Wow, February already!!! Holy s**t!  Where did the time go?

Lots of Azure news coming through this time of the year in the lead up to Microsoft Ignite AU. Azure News below, as heard on the Need to Know podcast. Follow the Need to Know podcast on Twitter @n2kpodcast. In the lead up to Microsoft Ignite, we are featuring on the podcast all the presenters that are presenting at Microsoft Ignite.

As always, appreciate the feedback, either constructive or non-constructive. Keep it coming, feedback@needtoknow.cloud

Microsoft Azure Germany expands services and compliance

Azure Germany has been opened for business since September 2016 and they have just recently made available a number of new services.

Two new compliance certifications:

• ISO/IEC 27001 – Information security management. Now that Azure Germany has this family of standards, it helps organisations manage the security of assets such as financial information, intellectual property, employee details or information entrusted to you by third parties.
• ISO/IEC 27018 – Security techniques, Code of practice for protection of personally identifiable information (PII) in public clouds acting as PII processors. Now that Azure Germany has this, they have accepted control objectives, controls and guidelines for implementing measures to protect Personally Identifiable Information (PII) in accordance with the privacy principles in ISO/IEC 29100 for the public cloud computing environment.

In addition to this, Azure Germany we has announced 4 major functionality releases:

• HDInsight on Linux – is Azure’s fully-managed cloud Hadoop offering – providing optimised open source analytic clusters for Spark, Hive, MapReduce, HBase, Storm, Kafka and R Server. These big data technologies and ISV applications are easily deployable as managed clusters with enterprise-level security and monitoring – enabling customers to extract critical business insights from their valuable data sources.
• With the combination of Azure services and Power BI in Azure Germany, customers can turn their data processing efforts into analytics and reports that provide real-time insights into their businesses. Power BI has several Azure connections available and customers can connect one or several Azure data sources, then shape and refine the data to build customised reports.
• Azure Cool Blob Storage provides a low-cost storage option for cool data such as backups, media content, or archive data.
• With the Mobile Apps capabilities of the Azure App Service in Germany, customers can leverage a highly scalable, mobile application development platform that enables them to build native and cross platform mobile experiences with a rich set of enterprise connected capabilities.

More info.

SQL Database Query Editor available in Azure Portal

Microsoft have announced the availability of an in-browser query tool that provides an efficient way to execute queries on Azure SQL Databases and SQL Data Warehouses without leaving the Azure Portal. With this editor, you can access and query databases without needing to connect from a client tool or configure firewall rules.

Common queries can be run in this editor, such as create new table, display table data, edit table data, create a stored procedure, or drop table. You have the flexibility to execute partial queries or batch queries in this editor. And by utilising syntax highlighting and error indicating, this editor makes writing scripts much easier.

More info.

Why developers need Microsoft Azure skills in 2017

Demand for professionals with Azure skills will increase as cloud adoption continues to rise and cloud-applications become more sophisticated.

80% of Microsoft customers have already deployed or fully embraced the cloud. By 2020, the idea that a company has no cloud infrastructure may be as rare as a ‘no internet policy’ is today.

Since its launch, Microsoft Azure has been widely adopted across businesses – with over 66% of Fortune 500 companies relying on the technology to operate – and more high profile adoptions in early 2017.

There is a lack of qualified professionals, and a 2016 study of 120 Microsoft Partners found that Azure skills were the hardest to source.

 

There are now six free MOOC (Massively Open Online Courses) Azure training courses available. These free online courses are ideal for entry-level and seasoned developers looking to get Azure knowledge.

Microsoft have also introduced discounted exam vouchers for Azure related courses, which can help developers without Azure skills migrate to the technology. Exam vouchers can be used across any Azure course – including the Microsoft Specialist: Developing Microsoft Azure Solutions course.

More info