Microsoft’s new tools help devs manage cloud deployments on the go

Source – heraldkeeper.com

The Basic tier will be broadly available and the Standard tier will be available in a limited number of Azure regions.

While new tools and updates were demonstrated and discussed, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella set the tone for the conference by noting a fundamental shift in the world view of computing.

Described by Microsoft as a database built from scratch to “power planet-scale cloud services” with both strong power and fault tolerance capabilities and the ability to handle all manner of data, including documents, graphs, and columnar, Cosmos DB has evolved out of DocumentDB, the NoSQL database service.

“It is a pretty unbelievable world you can create using intelligent cloud and intelligent edge”.

All of these devices can be managed centrally from the Azure IoT Hub and developers can write their applications in C, Node.js, Java, .NET and Python.

Microsoft has announced support for MySQL and PostgreSQL as fully managed instances on the Azure cloud platform. And Visual Studio Team Services integration allows for continuous integration and deployment of these containerized applications. These will give the familiar open source databases in a platform-as-a-service style, removing the administrative overhead that comes of using them and making it easier to move workloads using them into Azure.

For those that don’t think that Microsoft is gunning for Oracle, well the Redmond company also launched a migration service that allows developers to take third-party and SQL Server databases to the Azure SQL Database – with Big Red being one of those third-party vendors.

For those unfamiliar with Azure, this is essentially Microsoft’s offering in the cloud platform space and is in many ways, not dissimilar to Amazon Web Services (AWS), or Google Cloud Platform (GCP), as it looks to offer the same sort of access and features.

Another intelligent service, the Microsoft Bot Framework, lets developers create ways for people to interact with AI in conversational ways. During that time, enterprises have been trying to figure out how to get there from here: choosing apps to move, building new ones, managing security controls and extending on-prem footprints to the cloud. Those services include Bing Custom Search, Custom Vision Service, Custom Decision Service and Video Indexer. For example, one new offering unveiled yesterday, Presentation Translator, will use Microsoft’s Translation APIs to enable real-time translations in a variety of languages during PowerPoint presentations.

The Cortana Skills Kit is now in public preview. But there was plenty for the developers who will build new apps and services used by businesses and consumers. Available in public preview in the U.S., the Cortana Skills Kit is available in Windows 10, iOS, Android, and new Cortana powered Invoke speakers.