Microsoft Continues to Innovate and Differentiate Their Offerings
Microsoft’s Ignite Conference
Last week, I attended Microsoft’s Ignite conference in Orlando, FL. It was the first time Evolving Solutions has attended the conference, and it reflects our continuing commitment to deliver hybrid cloud solutions to our clients. Public cloud is not new news, but I believe we’ve reached a new phase of public cloud maturity where multi and hybrid cloud options are being properly weighed by businesses today.
Each of the top cloud providers (Microsoft’s Azure, AWS, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and IBM) has transitioned from evangelism to steady competitive growth. The push by each provider to get client workloads, particularly data, onto their platform is certainly a continued theme. The Microsoft Ignite conference was a great opportunity to understand better how Microsoft is innovating and continuing to differentiate their offerings.
The Announcement of Azure Arc
Microsoft’s investments in Azure were readily apparent, as was their continued focus on Data and AI. They continue to lower the barrier to using advanced data capabilities, creating options, but also requiring important considerations on which platform is the best for an individual business. One of the most interesting items showcased was Microsoft’s announcement of Azure Arc.
Azure Arc enables deployment of Azure services anywhere and extends Azure management to any infrastructure, simplifying complex and distributed environments across on-premises, edge, hybrid, and multi-cloud. With Azure Arc, customers can now realize the benefits of cloud innovation, including always up-to-date data capabilities, deployment in seconds (rather than hours), and dynamic scalability on any infrastructure. These benefits support Evolving Solutions’ Hybrid Cloud focus and add to our offerings to achieve your cloud requirements.
The other big take -away from the week is from a Cybersecurity perspective. There will be insurers (not Microsoft) that will offer insurance for data breaches, which will bring significant changes to security practices and requirements. Of course, it’s not possible to get the business value from any of this innovation without adopting a proper Cloud Architecture, the governance, and practices to ensure your business requirements are properly fulfilled and implemented in the cloud.
While the classes and presentations were top-notch, one of my favorite activities was to visit “The Hub.” The Hub was where Microsoft had all their experts at different booths ready to do a deeper dive in any MS technology. Also, other vendors had their booths for all of their “add-on” Microsoft & Azure tools and offerings.
Moving Forward
I’m excited about some of the new Azure capabilities that provide components of this and I’m looking forward to the options they provide for our clients. If you have any questions about the conference or how you can continue to move forward in your cloud journey, feel free to reach out to me.
