data by looking for personally identifiable information and sensitive data.
In February, Azure Purview’s data discovery, classification, and mapping capabilities will be available for data managed by other storage providers. Azure Purview was announced concurrently with the general availability of Azure Synaptics Analytics, an analytics service leveraging data integration, data warehousing, and enterprise data analytics.