Unlocking Efficiency: Microsoft Cost Management Strategies for Optimal Business Performance

Introduction

In the ever-evolving landscape of business technology, Microsoft has positioned itself as a cornerstone for organizations seeking seamless operations. One critical aspect that demands meticulous attention is cost management within the Microsoft ecosystem. In this article, we delve into unparalleled strategies and insights, steering your business towards optimal performance and fiscal responsibility.

Understanding Microsoft Cost Components

Azure Cloud Services: Navigating the Cost Labyrinth

Navigating the intricate world of Azure Cloud Services requires finesse. Organizations often grapple with unexpected expenses due to mismanagement. To mitigate such challenges, it's imperative to leverage tools like Azure Cost Management and Billing. This robust suite empowers businesses to track, analyze, and optimize their cloud expenditures, ensuring every penny is judiciously spent.

Licensing: A Blueprint for Cost-Efficient Software Usage

The labyrinth of Microsoft licensing can be overwhelming, but mastering it is paramount for cost efficiency. Tailoring your licensing model to your organization's specific needs can result in significant savings. Consider adopting Microsoft 365 E5 for comprehensive security and productivity features, ensuring maximum value for your investment.

Implementing Effective Cost-Control Measures

Resource Optimization: Maximizing Efficiency, Minimizing Costs

In the dynamic realm of technology, ensuring your resources are optimized is synonymous with cost control. Azure Reserved Instances offer a compelling solution, allowing businesses to reserve virtual machines at a discounted rate, substantially reducing operational costs. By strategically planning resource allocation, you enhance efficiency while keeping expenses in check.

Automation: Streamlining Operations for Cost Savings

Automation emerges as a game-changer in Microsoft cost management. Power Automate and Azure Logic Apps empower organizations to automate routine tasks, minimizing manual efforts and, consequently, costs. By embracing automation, businesses unlock a pathway to efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

Realizing Long-Term Cost Efficiency

Scalability: Balancing Growth and Expenditure

As your business evolves, scalability becomes pivotal. Microsoft's Azure Auto Scaling allows your infrastructure to adapt dynamically to demand, ensuring you pay only for the resources you need. This strategic approach ensures that your IT infrastructure scales seamlessly with your business growth, promoting long-term cost efficiency.

Continuous Monitoring and Optimization: A Never-Ending Journey

Cost management is not a one-time endeavor; it requires continuous monitoring and optimization. Regularly assess your usage patterns using tools like Azure Advisor, which provides personalized recommendations to optimize costs. By staying vigilant and proactive, your organization remains at the forefront of cost efficiency.

Conclusion

In the realm of Microsoft cost management, knowledge is power. Embrace the intricacies of Azure, master licensing nuances, implement effective cost-control measures, and realize long-term efficiency. Microsoft offers a rich tapestry of tools and services; unlocking their full potential is the key to achieving optimal business performance.

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Key customer benefits of the Microsoft and MongoDB expanded partnership

As we welcome the era of AI, it’s important to remember that data is the fuel that powers AI. With this understanding, it’s clear why our goal is to make Azure the best destination for data. In Azure, customers benefit from a comprehensive portfolio of database products including relational, non-relational, open source, and caching solutions. We have also established deep partnerships, like the one we have with MongoDB Inc., to enable digital transformation using their databases as managed offerings in Azure.

MongoDB is a leading data platform company that gives developers an intuitive way to model their data. We’ve partnered with MongoDB for years but this year we deepened our partnership significantly, culminating in a multiyear strategic partnership agreement. We’re incredibly proud of the work we’ve done together to make Azure a great place to run MongoDB Atlas. In the past six months alone, MongoDB has become one of our top performing Azure Marketplace partners driven by the adoption of the MongoDB Atlas on Azure pay-as-you-go self-service offering.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower everyone to achieve more, and we know that our customers like using MongoDB to build applications. In year one of our strategic partnership, we collaborated with MongoDB to make it even easier for our joint customers to do more with Microsoft services and MongoDB Atlas on Azure. We’ve enabled developers to use MongoDB Atlas in 40+ Azure regions globally—with our most recent new location being in Doha, Qatar, which we announced last month at our Ignite conference. And we know it’s not just about the data center, it’s also critically important to make it easy for developers to get started with MongoDB Atlas on Azure. GitHub Copilot makes it easy to build MongoDB applications on Azure due to its proficiency in making code suggestions and we’re working together to further improve GitHub Copilot’s performance using MongoDB schema, among other things.

We’ve already seen customers reaping the benefits of our strategic partnership. For example, our joint work with Temenos helped to enable their banking customers to reach record-high scale. And in another case, Mural, a collaborative intelligence company, shared their experience of building with MongoDB Atlas and Microsoft Azure to help their customers collaborate better and smarter.

MongoDB at Microsoft Ignite 2023

We continue to make investments to improve the customer experience of running MongoDB Atlas on Azure. In November, at Microsoft Ignite 2023, Microsoft and MongoDB announced three significant integrations: Microsoft Semantic Kernel, Microsoft Fabric, and Entity Framework (EF) Core. Let’s look at how customers can benefit from each one.

1. Semantic Kernel is an open source SDK that enables combining AI services like OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, and Hugging Face with programming languages like C# and Python. At Ignite, MongoDB announced native support for MongoDB Atlas Vector Search in Semantic Kernel. MongoDB Atlas Vector Search allows customers to integrate operational data and vectors in a unified and fully managed platform. Now, customers can use Semantic Kernel to incorporate Atlas Vector Search in applications. This enables, for example, using Atlas Vector Search to interact with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) in their work with large language models (LLMs), thereby reducing the risk of AI hallucinations, among other benefits.

2. Microsoft Fabric can reshape how your teams work with data by bringing everyone together on a single, AI-powered platform built for the era of AI. MongoDB Atlas is the operational data layer for many applications, these customers use MongoDB Atlas to store data from internal enterprise applications, customer-facing services, and third-party APIs across multiple channels. With connectors for Microsoft Fabric pipelines and Dataflow Gen2, our customers can now combine MongoDB Atlas data with relational data from traditional applications and unstructured data from sources like logs, clickstreams, and more. At Microsoft Ignite, we saw exciting announcements making this integration seamless and easy to use for MongoDB customers. During the first keynote, Microsoft announced that Microsoft Fabric is now generally available, and shared a new frictionless way to add and manage existing cloud data warehouses and databases, like MongoDB, in Fabric called Mirroring. Now, MongoDB customers can replicate a snapshot of their database to OneLake and OneLake will automatically keep this replica in sync in near real-time. You can read more on how to unlock the value of data in MongoDB Atlas with the intelligent analytics of Microsoft Fabric here.

3. Millions of developers depend on C# to write their applications, and a large percentage of these use Entity Framework (EF) Core, a lightweight, extensible, open source and cross-platform version of the popular Entity Framework data access technology. MongoDB announced that MongoDB Provider for EF Core is now available in Public Preview. This makes it possible for developers using EF Core to build C#/.NET applications with MongoDB while continuing to use their preferred APIs and design patterns.

In each case, we’ve worked closely with MongoDB to ensure developers, data engineers, and data scientists can easily connect their MongoDB data to Microsoft services.

Image of Satya Nadella, Microsoft Chairman and CEO, presenting at Microsoft Ignite.

A year of strengthened collaboration

These new integrations follow a banner year of collaboration between Microsoft and MongoDB. Beyond Microsoft Ignite, we’ve shared a lot of excellent developer news:

• The MongoDB for VS Code Extension was made generally available in August 2023. VS Code is the world’s most popular integrated development environment (IDE), and developers downloaded the MongoDB extension over 1 million times during its public preview. This free, downloadable extension makes it easy for developers to build applications and manage data in MongoDB directly from VS Code.
• MongoDB integrated with a range of services across the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform (MIDP), including:
• Azure Synapse Analytics, to make it easier to analyze operational data
• Microsoft Purview, so users can connect to and safeguard MongoDB data
• Power BI, making it possible for data analysts to natively transform, analyze, and share dashboards that incorporate live MongoDB Atlas data
• Data Federation: Atlas Data Federation can now be deployed in Microsoft Azure and supports Microsoft Azure Blob Storage in private preview.

Microsoft AI and cloud partners help customers achieve more. This is achieved by partners working together on that Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform, which includes Databases, Analytics, AI, and Governance.

• Jointly published tutorials and more covering:
• Building serverless functions with MongoDB Atlas and Azure Functions using .NET and C#, NodeJS, or Java;
• Creating MongoDB applications using Azure App Service and NodeJS, Python, C#, or Java;
• Building Flask and MongoDB applications with Azure App Container Apps;
• Developing IoT data hubs for smart manufacturing with MongoDB Atlas and Azure IoT;
• Connecting MongoDB Atlas and Azure Data Studio to allow Azure customers to work with their data stored in Atlas on Azure alongside data stored in other Azure data services

It has been a great year for Microsoft and MongoDB, together making it easier for organizations of all sizes to do more with their data.

Source: microsoft.com

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What’s new in Azure Data, AI, & Digital Applications: Modernize your data estate, build intelligent apps, and apply AI solutions

I write this blog each month to help navigate through the intense pace of news and innovation we’re releasing for customers. And what a year we’ve had! We witnessed incredible advances at breathtaking speed as AI reshaped what’s possible across industries, organizations, and our day-to-day lives.

Personally, I’m loving the features and capabilities of Copilot for Microsoft 365, especially meeting summaries after a Teams call so I can quickly access the most important points and any actions. We’re still experimenting with AI to craft marketing narratives across my team and it’s exciting to see how AI enhances our own creativity.

AI technology is not brand new. It’s been improving experiences across applications and business processes for some time but, the broad availability of generative AI models and tools this year was a watershed moment.  

Customers and partners made quick pivots to bring AI into their transformation roadmaps, and within months were deploying applications and services powered by AI. I have never seen a new technology generate such profound change at this pace. It shows how ready many organizations were for this moment; how investments made in the cloud, data, DevOps, and creating transformation cultures set the stage for AI adoption. This year Microsoft introduced hundreds of resources, models, services, and tools to help customers and partners maximize AI.

This month, I’m pleased to expand this blog’s scope and bring in what’s new for digital applications for a holistic look at everything we’re delivering to help customers modernize their data estate, build intelligent applications, and apply AI technologies to help achieve their business goals. Let’s go.

New models and multimodal capabilities available in Azure AI

Our focus is to deliver the most cutting-edge open and frontier models available so developers can build with confidence and unlock immediate value across their organization.  

Last month we announced a significant expansion of Azure OpenAI Service and introduced Models as a Service (MaaS). This is a way for model providers to offer their latest open and frontier LLMs on Azure for generative AI developers to integrate into their applications.

And just last week, we announced the availability of MaaS for Llama 2. With MaaS for Llama 2, developers can integrate with their favorite LLM tools like Prompt Flow, Semantic Kernel, and LangChain with a ready-to-use API and pay-as-you go billing based on tokens for LLMs. This allows generative AI developers to access Llama 2 via hosted fine-tuning without provisioning GPUs, greatly simplifying the model set up and deployment process. Then they can offer their custom applications utilizing Llama 2, purchased through and hosted on the Azure Marketplace.

Model catalog in Azure AI Studio Preview

We continue to advance our Azure OpenAI Service and recently launched several multimodal AI capabilities that empower businesses to build generative AI experiences with image, text and video, including:

• DALL·E 3, in preview: Generate images from text descriptions. DALL·E 3 is a remarkable AI model that does just that. Users describe an image, and DALL·E 3 will be able to create it.
• GPT-3.5 Turbo model with a 16k token prompt length, generally available, and GPT-4 Turbo, in preview: The latest models in Azure OpenAI Service enable customers to extend prompt length and bring more control and efficiency to their generative AI applications.
• GPT-4 Turbo with Vision (GPT-4V), in preview: When integrated with Azure AI Vision, GPT-4V enhances experiences by allowing the inclusion of images or videos along with text for generating text output, benefiting from Azure AI Vision enhancement like video analysis.
• Fine-tuning of Azure OpenAI Service models: Fine-tuning is now generally available for Azure OpenAI Service models including Babbage-002, Davinci-002, and GPT-35-Turbo. Developers and data scientists can customize these Azure OpenAI Service models for specific tasks.
• GPT-4 updates: Azure OpenAI Service has also rolled out updates to GPT-4, including the ability for fine-tuning. Fine-tuning will allow organizations to customize the AI model to better suit their specific needs. It’s akin to tailoring a suit to fit perfectly, but in the world of AI. Updates to GPT-4 are in preview.

Steering at the frontier: Extending the power of prompting

The power of prompting in GPT-4 continues to amaze! A recent Microsoft Research blog discusses promptbase, an approach to prompting GPT-4 that harnesses its powerful reasoning abilities. Across a wide variety of test sets (including the ones used to benchmark the recently announced Gemini Ultra), GPT-4 gets better results than other AI models (including Gemini Ultra). And it does this with zero-shot chain-of-thought prompting.

Infuse Responsible AI (RAI) tools and practices in your LLMOps

As AI adoption matures and companies put their AI apps into production, it’s important to consider the safety boundaries supporting the short- and long-term ROI of those applications. This month, we continued our series on LLMOps for business leaders with an article focused on how to infuse responsible AI into your AI development lifecycle. We highlight best practices and tools in Azure AI Studio to help development teams put their principles into practice.

Azure AI Advantage offer

Azure Cosmos DB is the cloud database for the Era of AI. It supports built-in AI, including natural language queries, AI vector search capabilities, and simple AI integration with Azure AI Search. We’re investing in helping customers discover these benefits with our new Azure AI Advantage offer, which helps new and existing Azure AI and GitHub Copilot customers save when using Azure Cosmos DB by providing 40,000 Request Units per second (RU/s) of Azure Cosmos DB for 90 days.

What’s new in the Azure data platform—because AI is only as good as your data

Every intelligent app starts with data so a modern data and analytics platform is essential for any AI transformation.

One example of this how multinational law firm Clifford Chance leverages new technologies to benefit their clients. The firm built a solid data platform on Azure to innovate with new technologies, including the new generation of large language models, Azure OpenAI and Microsoft 365 Copilot. Early innovations are already delivering value with cognitive translation proving to be one of the fastest growing products their IT team has ever released.

And Belfius, a Belgian insurance company, built on the Microsoft intelligent data platform using services like Azure Machine Learning and Azure Databricks to reduce development time, increase efficiency, and gain reliability. As a result, their data scientists can focus on creating and transforming features and the company can better detect fraud and money laundering. 

Azure and Databricks: Co-innovation for powerful AI experiences

Microsoft’s Scott Guthrie (left) and Arun Ulagaratchagan (right) with Databrick’s Co-Founder and CEO Ali Ghodsi (center) at Ignite

At Microsoft Ignite 2023 in November the benefits of maturing AI tools and services were in full view as customers and partners shared how Microsoft is empowering them to achieve more. 

Databricks is of one of our most strategic partners with some of the fastest growing data services on Azure. We recently showcased our co-innovation, including Azure Databricks interoperability with Microsoft Fabric, and how Azure Databricks is taking advantage of Azure OpenAI to deliver AI experiences for Azure Databricks’ customers. This means customers can take advantage of LLMs in Azure OpenAI as they build AI capabilities like retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) applications on Azure Databricks, and then use Power BI in Fabric to analyze the output.

If you missed Databricks’ CEO Ali Ghodsi on stage with Scott Guthrie at Ignite, I encourage you to check out the replay of Scott’s full segment Microsoft Cloud in the era of AI. If you only have a few minutes, his wrap up on LinkedIn is a great option, too. It’s a helpful overview of how the Microsoft Cloud is uniquely positioned to empower customers to transform by building AI solutions and unlocking data insights using the same platform and services that power all of Microsoft’s comprehensive solutions.

And for a closer look at our latest work with Databricks, check out the click-thru version of the Modern Analytics with Microsoft Fabric and Azure Databricks DREAM Lab from Ignite.

Now in preview: Azure AI extension for Azure Database for PostgreSQL 

The new Azure AI extension allows developers to leverage large language models (LLMs) in Azure OpenAI to generate vector embeddings and build rich, PostgreSQL generative AI applications. These powerful new capabilities combined with existing support for the pgvector extension, make Azure Database for PostgreSQL another great destination for building AI-powered apps. 

Azure Arc brings cloud innovation to SQL Server anywhere

This month, we’re introducing a new set of enhanced manageability and security capabilities from SQL Server enabled by Azure Arc. With Monitoring for SQL Server, customers can gain critical insights into their entire SQL Server estate and optimize for database performance. Customers can also view and manage Always On availability groups, failover cluster instances, and backups directly from the Azure portal, with better visibility and simplicity. Lastly, with Extended Security Updates as a service and automated patching, customers can always keep their apps secure, compliant, and up to date at all times. 

Lower pricing for Azure SQL Database Hyperscale compute

New pricing on Azure SQL Database Hyperscale offers cloud-native workloads the performance and security of Azure SQL at the price of commercial open-source databases. Hyperscale customers can save up to 35% on the compute resources they need to build scalable, AI-ready cloud applications of any size and I/O requirement. The new pricing is now available.

Digital applications deliver transformational operations and experiences

This era of AI is brought to life through digital applications developed and deployed by companies putting AI to work to enhance their operations and experiences—like a personalized app experience for employees or a customized chatbot for end customers. Here are some recent updates that help make all this innovation possible.

The seven pillars of modern AI development: Leaning into the era of custom copilots

Copilots are generating a lot of excitement and with Azure AI Studio in public preview, developers have a platform purpose-built for generative AI application development. As we lean into this new era, it’s important for businesses to carefully consider how to design a durable, adaptable, and effective approach. How can AI developers ensure their solutions enhance customer engagement? Here are seven pillars to think through when building your custom copilot.

AKS is a leading platform for modern cloud native and intelligent applications

The future of app development is at the intersection of AI and cloud-native technologies like Kubernetes. Cloud-native and AI are deeply rooted together in fueling innovation at scale and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) provides the scale customers need to run their compute intensive workloads like AI and machine learning. Check out Brendan Burn’s recent blog from KubeCon to learn how Microsoft is building and servicing open-source communities that benefit our customers.

There are no limits to your innovation with Azure

It has been amazing to see the tech community and customer response to our recent news, resources, and features across the portfolio, particularly digital applications. 

Resources like the Platform Engineering Guide launched in with Ignite have been incredibly popular, demonstrating the demand and appetite for this kind of training material.  

Seeing how organizations innovate with the technology is what it’s all about.   

Here are a couple of customer stories that caught my attention recently.

Modernizing interactive experiences across LEGO House with Azure Kubernetes Service

We’re collaborating with The LEGO House in Denmark—the ultimate LEGO experience center for children and adults—to migrate custom-built interactive digital experiences from an aging on-prem data center to Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) to improve stability, security, and the ability to iterate and collaborate on new guest experiences. This shift to the cloud enables LEGO House to more quickly update these experiences as they learn from guests. As the destination modernizes it hopes to share learnings and technologies with the broader LEGO Group ecosystem, like LEGOLAND and brand retail stores. 

Gluwa chose Azure for a reliable, scalable cloud solution to bring banking to emerging, underserved markets and close the financial gap

An estimated 1.4 billion people lack access to basic financial services because they live in a country with limited financial infrastructure, making it difficult to get credit or personal and business loans. Gluwa with Creditcoin uses blockchain technology to differentiate their business through borderless financial technology and chose Azure as the foundation to support it. Using a wide combination of our services and solutions—.NET framework, Azure Container Instances, AKS, Azure SQL, Azure Cosmos DB, and more—Gluwa has a strong platform to support their offerings. The business has also boosted operational efficiency with reliable uptime, stable services, and rich product offerings. 

CARIAD creates a service platform for Volkswagen Group vehicles with Azure and AKS

With the automotive industry shifting to software defined vehicles, CARIAD, the Volkswagen Group software subsidiary, collaborated with Microsoft using Azure and AKS to create the CARIAD Service Platform for providing automotive applications to brands like Audi, Porsche, Volkswagen, Seat and Skoda. This platform powers and accelerates the development and service of vehicle software by CARIAD’s developers, helping software become an advantage for the Volkswagen Group in the next generation of automotive mobility.

DICK’S Sporting Goods creates an omnichannel customer experience using Azure Arc and AKS

To create a more consistent, personalized experience for customers across its 850 stores and its online retail experience, DICK’S Sporting Goods envisioned a “one store” technology strategy with the ability to write, deploy, manage, and monitor its store software across all locations nationwide—and reflect those same experiences through its eCommerce site. DICK’S needed a new level of modularity, integration, and simplicity to seamlessly connect its public cloud environment with its computing systems at the edge. With the help of Microsoft, DICK’s Sporting Goods is migrating its on-premise infrastructure to Microsoft Azure and creating an adaptive cloud environment comprised of Azure Arc and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). Now the retailer can easily deploy new applications to every store to support a ubiquitous experience. 

Azure Cobalt delivers performance and efficiency for intelligent applications

Azure provides hundreds of services supporting the performance demands of cloud native and intelligent applications. Our work to maximize performance and efficiency now extends to the silicon powering Azure. We recently introduced Azure Maia, our first custom AI accelerator series to run cloud-based training and inferencing for AI workloads, and our custom in-house CPU series, Azure Cobalt, the first CPU designed by us, specifically for the Microsoft Cloud. 

Cobalt 100, the first generation in the series, is a 64-bit 128-core chip that delivers up to 40% performance improvement over current generations of Azure Arm chips and can power services such as Microsoft Teams and Azure SQL.

With Cobalt, we will deliver performance and economics to meet the demands of resource-intensive workloads like intelligent applications using generative AI for at-scale workloads. Our customized silicon and system features include dynamic power capabilities that can be tuned per-core based on the workload, leveraging the co-optimization of hardware with software to deliver best-in-class performance efficiency. 

Don’t just take it from me and Omar. Rani Borkar, CVP, Azure Hardware Systems shares how Cobalt delivers differentiated performance—and can even help drive toward achieving sustainability goals:

“We’re building sustainability into every part of our hardware for the cloud, from our silicon to the servers. This starts in the design phase, and on Cobalt we made those intentional design choices to be able to control performance and power consumption per core and on every single VM. We’re pleased with the performance we’ve seen testing Cobalt on internal workloads like Teams and Azure SQL, and looking forward to rolling this out more widely to customers as a VM offering next year.”

Grow your data, AI, and intelligent applications understanding and skillset

I often use December downtime to do a deep dive into a new technology or learn a new skill. I’m a data geek, and I have fond memories from a few years ago when I worked through more than a dozen Power BI trainings and loved every minute of it. Demystifying AI and helping customers build the right skillsets is just one way Microsoft is empowering AI transformation. Here are some new learning resources if you are like me and plan to end the year learning something new!

AI in a Minute: Looking for help ramping your teams on generative AI? Or maybe you want to go to end of year gatherings prepared to discuss AI and its possibilities? Our new “AI in a Minute” video series explains generative AI basics in short, snackable bites anyone can digest, regardless of job tile, level, or industry.

GenAI for beginners: This free 12-lesson course is designed to teach beginners everything they need to know to start building with generative AI. 

Microsoft Learn Cloud Skills Challenge—Microsoft Ignite Edition: Skill up for in-demand Data & AI tech scenarios and enter to win a VIP pass to the next Microsoft Ignite or Microsoft Build by completing a challenge by January 15, 2024. 

Cloud Workshop for the SQL Professional—If you missed this workshop at the PASS Data Summit, the labs are available to go through at your own pace. Our next workshop will be in March at the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference, so be sure to register and come see us in Las Vegas.

Accelerate your AI journey with key solution accelerators—Get started building intelligent apps on Azure with newly-published demos, GitHub repos, and Hackathon content to create AI-powered, intelligent apps. Customers and partners can “Build Your Own Copilot” using a click-through demo, sellers and partners can run a Hackathon with customers, and developers can leverage a code repo to quickly build solutions in their Azure account.

What will you build in 2024? Transform your business with a trusted partner

The ability of AI to accelerate transformation across industries, organizations, and daily life will certainly continue at an intense pace in 2024. Microsoft is proud to be your trusted partner in this era of AI and we’re committed to helping you achieve more for your business. I am excited to see how data, AI, and digital applications innovation unfolds for your business in the new year!

Source: microsoft.com

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Cosmic Computing Unleashed: Microsoft Azure Space Transforms the Space Industry

Introduction

In the ever-evolving landscape of technology, Microsoft Azure Space emerges as a transformative force, reshaping the dynamics of the space industry. This groundbreaking venture propels us into an era where cosmic computing takes center stage, promising unparalleled advancements and innovations. In this article, we delve into the profound impact of Microsoft Azure Space on the space industry, exploring its features, applications, and the game-changing potential it holds.

The Power of Microsoft Azure Space

Cosmic Connectivity

Microsoft Azure Space transcends traditional boundaries, offering a cosmic network that redefines connectivity. The high-speed, low-latency communication capabilities enable seamless data transfer between Earth and space, fostering unprecedented collaboration and real-time decision-making. This cosmic connectivity lays the foundation for a new era of space exploration and communication.

Edge Computing in Orbit

One of the stellar features of Microsoft Azure Space is its integration of edge computing in orbit. By deploying computing resources closer to the data source, it eliminates latency bottlenecks, ensuring swift data processing and analysis. This not only enhances the efficiency of space missions but also opens up avenues for advanced research and exploration.

Applications in the Space Industry

Revolutionizing Satellite Operations

Microsoft Azure Space revolutionizes satellite operations by introducing a paradigm shift in satellite management. The integration of AI-powered analytics and real-time monitoring allows for predictive maintenance, minimizing downtime and optimizing satellite performance. This translates into a more efficient and cost-effective satellite ecosystem.

Enabling Scientific Breakthroughs

In the realm of space research, Microsoft Azure Space becomes a catalyst for scientific breakthroughs. The platform's advanced data analytics capabilities empower researchers to analyze vast datasets collected from space probes and telescopes, unlocking new insights into the mysteries of the cosmos.

Collaborative Possibilities

Global Collaboration for Space Exploration

The collaborative potential of Microsoft Azure Space extends beyond borders. Space agencies, research institutions, and private enterprises can leverage the platform to foster global collaboration in space exploration. This opens up possibilities for joint missions, shared resources, and collective efforts towards understanding the universe.

Empowering Small Satellite Ventures

Microsoft Azure Space democratizes space access, particularly benefiting small satellite ventures. The platform's scalability and cost-effectiveness make it an ideal choice for startups and innovators, allowing them to focus on their missions without being burdened by prohibitive infrastructure costs.

Future Outlook

Towards a Cosmos of Opportunities

As we peer into the future, the impact of Microsoft Azure Space on the space industry is poised to grow exponentially. The convergence of cosmic computing, edge computing in orbit, and advanced analytics paves the way for a cosmos of opportunities. From unlocking new frontiers in space exploration to driving innovation in satellite technology, the possibilities are limitless.

Environmental Monitoring from Orbit

Beyond space exploration, Microsoft Azure Space plays a crucial role in environmental monitoring. Satellites equipped with state-of-the-art sensors can collect data on climate patterns, deforestation, and natural disasters, providing invaluable insights for sustainable resource management on Earth.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Microsoft Azure Space emerges as a transformative force, reshaping the landscape of the space industry. Its cosmic computing capabilities, coupled with advanced analytics and collaborative features, position it as a key player in the future of space exploration and technology. As we navigate this cosmic journey, the possibilities are boundless, and the impact on our understanding of the universe profound.

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Azure OpenAI Service powers the Microsoft Copilot ecosystem

Many AI systems are designed for collaboration: Copilot is one of them. Copilot—powered by Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service—allows you to simplify how you design, operate, optimize, and troubleshoot apps and infrastructure from cloud to edge. It utilizes language models, the Azure control plane, and insights about your Azure and Arc-enabled assets. All of this is carried out within the framework of Azure’s steadfast commitment to safeguarding data security and privacy.

A brief history of AI collaboration with copilots

In aviation terms a copilot is responsible for assisting the pilot in command, sharing control of the airplane, and handling various navigational and operational tasks. Having a copilot ensures that there is a second trained professional who can take over controls if the main pilot is unable to perform their duties, thereby enhancing safety.

Microsoft originally introduced the concept of a copilot two years ago as an AI pair programmer in GitHub to assist developers in generating code, catching errors, and suggesting improvements. Today, Azure OpenAI Service powers more than just GitHub Copilot. Microsoft 365 Copilot performs as a digital companion for your whole life creating a single Copilot user experience across Bing, Edge, Microsoft 365, and Windows.

AI at the service of others

Microsoft Copilot represents a profound shift in how AI-powered software can support the user experience, the architecture, the services that it uses, and how we think about safety and security.

“We now have machines that are so fluent in human language. Every place that you interact with a machine ought to be much more fluent in human natural language and I think we’ll start to see that change coming in a lot of different places as well and it will really redefine the interfaces that we’re used to.”—Eric Boyd, head of AI at Microsoft.

Copilots powered by Azure OpenAI Service can be trained on a specific set of data to adapt the model to a specific domain. We’re seeing developments across a variety of sectors. For example:

Language translation: Language translation models can help bridge communication gaps between people who speak different languages. This can be particularly useful in situations such as emergency response, disaster relief, and international diplomacy.

Educational support: Educational chatbots that can help students with homework, provide personalized tutoring, and answer questions related to different subjects.

Crime investigation: Financial crimes such as money laundering and fraud are linked to human trafficking, child exploitation, terrorism, theft, and wildlife trafficking. SymphonyAI’s new Sensa Copilot acts as a sophisticated AI assistant to a financial crime investigator by automatically collecting, collating, and summarizing financial and third-party information.

Medical reporting: Generative AI has the potential to increase the power and accessibility of self-service reporting, making it easier for healthcare organizations and their providers to identify operational improvements, including ways to reduce costs and to find answers to questions both locally and within a broader context.

Climate change: Azure OpenAI Service can be used to generate educational materials or assist in research on topics related to climate change, including natural disasters, global warming, and environmental conservation.

Inclusive and diverse avatars: DeepBrain AI includes a library of photo-realistic and virtual avatars that businesses can use for training videos, news broadcasts, marketing videos, and more. An integral part of the digital world, avatars foster a sense of inclusivity and diversity by allowing people to choose representations that reflect their individuality, regardless of physical appearance or other limitations.

Industrial advances: ABB is partnering with Microsoft to integrate Azure OpenAI Service into its ABB Ability™ Genix Industrial Analytics and AI suite with the goal of boosting real-time insights and asset longevity by 20% and reducing unplanned downtimes by 60%. Additionally, it will aid in monitoring and optimizing industrial emissions and energy usage, contributing to sustainability goals.

Prioritizing human agency

The Copilot System powered by Azure OpenAI Service builds on our existing commitments to data security and privacy in the enterprise. Copilot automatically inherits your organization’s security, compliance, and privacy policies for Microsoft 365. Data is managed in line with our current commitments. Copilot prioritizes human agency and puts the user in control. This includes noting limitations, providing links to sources, and prompting users to review, fact-check, and fine-tune content based on their own knowledge and judgment.

AI systems can analyze and learn from copious amounts of data and help employees make decisions based on that data. They can be programmed for specific tasks such as image recognition and natural language processing.

While technology has the potential to generate both favorable and adverse consequences, technological developments such as Copilot are proving far more likely to help society steer a straight and humane course toward a future that benefits us all.

Our commitment to responsible AI

With Responsible AI tools in Azure, Microsoft is empowering organizations to build the next generation of AI apps safely and responsibly. Microsoft has announced the general availability of Azure AI Content Safety, a state-of-the art AI system that helps organizations keep AI-generated content safe and create better online experiences for everyone. Customers—from startup to enterprise—are applying the capabilities of Azure AI Content Safety to social media, education, and employee engagement scenarios to help construct AI systems that operationalize fairness, privacy, security, and other responsible AI principles.

Source: microsoft.com

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Microsoft is a leader in the 2023 IDC MarketScape for AI Governance Platforms

AI is transforming every industry, enabling new levels of productivity, efficiency, and innovation. AI governance is not only a matter of compliance and risk management, but also a strategic advantage and a source of trust to accelerate returns on AI investment. We are excited to announce that Microsoft is recognized as a Leader in the inaugural IDC MarketScape Worldwide AI Governance Platforms 2023 Vendor Assessment (doc #US50056923, November 2023). The study represents a vendor assessment of the 2023 AI governance platform market through the IDC MarketScape model. The IDC MarketScape looked at AI governance platforms that ensure AI and machine learning lifecycle governance, collaborative risk management, and regulatory excellence for AI across five key principles: fairness, explainability, adversarial robustness, lineage, and transparency.

The IDC Marketscape advises, “Consider Microsoft when you need a robust and scalable AI governance solution. Microsoft tackles challenges in AI such as transparency, accountability, fairness, reliability, safety, and inclusivity. It provides tools and frameworks for transparency, mechanisms for accountability, techniques to detect and mitigate bias, best practices for reliability, safety measures, and inclusive design principles. Microsoft also offers extensive support services, certifications, workshops, and educational materials. If you want a comprehensive solution with strong expertise, resources, and support, Microsoft is a compelling choice for AI governance.”

At Microsoft, we think about AI governance as encompassing policies, practices, and tools that enable organizations to deploy AI systems in a safe, responsible, and effective way. In other words, it is the “how,” or implementation and operationalization, of responsible AI. For us, that means grounding research, policy, and engineering efforts in our six AI principles and building tools and practices like Azure AI Content Safety, Azure AI prompt flow, and the responsible AI dashboard that help integrate those principles into everyday work. After all, principles are not self-executing. This is why we’re focused on building practical tools and controls to help our customers incorporate their own responsible data and AI policies and practices into each stage of the AI development lifecycle—for improved safety and compliance.

Azure AI helps customers scale AI innovation with confidence

According to IDC’s October 2023 Global AI Buyer Sentiment, Adoption, and Business Value Survey, “cost, lack of skilled staff, and lack of AI governance and risk management solutions” are the top barriers for AI adoption. To adapt and thrive in the era of AI, organizations need to adopt a comprehensive and proactive approach to data and AI governance, inclusive of policies, practices, and integrated tools that support safe and responsible AI at each step of AI development.

Microsoft offers a myriad of data and AI capabilities to help you build, deploy, and manage generative AI and traditional ML solutions with confidence. For example, Azure AI Studio features like prompt flow, Azure AI Content Safety, and model monitoring help teams infuse responsible AI into their LLMOps practices. Azure Machine Learning integrates with Microsoft Purview, empowering organizations to responsibly discover, audit, and manage the data needed to build and deploy AI models, while the Responsible AI dashboard helps them assess and debug models and generate model scorecards as part of their MLOps. Azure AI Studio and Azure Machine Learning also have native integrations with Microsoft Fabric to help customers harness the full potential of their data estate with visibility and control. 

Siemens saw a need to enable better cross-functional communication for industrial companies that use its software, allowing those customers to rapidly address problems as they arose on their shop floors. Siemens’ new solution uses Azure AI with translation enabling workers on the shop floor to speak their own native language to describe an observed issue. The system automatically creates a summarized problem report and routes it to the appropriate design, engineering, or manufacturing experts—in any language they prefer. Siemens noted that network isolation and its service-level agreement–backed availability were key in meeting their enterprise grade objectives, and the UI-first approach in prompt flow helped streamline LLMOps.

ERM, the largest global pure play sustainability consultancy, has built a software-as-a-service (SaaS) tool that can rate companies based on their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance for private capital investors. Powered by Azure AI, ESG Fusion can provide a comprehensive assessment of a company’s ESG risks and opportunities within two business days—a big step in promoting sustainable business practices around the globe. The company uses the Azure Machine Learning responsible AI dashboard for text for model debugging and visualizations to be able to digest and visualize text data more easily. The dashboard provides several mature tools in the areas of error analysis, model interpretability, unfairness assessment and mitigation for a holistic assessment, debugging of NLP models to make informed business decisions.

Shell and the Department of Education of Southern Australia are helping to protect end users from the classroom to the chatroom using Azure AI Content Safety. The service works by running both the prompt and completion for a generative AI model through classification models aimed at detecting and preventing the output of unwanted and adversarial content, including jailbreaks and protected material. Internally, Microsoft has relied on Azure AI Content Safety to help protect users of its own AI-powered products. The technology was essential to releasing chat-based innovations in products like Bing, GitHub Copilot, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and Azure Machine Learning responsibly.

Providence recognized that the use of large language models presents both opportunities and challenges in the healthcare setting. When building a solution to triage the deluge of electronic messages from patients, they chose Azure OpenAI Service and used the models as a document classifier, which lends itself to a rules-based verification process and minimizes the risks present in other applications of LLMs. They believe this approach—AI with the safeguard of rules—represents a responsible use of AI in healthcare. Now, Providence can quickly and securely classify incoming messages, direct them to the appropriate caregiver, and free providers to focus on patient care.

Swift, a leading infrastructure provider for financial messaging services, has long worked with its community of over 11,500 institutions to drive new ways to detect and catch fraudulent transactions that can cost hundreds of billions annually. Using federated learning techniques along with Azure Machine Learning and Azure confidential computing, Swift and Microsoft are building an anomaly detection model for transactional data—all without copying or moving data from secure locations. The shared vision is that the model will become the new standard for reducing financial crime while achieving the highest level of security, privacy, and cost efficiency.

These are some of the customers who are leveraging Microsoft capabilities to build and scale AI applications responsibly. We continue to innovate with AI to help customers drive AI transformation safely.

Build on a trusted foundation

Microsoft Azure is a trusted platform for AI innovation, offering governance capabilities that help you build AI solutions that scale. By choosing Microsoft Azure, you can benefit from Microsoft’s strong vision and expertise in AI, as well as our extensive experience in AI research and innovation. Whether you are a beginner or an expert in AI, Microsoft Azure can help you accelerate AI adoption that aligns with your organizational values and earns customers’ trust. 

Source: microsoft.com

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Create new ways to serve your mission with Microsoft Azure Space

Since launching Microsoft Azure Space, we’ve been focused on three main goals:

1. Connect anyone, anywhere, at any security level, back to the full power and potential of the Microsoft Cloud. This includes working with exciting space start-ups like Muon Space and True Anomaly as well as government agencies like the United States Space Force.

2. Enable real-time analysis across petabytes of data gathered on orbit, so that our customers can take immediate action that delivers on their mission.

3. Empower developers to develop, deploy, and run their applications on orbit.

As customers and partners have adopted and experimented with the Azure Space portfolio, new and interesting use cases are emerging that illustrate what’s possible. Today, we are excited to share some of those customer stories, along with updates for Azure Orbital Ground Station, Azure Orbital’s software development kit, and Microsoft Planetary Computer. While it is still early days, these stories offer a glimpse at understanding how an accessible space layer can transform the way organizations across the public and private sectors serve their missions.

Satellite operators are using Azure Orbital Ground Station for spacecraft communications

Delivering space data to Earth requires a secure, robust ground network with low latency and high throughput—presenting various challenges for the operator. Opportunities for satellite contacts are limited by ground station coverage, and it can be difficult and expensive to achieve sufficient capacity.

Azure Space is enabling partner-powered, space-to-cloud transmissions with end-to-end support for space data downlink, processing, storage, analytics, and dissemination. Azure Orbital Ground Station provides easy, secure access to communication products and services required to support all phases of satellite missions—from launch to operations and decommissioning. Mission operations are seamless with self-service scheduling of contacts in Microsoft Azure with a managed data path.

Muon Space collaborates with Microsoft for its first two launches

As previously announced, Muon Space selected Microsoft to support its first-ever launch, using Azure Orbital Ground Station as the sole ground provider for their MuSat-1 mission. Muon Space is ramping up for the launch of its second satellite, MuSat-2, in early 2024—again leveraging Azure Orbital Ground Station to bring down data gathered by a prototype microwave sensor. Muon Space will provide space weather and ionospheric data to the United States Space Force.

“Launch and early operations is always a very stressful period for satellite operators. With Azure Orbital, we achieved contact with MuSat-1 within six minutes of separation from the launch vehicle. This early success, along with our continuous on-orbit operations, gives us confidence to use Azure Orbital for future missions.”

Paige Holland, Operations Automation Lead, Muon Space

Azure Orbital Ground Station for government customers

We’ve seen increasing momentum with commercial customers adopting Azure Orbital Ground Station. Azure Orbital Ground Station is now available in preview within the Microsoft Azure Government region. Introducing Azure Orbital Ground Station into Azure Government enables government customers to fully leverage a global partner ecosystem of ground stations, cloud modems, self-service scheduling, and a managed data path.

True Anomaly and Viasat are leveraging Azure Orbital Ground Station in Azure Government for space domain awareness

True Anomaly selected Microsoft and Viasat to provide ground support for its upcoming launch of two Jackal spacecrafts—autonomous orbital vehicles for rendezvous and proximity operations. True Anomaly will schedule satellite contacts at Viasat Real Time Earth (RTE) sites using Azure Orbital Ground Station in Azure Government.

“Azure Orbital Ground Station’s managed data path makes it easy to connect to a global ground network. With one click of a button on Azure, we gain access to all Viasat Real Time Earth sites and simply indicate where the data from our spacecraft should land, while Microsoft handles the orchestration and connectivity. Working within Azure Government lets us meet our customers where they are.”

Jared Kirkpatrick, Jackal Block 1 Project Manager, True Anomaly

Provisioning fiber to Viasat sites

To provide customers with their data as quickly and securely as possible, Microsoft is provisioning high-speed, real-time cloud connectivity to select Viasat RTE sites, allowing customers to stream multi-gigabit per second downlinks.

“Viasat is collaborating with Microsoft to enable low-touch access to space communication solutions for our customers like True Anomaly. Azure Orbital Ground Station offers a common data plane and API to access our global antenna network that includes very high throughput data downlinks over Ka-band.”

Aaron Hawkins, Real Time Earth Director for Strategic Partnerships, Viasat

Gaining insights from space data

As the volume and value of space data continues to grow, having easy and affordable access to ground infrastructure will play a central role in serving customers’ mission-critical operations. So too will be the ability of customers to access and analyze near real-time data gathered from space.

The future of the cloud will incorporate space solutions such as satellite connectivity and Earth observational data. Space-based sensors observing Earth and satellite data will increasingly be used to improve our data insights on the ground.

The latest episode in the Microsoft Future of the Cloud Webinar series explores the role of space data in creating “a planetary computer for a sustainable future.”

Watch the series to learn about:

• Leveraging the potential of the cloud and space to enable data-driven decision making for your organization and missions.
• How Microsoft Planetary Computer supports global efforts of environmental sustainability and Earth science by enabling developers to build tools for measuring, monitoring, modeling, and managing healthy ecosystems.
• The potential opportunities that a new Azure Space data solution built on the Microsoft Planetary Computer will create for Microsoft’s customers to unlock the full potential of their Earth observation data.

Empowering developers to build, deploy, and operate on-orbit

Empowering any developer to build and deploy applications into space will be critical to lowering the barrier to entry for participating in the space industry. Azure Orbital’s software development kit provides satellite operators with the tools and capabilities to unlock new business models and enable mission requirements.

Loft Orbital customer onboarding for virtual missions on YAM-6 is now open

Over the past two years, Microsoft and Loft Orbital have been collaborating to lower the barriers to entry for space. A key pillar in this collaboration has been the enablement of “virtual missions,” making it easier for developers to access space capabilities without having to develop or launch their own hardware in space, and instead by simply writing software applications.

YAM-6 is the first satellite fully dedicated to offering this capability. Last week, we announced that YAM-6 is now publicly accepting customers for virtual missions for 2024. General availability is planned for April 2024.

“Our joint product offering leverages Loft’s space infrastructure and Microsoft’s cloud and ground infrastructure to make it simple for anyone to deploy AI applications in space at scale. YAM-6 is supported by the Azure Orbital product portfolio, including Azure Orbital Ground Station, Azure Orbital space edge on-orbit application framework.”

Pierre Damien Vaujour, Cofounder and Chief Executive Officer, Loft Orbital

Space Compass leveraging virtual missions to prove out concepts quickly

Space Compass—a joint venture company between NTT, Japanese Information and Communications Technology (ICT) leader, and SKY Perfect JSAT Corporation, Asia’s largest satellite operator—is on a multi-year mission to deploy space-edge computing capabilities together with an ultra-speed optical data relay network. This will allow space data users to utilize real-time data much more efficiently in the cloud environment (see Figure 1).

Over the past three months, Space Compass has been working with Microsoft to explore use cases in an effort to better understand and demonstrate the value of on-orbit processing, and how to shape their future space infrastructure to support it.

“We are very excited to closely collaborate with the Microsoft team to develop a cutting-edge space computing solution. This is one of our key initiatives to realize the Space Integrated Computing Network.”

Shigehiro Hori, Co-Chief Executive Officer, Space Compass

Space Compass will be running a virtual mission on YAM-6 to demonstrate AI-based ship detection. This demonstration paves the way and de-risks future missions that will be flown on Space Compasses’ own satellites.

Figure 1: Ship detection program.

Both Microsoft and Space Compass believe in the power of on-orbit processing, bringing AI to the edge in space with high-speed connectivity to the cloud.

Source: microsoft.com

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Microsoft and Oracle announce that Oracle Database@Azure is now generally available

The Microsoft and Oracle partnership is focused on giving customers choice and removing the hurdles faced when migrating mission-critical workloads to the public cloud where they can access the rich set of technology needed to accelerate innovation and compete more effectively. In September, Satya Nadella and Larry Ellison announced Oracle Database@Azure, a new offering that delivers Oracle database services running on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) inside Azure datacenters and gives customers more flexibility in where they run their workloads.

We are excited to share that Oracle Database@Azure is generally available in the Azure East United States region, with more regions coming in 2024. You can now use Oracle database services running on OCI hardware deployed in Azure data centers. This streamlines the migration of Oracle database workloads to Azure, where you can integrate and innovate with the breadth of Microsoft Cloud services like Azure AI and our application platform and developer services. You’ll be able to purchase this Oracle-managed service, running on OCI inside Azure datacenters, from the Azure Marketplace with the same features and pricing as Oracle Exadata cloud service on OCI. And, you can use your existing Azure and Oracle commitments, program benefits, and licenses to do so.

Exadata Database Service is the first service to be available along with support for Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC), Oracle GoldenGate, and Oracle Data Guard technologies. We plan to offer Autonomous Database Service in the near future. Microsoft Azure is the only hyperscaler other than OCI to offer these Oracle database services.

Many customers have shown strong interest in the product, and the Oracle and Microsoft product teams are working diligently to expand the availability of more regions in 2024, beginning with Germany Central, Australia East, France Central, Canada Central, Brazil South, Japan East, United Kingdom South, Central United States, and South Central United States. We will continue to add more regions based on customer demand, and we encourage customers to share their requirements for additional regions with their Oracle or Microsoft account teams.

The benefits of Oracle databases in Azure

Oracle Database@Azure provides a host of benefits:

• Optimized performance and latency: Oracle database services in Azure are designed to offer high levels of performance, scale, security, and availability. By running OCI databases in Azure datacenters alongside other services in Azure, you can optimize latency and performance.
• Streamlined migration: You can use familiar and proven Oracle solutions like Oracle Zero Downtime Migration (ZDM) to migrate Oracle databases as is with no need for refactoring applications or databases.
• Application modernization: You can use the rich set of application services, development tools, and frameworks available in Azure to modernize your workloads and run cloud native applications with direct access to data in Oracle Database@Azure, with the same security and compliance across the entire solution.
• Data and AI innovation: You can unlock data insights and innovation when you apply Azure data analytics and AI services across your Oracle and non-Oracle data and applications between resources, and handle even mission-critical application.
• Simplified operations: You can deploy and manage Oracle Database@Azure infrastructure through the Azure portal and use native Azure tools to view metrics, events, and logs for all Oracle Database@Azure databases. You can also do database provisioning and management via OCI interfaces along with access to familiar tooling like Data Guard, GoldenGate, and others.
• Simplified purchasing: You can purchase Oracle Database@Azure through the Azure Marketplace and take advantage of existing Azure and Oracle commitments and licenses. You’ll also be eligible for Oracle Support Rewards, a program where you can earn rewards that you can use to reduce your Oracle technology license support bill.
• Unified customer support: You can contact either your Oracle or Microsoft support team for a unified support process.  

Bringing the power of Oracle Exadata to Azure customers

Leading organizations in every industry have long relied on Oracle Exadata and Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) to make the most of their data and to power mission critical applications. Oracle Database@Azure customers will have access to Oracle RAC for high availability running on OCI hardware. The service will be deployable in multiple availability zones to ensure regional high availability and in cross-region pairs to support cross-geography disaster recovery scenarios.

Trusted migration and resilience

Migrating and deploying production-grade environments is straightforward when moving to Oracle Database@Azure. Oracle provides proven database migration strategies, including automated migration solutions like Zero-Downtime Migration (ZDM). Oracle Database@Azure also supports the Oracle Maximum Availability Architecture (MAA), which provides trusted high-availability architectures and configurations to meet a range of resiliency requirements.

Source: microsoft.com

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