Announcements from Microsoft Ignite 2018

After a pretty packed keynote, all the information from Microsoft started flowing out and we got bombarded with information about all the big announcements. So this is a summary of all the announcements so far.
You can also get a compressed PDF file from Microsoft containing all the new announcements –> https://news.microsoft.com/uploads/prod/sites/507/2018/09/IGNITEBOOKOFNEWS-5ba8f830261da.pdf

Some news was released a couple of days ago as well which was Microsoft Managed Desktop which also will be coming in a seperate blogpost after I’ve gotten some more information during Ignite. You can read more about it here –> http://bit.ly/2MZ7fVr

Azure Virtual Desktop (Which is essentially an DaaS offering which is the evolution of RDmi combined with multiuser Windows 10) more on that in a seperate blogpost. You can read more about it here –> http://bit.ly/2MWvL9G but this is also the service that Citrix is building their DaaS offering on top of as well.

Azure DataExplorer which is a PaaS service that you can use in your own custom applications to get realtime analytics, more info about it here –> http://bit.ly/2zr0EQ0

Public Preview of Azure Frontdoor which is a combination of web accelerator, CDN and load balancing and intelligent traffic management –> http://bit.ly/2xzazBI

Major announcements to Azure Networking, including Azure Firewall, Azure Virtual WAN now GA, Including also
ExpressRoute 100 GBps direct and Expressroute GlobalReach and also a new feature called Virtual TAP which allows for true networking forwarding to other packet brokers such as IXIA You can read more about it here –> https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-networking-fall-2018-update/

Also from a Security perspetive, Microsoft made a range of enhancements and new products such as introducing Secure Score as part of Azure Security Center also introducing Microsoft Threat Protection which you can read more about here –> https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/microsoftsecure/2018/09/24/delivering-security-innovation-that-puts-microsofts-experience-to-work-for-you/

On the infrastructure compute side and Storage. Microsoft announced Ultradisk which allows IOPS up to 160,000 and also bumping up the size and and performance of regular standard HDD, and also now GA of Standard SSD.
Microsoft has been behind the competition here compared to Google and AWS. They also introduced new instances types such as NVv2 VMs (preview) which now provides M60 on the same instance type but now together with SSD performance finally! You can read more about it here –> Storage: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/introducing-the-public-preview-of-larger-managed-disks-sizes/ All Infrastructure announcements: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/a-crazy-amount-of-new-azure-infrastructure-announcements/

They also came with some enhancements to Autopilot, which now supports Hybrid and existing devices you can read more about it here –> http://bit.ly/2IabPzt

When it came to AzureStack there wasn’t that to many big announcements yet, only that Event Hub and IoT Hub are coming more info here –> https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/new-investments-in-azure-stack-extend-microsoft-s-hybrid-cloud-leadership/

Public preview of Azure SQL Database Hyperscale. SQL Database Hyperscale is a new SQL-based and highly scalable service tier for single databases that adapts on-demand –> https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-azure-sql-database-hyperscale-public-preview/

Azure Functions v2 is now GA as well, which can now run in more environments, including locally on Mac or Linux machine. More info here –> https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/introducing-azure-functions-2-0/

They also announced SQL Server 2019 which now  creates a unified data platform with Apache Spark and Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) packaged together with SQL Server as a single, integrated solution. More info here –> https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2018/09/24/sql-server-2019-preview-combines-sql-server-and-apache-spark-to-create-a-unified-data-platform/

Many announcements to IoT including Public Preview of Storage blob on Edge –> https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/filecab/2018/09/24/announcing-public-preview-of-azure-blob-storage-on-iot-edge/

Introducing also Azure Blueprints and Azure Resource Graph which provides us a way to use command-line tool (supports Azure CLI and Azure PowerShell) to rapidly query complex details about your Azure resources and with Blueprint too which allows us to create an Azure native package of artifacts (resource groups, policies, role assignments, Resoure Manager templates –> https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/governance/

Open Data initiative together with Adobe and SAP to provide partners which a way to get information. You can read the pressnote here –> https://news.microsoft.com/2018/09/24/adobe-microsoft-and-sap-announce-the-open-data-initiative-to-empower-a-new-generation-of-customer-experiences/

Now expanding support for On-demand files for OneDrive on MAC, more info here –> https://support.office.com/en-us/article/try-files-on-demand-for-mac-529f6d53-e572-4922-a585-e7a318c135f0

Alot of new support for new database features in Azure, including now with Azure MariaDB in Preview, ATP for MySQL and PostgreSQL –> https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/latest-updates-to-open-source-database-services-for-azure-ignite-2018/

Loads of new enhancements to Azure SQL and Datawarehouse and DataBriks https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/ignite-2018-making-ai-real-for-your-business-with-azure-data/

Annoucement of Azure Digital Twins which allows us to create a comprehensive digital model of any physical environment. This includes a model of people, places, and things as well as the relationships and processes that bind them. Also Azure IoT Central moves into general availability. Can read more about it here –> https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/microsoft-azure-enables-a-new-wave-of-edge-computing-here-s-how/

New Monitoring Capabilities with Azure Monitor to monitor the entire stack –> https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/new-full-stack-monitoring-capabilities-in-azure-monitor/

Leave a Reply

Scroll to Top