Unleash the power of APIs: Strategies for innovation

Modern businesses increasingly rely on technology to drive growth and deliver innovative experiences to their customers. Application programming interfaces (APIs) are the building blocks that power these connected digital experiences. And more than ever, effective API management has become critical to accelerate time-to-market and deliver compelling customer and partner interactions.

We are excited to announce, "Unleash the Power of APIs: Strategies for Innovation", the latest in the Microsoft Azure webinar series on April 26, 2023, from 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM PT. In this 90-minute interactive virtual session, you will hear from analysts, product leaders, and Microsoft Azure API Management customers on how API management can maximize your investments and accelerate your API programs.

From security to development, first-hand customer accounts to analyst insights, this event will cover why APIs are so important today and in the future. Here’s a preview of what we’ll have featured at the webinar:

API-first businesses transformation

Amanda Silver, Corporate Vice President and Head of the Product Developer Division at Microsoft

We’re all hearing a lot about API-first development these days, and for good reason. The impact of API-first development is huge—An API-first approach promotes faster development, better collaboration, scalability, reusability, and enhanced security for developers. But what does API-first mean for businesses? And how do you implement this strategy?

The event will kick off with Amanda sharing insights on what API-first means and how it’s a game changer for businesses to achieve faster time-to-market, better integration, and accelerated innovation. She will also discuss the role of the Azure API Management platform in supporting an API-first strategy.

Market trends and API-driven innovation

Shari Lava, IDC Research Director Automation, and Ashmi Chokshi, General Manager Azure Digital and Application Innovation, Microsoft

Businesses are increasingly adopting digital-first strategies to stay competitive in today’s fast-moving market and economy, and as a result, interest in APIs is surging as they become critical to these strategies.

Join Shari and Ashmi in a conversation about what’s driving the adoption of APIs now and why APIs are critical to driving competitive innovation and business differentiation. Shari will also discuss why it is crucial to invest in an API management solution, the market trends in the adoption of API management tools, and the factors to consider when choosing one based on your business needs.

Enterprise scale API management with Azure

Balan Subramanian, Partner Director of Product Management Azure App Platform, Microsoft

If you’ve been curious about how Azure API Management is empowering our customers to drive superior business outcomes, don’t miss this overview on Azure API Management from Balan.

With Azure API Management, organizations can manage every aspect of an API's lifecycle, from its inception to productization, across their API footprint, whether it's on-premises, on Azure, or on other clouds. Additionally, the developer portal and customizations allow platform engineering teams to create their API platforms on top of Azure API Management, tailoring it to their unique business requirements. Azure API Management is also fully integrated into Azure, making it an ideal solution for organizations migrating application workloads to the cloud without any overhead of using disparate solutions for building and managing their APIs.

API-first approach in the mortgage industry

Matt Cesarz, Chief Technology Officer, Optimal Blue, and Ali Powell, Vice President, Customer Success Digital and Application Innovation, Microsoft

In this customer session, Optimal Blue, a leading mortgage provider in the United States, talks about their successful partnership and journey with Azure API Management. Matt explains how adopting an API-first mindset enabled them to create frictionless customer experiences, deliver innovations faster, and drive growth.

Comprehensive defense-in-depth security with Azure API Management

APIs have become a popular attack vector, making defense-in-depth a crucial strategy for protecting enterprise data vaults against security threats. Without that level of protection, organizations are leaving themselves vulnerable to a range of security threats, including malicious attacks and data exfiltration.

Attend this session and learn how Azure API Management enables a defense-in-depth strategy through multiple layers of protection to prevent, detect, and respond to API threats. Balan will also cover the latest innovations that can further strengthen the security posture of your APIs.

Customer-centric healthcare with APIs

Blake Wilson, Integration and Site Reliability Engineering Manager, Technology, Bupa, and Ali Powell, Vice President, Customer Success Digital and Application Innovation, Microsoft

In this customer session, Bupa, one of the largest global medical insurance providers—with a large presence in Australia—talks about their successful innovations built with Azure API Management. Blake explains how leading with APIs has enabled them to enhance partner collaboration, improve security posture, and increase developer productivity.

Line of business innovation with Azure API Management

For businesses, low-code development and enterprise integration are two key strategic areas of investment that can drive innovation. By enabling seamless collaboration among application, integration, and low-code developers, these integrations can help accelerate innovation across all areas of your organization.

Hear from Balan about the Azure API Management integrations with Microsoft Power Platform to facilitate low-code development. You will also learn that Azure API Management is a core component of Azure Integration Services and is tightly integrated with other services such as Azure Logic Apps, Azure Functions, Azure Service Bus, and managed connectors enabling API-centered integration.

Source: microsoft.com

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Image Analysis 4.0 with new API endpoint and OCR model in preview

Enterprises and hobbyists alike have been using Azure Computer Vision’s Image Analysis API to garner various insights from their images. These insights help power scenarios such as digital asset management, search engine optimization (SEO), image content moderation, and alt text for accessibility among others. 

Newly improved features including read (OCR)

We are thrilled to announce the preview release of Computer Vision Image Analysis 4.0 which combines existing and new visual features such as read optical character recognition (OCR), captioning, image classification and tagging, object detection, people detection, and smart cropping into one API. One call is all it takes to run all these features on an image. 

The OCR feature integrates more deeply with the Computer Vision service and includes performance improvements that are optimized for image scenarios that make OCR easy to use for user interfaces and near real-time experiences. Read now supports 164 languages including Cyrillic, Arabic, and Hindi.

Tested at scale and ready for deployment 

Microsoft’s own products from PowerPoint, Designer, Word, Outlook, Edge, and LinkedIn are using Vision APIs to power design suggestions, alt text for accessibility, SEO, document processing, and content moderation. 

You can get started with the preview by trying out the visual features with your images on Vision Studio. Upgrading from a previous version of the Computer Vision Image Analysis API to V4.0 is simple with these instructions.

We will continue to release breakthrough vision AI through this new API over the coming months, including capabilities powered by the Florence foundation model featured in this year’s premiere computer vision conference keynote at CVPR.

Additional Computer Vision services

Spatial Analysis is also in preview. You can use the spatial analysis feature to create apps that can count people in a room, understand dwell times in front of a retail display, and determine wait times in lines. Build solutions that enable occupancy management and social distancing, optimize in-store and office layouts, and accelerate the checkout process. By processing video streams from physical spaces, you're able to learn how people use them and maximize the space's value to your organization.

The Azure Face service provides AI algorithms that detect, recognize, and analyze human faces in images. Facial recognition software is important in many different scenarios, such as identity verification, touchless access control, and face blurring for privacy. Face service access is limited based on eligibility and usage criteria in order to support our Responsible AI principles. Face service is only available to Microsoft managed customers and partners. Use the Face Recognition intake form to apply for access.

Computer Vision and Responsible AI

We are excited to see how our customers use Computer Vision’s Image Analysis API with these new and updated features. Our technology advancements are also guided by Microsoft’s Responsible AI process, and our principles of fairness, inclusiveness, reliability and safety, transparency, privacy and security, and accountability. We put these ethical standards into practice through the Office of Responsible AI (ORA)—which sets our rules and governance processes, the AI Ethics and Effects in Engineering and Research (Aether) Committee—which advises our leadership on the challenges and opportunities presented by AI innovations, and Responsible AI Strategy in Engineering (RAISE)—a team that enables the implementation of Microsoft Responsible AI rules across engineering groups.

Source: microsoft.com

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Azure API for FHIR and Microsoft’s Power Platform help universities tackle COVID-19

When summer 2021 ended, many organizations faced the formidable challenge of how to return to their places of work and school safely. Tuskegee University (Tuskegee) was one of them—not only was the safe return of students and faculty to school a priority but since Tuskegee is in a community with no hospital, controlling exposure was essential.

At the time, Tuskegee encountered many challenges, including but not limited to a statewide shortage of testing kits, inability to handle the broadscale logistics of testing, contact tracing, and figuring out a simplified way to report on status and schedule tests.

With the help of industry partners like Microsoft and Enabling Technologies, Tuskegee was able to build and execute a successful strategy to allow students to return to school safely amidst COVID-19.

Public health specialist, Crystal James stepped up to address the challenge that Tuskegee faced. "We realized that to get back to face to face, we needed to have a strategy to protect the learning environment," she recalled. She expanded her responsibilities as Department Chair in the College of Veterinary Medicine to include a new position: the Special Assistant to the President for COVID-19 Response.

Lack of testing kits

The first hurdle faced was the lack of test kits. According to Crystal, the COVID-19 Recovery Management Center (CRMC) studied the test kits and decided to make their own kits. The Tuskegee CRMC is composed of laboratory scientists, policy specialists, nurses, and public health professionals. They made test kits for the faculty, staff, students, and the surrounding Black Belt Counties who lacked access to tests.

Handling the logistics of testing

With their campus laboratories ready to make the kits, the industry came to Tuskegee’s aid. Thermo Fisher Scientific generously offered the instrumentation for Tuskegee to do PCR testing on campus. In February 2021, Tuskegee University opened its own Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) certified reference laboratory and began PCR testing for COVID-19. They tied their testing systems to Thermo Fisher’s for processing.

An easy-to-use app

With test kits and the ability to provide results on campus, Tuskegee University Health Disparities Diagnostic Center addressed the next step—developing a mechanism to deliver the test results back to individuals promptly and contact tracing on campus.

Tuskegee found Microsoft’s offerings and solutions to be the right fit—using Microsoft Power Platform, Dataverse & Azure API for FHIR, the institution had tools to schedule tests, send test results back, and attest to health status while on campus.

Building an app that was simple to use was paramount. The features in the app that was built using Microsoft’s Power Platform allowed students and faculty to:

◉ Report and screen for symptoms—keeping track of symptoms and questionnaire responses by completing daily self-attestations from a smartphone or desktop.

◉ Create daily passes—after completing the daily self-attestation, the application generates a unique daily QR code. That barcode is scanned to gain access to campus facilities.

◉ Manage testing—designated personnel can manage student appointments, questionnaire responses, and test result notifications.

You can find the information about the implementation at Golden Tiger Health Check | Tuskegee University.

Integration assistance from Enabling Technologies

Microsoft Gold Partner, Enabling Technologies (Enabling), led the coordinated development efforts on behalf of Tuskegee. Enabling also rolled out the Return to School app at Lake Washington School District, Kent School District, and Howard University.

"Enabling Technologies provided the technical expertise to create a new system that would talk to the two existing systems," stated Crystal, "including CareEvolve and Thermo Fisher’s Platform for Science. Enabling helped with APIs, programming, and some other integration, which was helpful for non-IT people."

Microsoft technology provided a simple-to-use app and the integration protocols needed to handle the end-to-end testing and results.

Enabling architected the solution and used the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR®) protocol within Azure API for FHIR to safeguard Tuskegee data.  Azure API for FHIR was used to facilitate the movement of data between the application built on Power Platform and the testing lab software systems.

The rollout at Tuskegee and other Historically Black Colleges and Universities was aligned to Microsoft’s racial equity initiative. this solution was also deployed in support of  Microsoft's announcement to commit more than $110M to support nonprofits, workers, and schools in Washington state.

Soothing the concerns of the community

With COVID-19 swirling, Tuskegee’s students, faculty, and staff had enough on their minds. Learning to use a new app could not be yet another burden. Enabling’s Adoption and Organizational Change team, led by Gabrielle Manuel, stepped in. "It was important to provide students, faculty, and staff with appropriate support materials and advance messaging to prepare them to begin using the app," she said. "The custom messaging, user guides, and videos provided clear instructions and expectations."

Tuskegee’s James advised, "One of the biggest issues that isn’t as well highlighted about the pandemic is the anxiety created when you have to engage in public spaces during this pandemic. Having a tool like this assists us to bring that anxiety level down to a manageable level and bring our students and faculty back to an environment we can call as safe as possible."

The results

The implemented solution through Microsoft’s Power Platform improved the safety of Tuskegee's students, faculty, and staff. The Return to School solution helped decrease the time from exposure to a confirmed PCR lab result to five hours. It also helped Tuskegee to assure parents and students that there is a system to monitor trends every day since RTS also publishes results to their dashboard. Tuskegee published the number of cases on campus, the number of tests conducted, and the percentage of positive cases reducing the mental stress on potentially exposed individuals.

"Microsoft’s release was just in time," said Chris Stegh, CTO, Enabling Technologies. "The fact that the app could be activated in the existing Microsoft 365 tenant made the decision simple. Azure API for FHIR allowed the app to integrate with the university’s COVID-19 testing lab."

What’s next?

While Ms. James is optimistic, she’s also realistic. "While I know the rest of the world would like for us just call it over, that's not how pandemics work. We realize that COVID-19 will still be an issue that needs to be addressed on our campus. Because we are in an area that does not have a hospital and access to health care is very sparse, we want to continue to monitor the prevalence of COVID-19 on our campus. The app will help us pivot should another wave start around the country."

Source: microsoft.com

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Microsoft Cost Details API now generally available for EA and MCA customers

The Cost Details API is now generally available for use by Enterprise Agreement (EA) and Microsoft Customer Agreement (MCA) customers. This API provides on-demand download of the granular cost details (formerly referred to as usage details) associated with your Microsoft charges. The API replaces all existing Usage Details APIs and provides data for charges in your invoice. For customers with an MCA agreement this includes Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and Azure charges. This API is the go-to solution, along with Exports, for ingesting the raw cost data needed to build any custom reporting solution. To learn more about how to call the Cost Details API, please see our documentation on how to get small cost datasets on demand.

Customers that are not using Exports or the Cost Details API should migrate to one of these solutions moving forward.

Benefits of the new solutions

Both the Cost Details API and Exports provide extensive benefits on top of existing solutions today.

◉ Security and stability—New solutions require Service Principal and/or user tokens in order to access data. For EA customers, keys used in the EA Reporting APIs are valid for six months. Going forward it is recommended to use token-based solutions through Service Principal or User authentication, consistent with Azure REST APIs.

◉ Scalability—The EA Reporting APIs (available only for EA customers) and the Consumption Usage Details (available for both EA and MCA customers) aren't built to scale well as your Microsoft and Azure costs increase. The number of Azure cost records in your cost details dataset can get exceedingly large as you deploy more resources into the cloud. The new solutions are asynchronous and have extensive infrastructure enhancements behind them to ensure successful downloads for any size dataset.

◉ Single dataset for all usage details—For EA customers, the existing EA Reporting APIs have separate endpoints for Azure usage charges versus Azure Marketplace charges. These datasets have been merged in the new solutions. A single dataset reduces the number of APIs that you need to call to see all your charges.

◉ Purchase amortization—Customers who purchase Reservations can see an amortized view of their costs using the new solutions. You can request for amortized or actual cost datasets as part of report configuration. Learn more about using amortized cost details datasets.

◉ Schema consistency—The Cost Details API and Exports provide files with matching fields. This allows you to easily move between solutions based on your scenario.

◉ Cost allocation integration—EA and MCA customers can use the new solutions to view charges in relation to the cost allocation rules that have been configured.

◉ Go forward improvements—The new solutions are being actively developed moving forward. They'll receive all new features as they're released.

Migrating to the new solutions

The EA Reporting APIs and the Consumption Usage Details API are no longer actively being developed. We strongly recommend migrating off these APIs as soon as possible. A retirement announcement will be made in the future with formal timelines for when the APIs will be turned off. However, the APIs will be fully supported from a reliability standpoint until the formal retirement date is reached.

When assessing the migration off existing usage details solutions, please use the documents below as a reference point:

◉ Migrate from the Enterprise Reporting Usage Details API 

◉ Migrate from the Consumption Usage Details API

Please note that pay-as-you-go, MSDN, and Visual Studio customers who are not a part of either an Enterprise Agreement (EA) or Microsoft Customer Agreement (MCA) should continue using the Consumption Usage Details API.

Source: microsoft.com

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Secure your APIs with Private Link support for Azure API Management

Azure API Management is a fully managed service that enables customers to publish, secure, transform, maintain, and monitor APIs. With a few clicks in the Azure portal, you can create an API facade that acts as a “front door” through which external and internal applications can access data or business logic implemented by your custom-built backend services, running on Azure, for example on Azure App Service or Azure Kubernetes Service, or hosted outside of Azure, in a private datacenter or on-premises. Azure API Management handles all the tasks involved in mediating API calls, including request authentication and authorization, rate limit and quota enforcement, request and response transformation, logging and tracing, and API version management.

Azure API Management helps you in:

◉ Unlocking legacy assets—APIs are used to abstract and modernize legacy backends and make them accessible from new cloud services and modern applications. APIs allow innovation without the risk, cost, and delays of migration.

◉ Create API-centric app integration—APIs are easily consumable, standards-based, and self-describing mechanisms for exposing and accessing data, applications, and processes. They simplify and reduce the cost of app integration.

◉ Enable multi-channel user experiences—APIs are frequently used to enable user experiences such as web, mobile, wearable, or Internet of Things (IoT applications. Reuse APIs to accelerate development and return on investment (ROI).

◉ Business-to-business (B2B) integration—APIs exposed to partners and customers lower the barrier to integrate business processes and exchange data between business entities. APIs eliminate the overhead inherent in point-to-point integration. Especially with self-service discovery and onboarding enabled, APIs are the primary tools for scaling B2B integration.

We are happy to announce the preview of Azure Private Link support for Azure API Management service. If you are not familiar with Azure API Management, when you deploy this service, you get three main components: Azure portal, gateway, and management plane. With Azure Private Link we can create a private endpoint for the gateway component, which will be exposed through a private IP within your virtual network. This will allow inbound traffic coming to the private IP to reach Azure API Management gateway.

Azure Private Link

With Azure Private Link, communications between your virtual network and the Azure API Management gateway travel over the Microsoft backbone network privately and securely, eliminating the need to expose the service to public internet.

Key benefits of Azure Private Link

Through this functionality we will provide the same consistent experience found in other PaaS services with private endpoints:

◉ Private access from Azure Virtual Network resources, peered networks, and on-premises networks.

◉ Built-in data exfiltration protection for Azure resources.

◉ Predictable private IP addresses for PaaS resources.

◉ Consistent and unified experience across PaaS services.

Private endpoints and public endpoints

Figure 1: Architecture diagram depicting the secure and private connectivity to Azure API Management Gateway—when using Azure Private Link.

Azure Private Link provides private endpoints to be available through private IPs. In the above case, the contoso.azure-api.net gateway has a private IP of 10.0.0.6 which is only available to resources in contoso-apim-eastus-vnet. This allows the resources in this virtual network to securely communicate. The other resources may be restricted to resources only within the virtual network.

At the same time, the public endpoint for the contoso.azure-api.net gateway may still be public for the development team. In this release, Azure Private Link will support disabling the public endpoint, limiting access to only private endpoints, configured under Private Link.

How to decide which networking model to use with Azure API Management?

Azure API Management also supports virtual network injection, allowing all components to be deployed inside a virtual network. With the addition of private endpoints, we have the following options for integrating inside a custom Azure Virtual Network:

Network model	Supported tiers	Supported components	Supported traffic
Virtual network—external	Developer and Premium.	Azure portal, gateway, management plane, and Git repository.	Inbound and outbound traffic can be allowed to internet, peered virtual networks, Express Route, and VPN S2S connections.
Virtual network—internal	Developer and Premium.	Developer portal, Gateway, Management Plane, and Git repository.	Inbound and outbound traffic can be allowed to peered virtual networks, Express Route, and VPN S2S connections.
Private endpoint connection (preview)	Developer, Basic, Standard, and Premium.	Gateway only (managed gateway supported, self-hosted gateway not supported).	Only inbound traffic can be allowed to internet, peered virtual networks, Express Route, and VPN S2S connections.

At this moment, these three options are mutually exclusive, you cannot choose a virtual network integration option (external or internal) in combination with private endpoint connections. Also notice that only our managed gateways will support private endpoint connections, the Self-Hosted Gateway does not support private endpoints in Azure.

Preview limitations

During the preview period, we will only support inbound traffic coming to the gateway, instances using STV2 compute platform, all pricing tiers except consumption, and Azure Private Link is limited to instances that are not using virtual network injection (internal or external). The feature will move to general availability as we assess feedback.

With the preview of Azure Private Link for Azure API Management, you are now empowered to bring your Azure API Management instances to a virtual network using the same consistent experience of other Azure PaaS services. You can create and manage private endpoints for the gateway of your Azure API Management instance. We will be sharing more updates and content in the future, so stay tuned for new updates towards the general availability of this feature.

Source: microsoft.com

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New Azure for Operators solutions and services built for the future of telecommunications

After years of laying the foundation for the rollout of 5G and network cloudification, we are now seeing tremendous possibilities for how consumers and organizations will interact with technology for work, play, and connecting with communities. Around the world and across industries, 5G, augmented and virtual reality, AI, IoT, and edge computing are creating opportunities for rapid digital transformation. This is compelling operators to move away from legacy systems to accelerate network transformation and begin monetizing their investments in 5G and edge technologies.

Imagine the benefits to communities and organizations that have access to improved bandwidth, reliability, and reduced latency, while leveraging the rich capabilities of cloud-to-edge technology without compromise to security, critical services, or key workloads.

With the most complete offerings for the telecommunications industry, Microsoft is the ideal cloud provider to help operators with their digital transformation journey and enable them to deliver these innovative services to their consumer, enterprise, and public sector customers.

Azure for Operators

With Azure for Operators, we’re empowering operators to unlock the power of 5G by bringing cloud and edge closer together to modernize their networks so that they can streamline and optimize their business operations and deliver new services faster with greater reach and lower cost. With solutions that run on-premises, at the edge, or in the cloud but are always managed and secured by Azure, Microsoft meets you where you are, offering flexibility to transform on your terms and timelines. We are committed to partnering with you, not competing against you. Your consumer, enterprise, and government customers will benefit from a cloud platform with industry-leading security and governance built-in, and with an unmatched partner and developer ecosystem to maximize the value of the cloud at the edge. We’re applying Microsoft technology and developer ecosystem capabilities to offer the next-generation Azure for Operators portfolio—carrier-grade hybrid cloud platform, voice core, mobile core, and multi-access edge compute.

Introducing the new Azure for Operators solutions and services

In September 2020, we unveiled the Azure for Operators initiative to help operators evolve their own networks, and for partners to assist enterprises to maximize their industry 4.0 opportunities. In June of 2021, we introduced a new category, Azure private multi-access edge compute (MEC), which empowers operators and system integrators to unlock the enterprise 5G opportunity. Today, we’re announcing the next wave of Azure for Operators solutions and services.

The hybrid cloud platform built for the future of telecommunications

Operators are continually looking toward digital transformation to improve competitiveness, deliver new services, and yield positive financial results through both innovation and growth. We believe telecom digital transformation starts with the modernization of network core systems and operations.

In June 2021, Microsoft acquired the AT&T Network Cloud 2.7 Software technology, an industry-first collaboration. The AT&T Network Cloud supports AT&T's 5G core and FirstNet today, representing seven years of experience developing on-premises cloud for network workloads. We’ve taken the acquisition of this technology, moved the engineering and program organization from AT&T’s Network Cloud organization into Azure for Operators, and directly integrated the intellectual property into a new Azure offering. We continue to make significant enhancements to the acquired technology itself, including security across AT&T’s entire Network Cloud deployment.

Today we are announcing the next-generation hybrid cloud platform for operators—Azure Operator Distributed Services—which combines the enhanced version of the acquired AT&T technology with the best of Azure, including our industry-leading security, monitoring, analytics, AI, machine learning, and so much more.

Built from the ground up and proven to run network-intensive workloads and mission-critical applications, Azure Operator Distributed Services meets the security, resiliency, observability, manageability, and performance needs required by operators to achieve meaningful results from digital transformation. It will enable operators to run all their workloads (such as core, RAN, mobile and voice core, OSS, and BSS) on a single carrier-grade hybrid platform. With Azure Operator Distributed Services, business operations can be streamlined, providing operators with simplified management, policy, and automation delivered through unified cloud management using Azure Services, Azure Arc management, Azure Security, and platform as a service with Azure. Azure Operator Distributed Services provides the flexibility and scalability to support customer deployments at the edge of the cloud, the edge of the network, or the enterprise edge. Now, operators can effectively create new services to monetize their network, all while gaining robust network and customer insights that are necessary to facilitate proactive decision-making, critical action, and the creation of real value.

With Azure Operator Distributed Services, we are delivering a carrier-grade hybrid cloud service to the market and AT&T where it can run at AT&T on-premises or on Azure public cloud. Azure Operator Distributed Services is designed to support the AT&T mobile core network that today spans more than 60 containerized network functions (CNFs) and virtual network functions (VNFs) from 15 different vendors, which currently are deployed and running on the AT&T Network Cloud platform. AT&T will continue to select and manage VNFs and CNFs and their configurations to deliver mobility services to AT&T customers. AT&T and Microsoft are closely collaborating on the deployment of Azure Operator Distributed Services with initial testing stages planned for later this year.

“AT&T's 5G network is built on an agile, future-ready mobile core that's designed to boost innovation, resiliency, and security for our customers. Our 5G mobility core is fully cloud-based, integrating Network Functions from multiple vendors that today are hosted on Network Cloud infrastructure based on a cloud software stack that Microsoft acquired from AT&T last year. We are pleased with Microsoft’s plan to evolve Network Cloud and integrate it with Azure technologies to create hybrid telco-grade Azure Operator Distributed Services. This will enable AT&T and other operators to host Network Functions on clouds spanning telco premises and public cloud and will help us realize the many benefits of the cloud-native approach and Azure innovation including additional speed, resiliency, security, cost, and operational improvements.“—Andre Fuetsch, Executive Vice President and CTO Network Services, AT&T

We designed the Azure Operator Distributed Services for use by all operators while maintaining security and without losing differentiation. In terms of security and privacy, we want to make clear that operators using Azure Operator Distributed Services continue to hold access to their customer data, Microsoft cannot access or see it. With this product, we want to enable operators to deliver new services faster and more flexibly across Azure public cloud and on-premises with common tooling and services, reducing time-to-market with a cloud-native approach. True to our mission of empowering everyone to achieve more, we are collaborating with the broader partner ecosystem, including Ericsson and Nokia, to build on our next-gen hybrid cloud platform for operators.

“Combined with cloud capabilities, 5G has the potential to accelerate the digital transformation of virtually any sector of industry or society. The combination of Azure Operator Distributed Services and Ericsson’s market-leading cloud-native network functions and orchestration suite promise significant benefits for customers. Microsoft and Ericsson are jointly exploring enterprise 5G use cases in conjunction with leading operators.”—Jan Karlsson, Senior Vice President and Head of Business Area Digital Services, Ericsson

“Open collaboration is key to the development of new and innovative high value 5G use cases that will equip our customers with the tools they need for digital transformation. This is part of Nokia’s continued commitment to leading an open mobile future, making it simple for our customers to take advantage of the 5G world, helping to drive it forward. We are enthusiastic to work closely with Microsoft to integrate our Cloud RAN technology with Microsoft Azure, offer Microsoft Azure IoT Edge Services allowing industries to realize new capabilities at the edge, and bring Nokia’s new SaaS-based NetGuard Cybersecurity Dome as well as other Cloud and Network Services software to Azure.”—Chris D. Jones, Vice President Strategic Partnerships, Strategy and Technology, Nokia

Next-generation packet core services

Today, we are also announcing the private preview of the Azure Operator 5G Core and public preview of the Azure Private 5G Core. The Azure Operator 5G Core deploys on the Azure Operator Distributed Services to meet the needs of operators seeking automated, operational efficiency in a mobile network that can scale hundreds of millions of subscribers and devices. Azure Private 5G Core is available as part of the Azure private MEC solution, enabling operators and system integrators to provide a simple, scalable, and secure deployment of private 4G and 5G networks at the enterprise edge. Both services are deployed and managed through Azure.

Azure Operator 5G Core

Microsoft Azure Operator 5G Core is an Azure service that enables operators to build, deploy, and manage scalable mobile networks. Operator networks need to handle unprecedented amounts of data as 5G unleashes a broad set of low-latency, high throughput consumer, industry 4.0, IoT, and massive machine-type communications. Using Azure Operator 5G Core, operators can seamlessly deploy network workloads on Azure and manage their networks at scale with agility and cost efficiency while keeping up with the evolving demands of 5G.

Azure Operator 5G Core is built on a distributed architecture and includes cloud management, service automation, life cycle management, network slicing, and integrated analytics. This allows operators to provide an enhanced and customized user experience and leverage open APIs to easily integrate with their existing environments. Azure Operator 5G Core and Microsoft’s vast ecosystem of first and third-party tools enable operators to achieve greater enterprise value by creating new vertical solutions (such as gaming, energy, smart cities, autonomous vehicles, agriculture, etc.). We are working with a select number of partners and customers during the private preview and are excited to make this available to all operators soon.

Azure Private 5G Core

This packet core as-a-service offer allows operators and system integrators to rapidly deploy enterprise private mobile networks and low latency applications on Azure Arc-connected edge platforms, such as Azure Stack Edge. Through Azure, partners can unify the cloud management of multiple, globally distributed private wireless networks, with the flexibility to also choose and integrate components from technology and solution partners, including a wide range of 4G and 5G Standalone RAN and SIM providers.

We are enabling a growing list of global partners to deliver next-generation private wireless solutions. Operators developing solutions using Azure private MEC include AT&T, Etisalat, Swisscom, and Telefonica. Our list of global system integrator partners continues to expand, with Accenture, Amdocs, ATOS, Capgemini, Cognizant, Harman, HCL, Intelsat, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Tampnet, TCS, and Tech Mahindra. Azure Private 5G Core is also validated with technology partners to speed up integration with RAN partners including ASOCS, AirSpan, CommScope, Fujitsu, Parallel Wireless, and Qualcomm.

Partners are actively working with enterprise customers on proof of concepts and trials:

◉ AT&T is looking to bring private 4G and 5G wireless networks as an integrated platform with connectivity and applications to enable low-latency services at the edge. Target customers include businesses, universities, and the public sector. Currently under development with Microsoft, the AT&T Private 5G Edge service is using Microsoft’s Azure private MEC and Azure Private 5G Core.

◉ Lockheed Martin is collaborating with Microsoft on 5G.MIL®solutions. Lockheed Martin 5G.MIL integrates 5G technologies into military communication networks for resilient and secure next-generation connectivity in highly dynamic environments. Using Azure Private 5G Core in 5G.MIL solutions will enable high performance in a small footprint and the ability to support, secure, and scale interconnection between 5G wireless and military networks. “Lockheed Martin’s strategic collaboration with Microsoft unlocks new capabilities that will provide a decisive edge for military personnel across all domains,” said Dan Rice, Vice President of 5G.MIL® Programs at Lockheed Martin. “Leveraging Microsoft’s expertise in cloud computing and distributed system orchestration, we are accelerating the scale and speed of critical military communications, which will be necessary in increasingly contested environments.”

◉ HARMAN Digital Transformation Solutions (DTS) has employed Azure private MEC to successfully advance digital transformation at one of the largest airports in the United States. The solution improved operational efficiencies for the airport’s manual cargo handling process. "Advances in technologies like 5G yield significant opportunity to accelerate innovation across nearly every industry—from transportation and healthcare to manufacturing and education,” said David Owens, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Digital Transformation Solutions, HARMAN. “HARMAN's deep knowledge and experience in the communications domain and Azure private MEC offers a comprehensive solution to enterprises planning to deploy private networks and cloud computing applications. We are glad to join hands with Microsoft in re-shaping the future by elevating experiences for our customers and end consumers."

◉ "Northrop Grumman’s advanced battle management technologies allow military forces to effectively communicate and securely share mission-critical data across all domains. With the integration of the Azure private MEC platform, we are leveraging Microsoft’s commercial-edge computing capabilities to inform tactical mobile ad hoc networks for the U.S. Navy’s Information Warfare Research Project.”—Tom Pieronek, Chief Technology Officer, Aeronautics Systems, Northrop Grumman

◉ "As a pioneer in digital transformation, Fujitsu is committed to helping enterprises and telcos accelerate adoption of 5G. Our market-leading O-RAN solutions and managed services offerings, combined with the power of Microsoft’s Azure private MEC offering, will play an important role in delivering 5G solutions to market, enabling rich customer experiences at the convergence of 5G, digital, and the edge.”—Shingo Mizuno, Corporate Executive Officer, Fujitsu Limited

◉ "We are entering a new era of enterprise digital transformation that will be fueled by private networks, edge computing, secure access service edge, and amplification of industry-specific applications. Along with Microsoft, we are making it easy for enterprises to order, provision, and consume full suite of infrastructure capabilities and applications—the cloud way"—Manish Mangal, Global Head of 5G and Network Services, Tech Mahindra

Delivering the value of cloud to the edge for enterprises with MEC solutions

In June 2021, we announced a new category, the Azure private MEC. Today we extend this MEC category with the introduction of Azure public MEC solution. An evolution of Azure Edge Zones with an operator, the Azure public MEC solution integrates Azure compute and services with mobile operator 5G connectivity, elevating application performance at the operator edge. Through the Azure private and public MEC solutions, we are collaborating and co-innovating with operators and system integrators, as well as bringing the broader technology and developer ecosystem to deliver innovative solutions that meet enterprise needs at the edge.

Azure public MEC

With Azure public MEC, we are collaborating with strategic operators to enable enterprises and developers to deliver innovative high-performance, low-latency applications at the operator edge, using operators’ public 5G network connectivity. Applications that run on Azure public MEC offer customers the unique ability to analyze data closer to where it is being captured from users and edge-enabled devices (such as industrial IoT devices, cars, and smartphones). The resulting timely, detailed insights pave the way for proactive responses to and solutions for real-world enterprise problems.

With Azure public MEC, enterprises and developers can select the low-latency components they need from the cloud to deliver at the edge while managing everything else in the cloud. This level of flexibility allows customers to rapidly deploy innovative MEC solutions, increasing efficiency, and optimizing costs by reducing the need for on-premises servers and the amount of traffic to the public cloud.

We are co-innovating with global strategic operators and independent software vendors (ISVs) to deliver public MEC solutions across the globe. We recently announced Azure public MEC with AT&T and Azure public MEC with Singtel, and others to follow. We are also working with many ISV partners to offer innovative networking, security, and low-latency applications that meet enterprise needs. Check out demos with Check Point, Couchbase, Game Cloud, Summit Tech, and VMware to learn how these partners are delivering innovative solutions at the edge with Azure public MEC.

Our partners in their own words

Partners are at the heart of what we do at Microsoft. Through strategic collaborations and scale ecosystem engagements, we are working with operators, system integrators, technology partners, and solutions partners to build innovative solutions that enable the telecommunications industry transformation. Read and watch what some of our partners are saying about working with Microsoft to deliver innovative solutions to capitalize on the promise of 5G for next-generation business outcomes.

“Combining the high bandwidth and low latency of 5G with cloud and edge compute capabilities opens an entirely new world of opportunities for businesses and other organizations to serve their customers in new ways. This will enable entirely new use cases in manufacturing, retail, health care, automotive, touching virtually every industry vertical. AT&T’s collaboration with Microsoft is about enabling organizations to harness the power of 5G, cloud and edge quickly with the ability to scale on demand.”—Rasesh Patel, Executive Vice President, and Chief Product and Platform Officer, AT&T

“This unique solution by Singtel and Microsoft leverages the strength and performance of Singtel's innovative edge cloud platform to deliver assured low latency, high throughput, intelligent connectivity, data analytics, and AI services to enterprises. This enables enterprises to accelerate their digital transformation journeys through adopting advanced technologies such as autonomous robots, vehicles, and drones, as well as Metaverse applications, into their enterprise operations through a single unified platform.”—Bill Chang, CEO, Group Enterprise, Singtel

Telstra announced customer trials of Australia’s first 5G-enabled edge compute solution for enterprises (Branch Offload) through a collaboration with Microsoft and Ericsson that will use technologies including Telstra’s 5G and fixed connectivity, Azure Stack Edge, Secure Edge, SD-WAN and service orchestration, and will be delivered as a managed service by Telstra Purple. Nikos Katinakis, Telstra’s Group Executive for Networks and IT said, “Telstra’s collaboration with our major strategic partners, Microsoft and Ericsson, continues to enable us to break new ground, leveraging new technologies and our smarter network to standardize solutions and that will help Australian businesses adapt for the digital future.”

“Technical trials demonstrated how Azure public MEC and AT&T’s 5G mobile network-enabled Summit Tech’s Odience 360 8K live streaming platform with built-in e-commerce to bring immersive and interactive experiences to use cases such as shopping, live concerts, sports stadiums, and eSports. MEC video processing yielded up to 80 percent bandwidth reduction, imperceptible motion-to-photon delay, and impressive glass-to-glass low latency for true two-way interactivity.

"As the requirements of modern applications continue to evolve, Couchbase is collaborating with Microsoft and Azure public MEC to bring the cloud and the edge closer together for customers. Azure public MEC and Couchbase’s modern database enables developers to build next-gen edge use cases."—Matt McDonough, SVP Business Development and Strategy, Couchbase

Watch this ISV testimonial to hear from Citrix, Spirent, Game Cloud, VMware, and Fortinet about how they are working with Microsoft to build and deliver public MEC solutions.

Source: microsoft.com

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Microsoft named a Leader in The Forrester Wave: Enterprise iPaaS, 2021

We are thrilled to share that Microsoft has been named a Leader in the Forrester Wave for Enterprise Integration-Platform-as-a-Service (iPaaS), 2021. Azure Integration Services consisting of Logic Apps, API Management, Event Grid, and Service Bus helps customers connect applications, data, and services on-premises and in the cloud, helping enterprises create new revenue opportunities with an API-driven partner and developer ecosystem and boost productivity with secure and automated workflows. Forrester credits Microsoft for providing a high-end developer experience to every kind of organization, from large enterprises to smaller ones, supporting varying integration requirements with flexible pricing options.

Our vision is to empower all kinds of organizations and users, from citizens to professional developers, to use Azure Integration Services to enable a composable enterprise. We believe that integration is an essential part of modern applications and should be available and accessible to all kinds of users; citizens to professional developers. We reach out to developers at the platform of their choice with Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code extensions, support for Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, Application Insights, and Azure Monitor, offering an intuitive user experience and increasing developer productivity. With Power Automate and its Windows-integrated robotic process automation (RPA) capabilities, we enable citizen developers to leverage integration without writing code. In addition to that, more than 450 out-of-the-box connectors such as Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Salesforce, SAP, and Twitter, help customers connect data, events, and resources across applications, and systems, fast and easy, without writing any code.

With the ability to run Azure’s application services on Kubernetes or any cloud through Azure Arc, Azure Integration Services enables customers to create, deploy, and manage integrations wherever they make the most sense to run, in on-premises data centers, or Azure and multicloud, or in the edge, or any combination of the above. Azure Arc enabled integration services offer customers better control to develop and deploy their integration solutions while providing the benefits of our iPaaS and the flexibility of hosting it anywhere.

Azure Integration Services has a vast and global customer base with more than 43,000 customers using our integration services to connect applications, systems, and services. Learn how customers use Azure Logic Apps and Azure API Management to connect business applications, data, and processes to digitally transform their businesses. We also have a vast partner network across all geographies to help enterprises modernize existing on-premises integration solutions, such as Microsoft BizTalk Server, or build modern integration platforms spanning cloud and on-premises.

Source: microsoft.com

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Automating quota management with Azure Quota REST API

Enterprises are increasingly defined by the applications they use and build to run their core business processes, including the customer experiences they provide. Across all sectors, we see how companies like challenger banks, online healthcare providers, e-commerce providers, and other startups are winning customers by providing new applications. The continuous need to innovate and deliver faster has yielded a new paradigm of software development called cloud native.

Cloud native describes the applications, architectures, platforms, infrastructure, and processes, that together make it economical and possible to respond quickly to a changing landscape and growing customer needs. In simple terms, it is application code, and dependencies packaged in containers, deployed as microservices, and exposed as APIs. And you can manage them using DevOps processes and tools.

Automation is a key aspect of DevOps and agile development. The longer it takes for developers and operations personnel to complete mechanical and manual tasks, the slower and less flexible their environment becomes. With Azure Quota REST API, you can automate quota management and integrate this capability programmatically with your applications, tools, and existing systems. Now you can move your applications and systems faster to the cloud and free up your time to focus on your core business.

On January 19, we announced the general availability of the Azure Quota API. In this blog post, we walk you through the benefits of using the Azure Quota API to automate and improve your Azure resource management operations.

What are quotas?

Quotas, also referred to as service limits, are the maximum values for the resources, actions, and items in an Azure account.

An Azure subscription is an agreement between a customer and Microsoft that enables the customer to obtain Azure services. The subscription pricing and related terms are governed by the offer chosen for the subscription. There is a default quota for a given subscription, region, and stock-keeping unit (SKU). Each Azure service defines its quotas and default values.

Here are some things to consider about quotas:

◉ Just like credit cards have credit limits, Azure services have limits. A quota is the upper limit of consumption for an Azure resource.

◉ A quota is shared across all the services in each subscription. When you are evaluating your capacity needs, you should calculate usage across all services.

◉ Some services have adjustable limits. The limit can be raised above the default limit but not above the maximum limit. Default limits vary by offer category type, such as free trial, pay-as-you-go, and virtual machine series (such as Dv4, Fsv2, and Easv4).

Key benefits

Customers with a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement, pay-as-you-go subscription, or Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) benefit from using Azure Quota API to improve their Azure resource management operations. Here are some customer benefits for using Azure Quota API:

◉ Granular and programmatic control for managing quotas that need to be adjusted.

◉ Managing transitional events when quota checks fail without resulting in creating a support ticket for a quota increase.

◉ Automating quota usage validation end-to-end and requesting quota increases with the Azure Quota API.

◉ Managing organic and inorganic growth of virtual machines efficiently.

Using Azure Quota API

To compete effectively, enterprises need to create an environment where developers can do their best work and operation teams can confidently meet the reliability, security, and compliance requirements their organizations expect. This requires advanced cloud capabilities designed to support modern constructs like containers, DevOps, APIs, managed services, and the fluidity to work across environments and teams. Azure Quota API can address this need for quota management automation and enabling quota management integration with your existing tools and applications.

Azure Quota API is a one-stop-shop for automating the process of viewing and managing quotas and eliminating the manual process of creating and managing quotas through support tickets in the Azure portal. Azure Quota API makes it easy to look up current quota usage and to request increases. With the current version of Azure Quota API, you can manage the service limits (quota) of Azure Virtual Machines (cores/vCPU) and Azure Machine Learning. In future releases, you will be able to take advantage of this capability to query current usage and quotas for additional Azure services and resources.

The following example illustrates how to use the Azure Quota API to automate quota management to improve agility, developer velocity, and efficiency in IT operations.

If you are a lead developer in a cloud readiness team, you may need to test software for a variety of configurations at scale. While testing, you may need to create many virtual machines. One of the challenges you may face is the inability to deploy new virtual machines because the maximum quota limit has been reached. This may happen frequently and unexpectedly because of the inorganic growth in the usage of virtual machines in your organization.

To continue with your workflow, you would have to manually create a support ticket to request a quota increase. But now, to improve efficiency in your workflow, you can use the Azure Quota API to automate quota request and validation operations end-to-end. You can check usage and monitor when your virtual machines reach the quota limit and automatically submit quota requests to increase limits. This can help you achieve operational efficiencies paving the way for uninterrupted firmware testing.

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