Foster a more data-driven culture with generative AI in Microsoft Fabric

From the invention of steam power to putting the world’s knowledge at our fingertips with the advent of smartphones, the right tools have always sparked transformation. And now we are seeing the potential of the next great shift: the new era of AI. It is one of the most exciting shifts of our generation, and we, along with other leaders are seeing this impact take shape across individuals, entire teams, and every industry. Everything from enterprise chat for better knowledge mining, to content generation and speech analytics, to data analysis to uncover more insights and make data more accessible.

Take PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) for example, a leader in the professional services sector and a long-time technology innovator. PwC is applying generative AI to acquire, transform, and analyze data faster to better support its employees and provide better audit experiences for clients.

“We’re implementing Microsoft infrastructure to help future-proof NGA design, increasing the potential future adaptability of our assurance services and processes. Generative AI capabilities within the Azure OpenAI Service open up possibilities for us to enable natural language interfaces for enterprise data.” 

Winnie Cheng, Director of AI in Products and Technology at PwC

Connect your data with Fabric

PwC is not alone. Increasingly, organizations are turning to AI to transform their data cultures for better business outcomes. Traditionally, building this culture requires a few key ingredients:

1. Organizing your data into a logical data mesh to make it easier for users to discover, reuse, and enhance the best data available.

2. Creating a seamless analytics engine that can meet the demands of the business to uncover insights in real-time.

3. Infusing those insights into the applications your people use every day so they can make data-driven decisions.  

These steps are still vital, but now you can employ generative AI to accelerate the path to a data-rich culture by enhancing the productivity of your data teams and making analytics tools more accessible to everyone. In my webinar, Infusing AI into your Data Culture: A Guide for Data Leaders I walk through exactly how Microsoft can help you accomplish each step along this journey.

First, we’ll explore the blockers preventing users from discovering, accessing, and using data to innovate and make better decisions. I will also show you the promise of Microsoft Fabric’s single, SaaS, multi-cloud data lake, OneLake, designed to connect to any data across the organization and serve everyone who needs access to data in an organized, intuitive data hub. Your data teams can use the OneLake data hub to manage your data, endorse high-quality data to encourage use, and manage access. Users can easily find, explore, and use the data items that they have access to—from inside data tools like Fabric or even applications like Teams and Excel. For more on OneLake, read our e-book, Lakehouse Analytics with Microsoft Fabric and Azure Databricks. 

With your data accessible to those who need it, you also need to equip them with powerful analytics tools that can help them scale to the needs of the business. That’s where Microsoft Fabric further shines. With Fabric, data teams can use a single product with a unified experience and architecture that provides all the capabilities required for analysts to extract insights from data and present them to the business user. Each role in the analytics process has the tools they need, so data engineers, data scientists, data analysts, business users, and data stewards feel right at home. By delivering the experience as a SaaS platform, everything is automatically integrated and optimized, and users can sign up within seconds and unlock significant business value within minutes.  

With your data in a single place and your data teams empowered to uncover insights faster than ever, the next step is to get insights into the hands of everyone in your organization. I’ll show you how Power BI can infuse reports and insights into your apps like Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and even third-party apps like Salesforce and SAP.  

And now, as we enter a future built on AI, I’ll walk you through three key ways generative AI can help foster a more data-rich culture: 

1. Take advantage of out-of-the-box experiences like Copilot in Fabric which helps you accelerate the productivity of your data teams.  

2. Employ powerful AI models right from Fabric to draw deeper insights from your data. 

3. Create custom AI experiences, grounded on your data, with native integration between Microsoft Fabric and Azure AI Studio.

Source: microsoft.com

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Accelerate your productivity with the Whisper model in Azure AI now generally available

Human speech remains one of the most complex things for computers to process. With thousands of spoken languages in the world, enterprises often struggle to choose the right technologies to understand and analyze audio conversations while keeping right data security and privacy guardrails in place. Thanks to generative AI, it has become easier for enterprises to analyze every customer interaction and derive actionable insights from these interactions.

Azure AI offers an industry-leading portfolio of AI services to help customers make sense of their voice data. Our speech-to-text service in particular offers a variety of differentiated features through Azure OpenAI Service and Azure AI Speech. These features have been instrumental in helping customers develop multilingual speech transcription and translation, both for long audio files and for near-real-time and real-time assistance for customer service representatives.

Read More: MB-500: Microsoft Dynamics 365 - Finance and Operations Apps Developer

Today, we are excited to announce that OpenAI Whisper on Azure is generally available. Whisper is a speech to text model from OpenAI that developers can use to transcribe audio files. Starting today, developers can begin using the generally available Whisper API in both Azure OpenAI Service as well as Azure AI Speech services on production workloads, knowing that it is backed by Azure’s enterprise-readiness promise. With all our speech-to-text models generally available, customers have greater choice and flexibility to enable AI powered transcription and other speech scenarios.

Since the public preview of the Whisper API in Azure, thousands of customers across industries across healthcare, education, finance, manufacturing, media, agriculture, and more are using it to translate and transcribe audio into text across many of the 57 supported languages. They use Whisper to process call center conversations, add captions for accessibility purposes to audio and video content, and mine audio and video data for actionable insights. 

We continue to bring OpenAI models to Azure to enrich our portfolio and address the next generation of use-cases and workflows customers are looking to build with speech technologies and LLMs. For instance, imagine building an end-to-end contact center workflow—with a self-service copilot carrying out human-like conversations with end users through voice or text; an automated call routing solution; real-time agent assistance copilots; and automated post-call analytics. This end-to-end workflow, powered by generative AI, has the potential to bring a new era in productivity to call centers around the world.

Whisper in Azure OpenAI Service 

Azure OpenAI Service enables developers to run OpenAI’s Whisper model in Azure, mirroring the OpenAI Whisper model functionalities including fast processing time, multi-lingual support, and transcription and translation capabilities. OpenAI Whisper in Azure OpenAI Service is ideal for processing smaller size files for time-sensitive workloads and use-cases. 

Lightbulb.ai, an AI innovator, is looking to transform call center workflows, has been using Whisper in Azure OpenAI Service.

“By merging our call center expertise with tools like Whisper and a combination of LLMs, our product is proven to be 500X more scalable, 90X faster, and 20X more cost-effective than manual call reviews and enables third-party administrators, brokerages, and insurance companies to not only eliminate compliance risk; but also to significantly improve service and boost revenue. We are grateful for our partnership with Azure, which has been instrumental in our success, and we’re enthusiastic about continuing to leverage Whisper to create unprecedented outcomes for our customers.”

Tyler Amundsen, CEO and Co-Founder, Lightbulb.AI

Try out the Whisper REST (representational state transfer) API in the Azure OpenAI Studio. The API supports translation services from a growing list of languages to English, producing English-only output. 

OpenAI Whisper model in Azure AI Speech

Users of Azure AI Speech can leverage OpenAI’s Whisper model in conjunction with the Azure AI Speech batch transcription API. This enables customers to easily transcribe large volumes of audio content at scale for non-time-sensitive batch workloads.

Developers using Whisper in Azure AI Speech also benefit from the following additional capabilities:

• Processing of large file sizes up to 1GB in size with the ability to process large amounts of files with up to 1000 files in a single request that processes multiple audio files simultaneously.
• Speaker diarization which allows developers to distinguish between different speakers, accurately transcribe their words, and create a more organized and structured transcription of audio files.
• And lastly, developers can use Custom Speech in Speech Studio or via API to finetune the Whisper model using audio plus human labeled transcripts.

Customers are using Whisper in Azure AI Speech for post-call analysis, deriving insights from audio and video recordings, and many more such applications.

Source: microsoft.com

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Modernize and build intelligent apps with support from Microsoft partner solutions

AI transformation drives significant business value, as a recent study of over 2000 business leaders and decision-makers found:

• For every USD1 a company invests in AI, it realizes an average return of USD3.50.
• Organizations realize a return on their AI investments within 14 months.
• 92% of AI deployments take 12 months or less. 
• 71% of respondents say their companies are already using AI.

Clearly, we’re witnessing rapid expansion of AI wherein organizations globally are unlocking productivity within their businesses, but also bending the curve on innovation by building on an open AI platform and partner ecosystem. These organizations are engaging Microsoft experts to build differentiated, intelligent applications and modernize existing, business-critical applications. These intelligent applications use real-time and historical data to deliver personalized and adaptable digital experiences with meaningful outcomes, that close the gap between the user’s current state and the desired outcome. New or modernized, when built on Microsoft Azure, these applications benefit from one of the largest interconnected networks on the planet, high availability, and trusted security and compliance.

Azure brings together capabilities for modern app development, cloud-scale data, and leading generative AI in one place. Customers see great value using these services together. In a recent Forrester Total Economic Impact of Microsoft Azure App Innovation report, customers were able to gain significant time savings of one to one and a half months when delivering new applications to the market, increase developer efficiency up to 25%, and reduce app downtime up to 25%. This leads to compelling business benefits such as beating competitors in the innovation race, capturing incremental revenue, minimizing lost revenue and fines from downtime, and increasing the engagement and retention of key talent.

ISV solutions help accelerate your AI transformation

While Azure provides the tools to build and modernize intelligent applications, it’s important to consider the broader tech stack. Independent Software Vendor (ISV) solutions complement Azure services by allowing you to meet specific use-case requirements, modernize existing tech stacks onto Azure, and mitigate the need to build new skillsets. If your organization routinely uses ISV solutions as part of the app infrastructure or development process, chances are that you can continue to use them even as you build new or modernize existing apps onto Azure. An example is apps built on Azure Spring Apps or Azure Red Hat OpenShift.

1. Azure Spring Apps Enterprise

Azure Spring Apps Enterprise is a fully managed service for the Spring Framework, built in collaboration with VMware. Building upon the Spring Framework and incorporating features from VMware Tanzu, Azure Spring Apps Enterprise helps accelerate development with ready-made, enterprise-conformant templates. Azure Spring Apps Enterprise offers full integration into Azure’s ecosystem and services, including fully managed infrastructure, built-in app lifecycle management, and ease of monitoring for app development and modernization. If you have existing apps in the Spring Framework, you can efficiently modernize them onto Azure while managing costs and enhancing the apps with AI. Here’s how to get started: Migrate Spring Boot applications to Azure Spring Apps.

2. Azure Red Hat OpenShift

Azure Red Hat OpenShift is a turnkey application platform. It is jointly engineered, operated, and supported by Red Hat and Microsoft. With Azure Red Hat OpenShift, you can deploy fully managed Red Hat OpenShift clusters without worrying about building and managing the infrastructure and get ready access to and integration with Azure tools, singular billing, integrated support and access to committed spend, and discount programs. This increases operational efficiency, time to value, and allows developers to refocus on innovation to quickly build, deploy, and scale applications. 

Microsoft also supports pure third-party solutions as part of its ISV ecosystem, to complement native Azure services. While these solutions meet a diverse set of use-cases, ranging from analytics to storage, here’s one that’s likely common to many app development or modernization projects—HashiCorp Terraform.

3. HashiCorp Terraform on Azure

An infrastructure as code tool for provisioning and managing cloud infrastructure, HashiCorp Terraform on Azure allows you to define infrastructure as code with declarative configuration files that can be used to create, manage, and update infrastructure. If your organization currently uses Terraform, developers can use their familiarity with the tool to deploy and manage Azure infrastructure using familiar and consistent syntax and tooling. To support this, HashiCorp offers a library of pre-built modules for Azure services, including Azure AI, Azure Kubernetes Service, and Azure Cosmos DB. And as your developers build new modules, perhaps with GitHub Copilot, those modules can be templatized using HashiCorp Terraform for reuse within your organization, setting up your developer teams for greater productivity and velocity.

Build and modernize apps with Azure and our partner ecosystem

So, as you look through your app infrastructure and decide to modernize your existing apps, any Spring apps or Red Hat OpenShift apps can easily be moved to Azure, with HashiCorp Terraform on Azure to assist. While we have only looked at three solutions in this blog, your preferred vendors are likely part of the Azure ISV ecosystem. Microsoft’s ecosystem of partners also includes partners that specialize in offering services to build custom intelligent apps, with industry-specific experience.

Connect with experts from Azure who will be able to guide you on your app architecture that utilizes the appropriate technology and services— Microsoft or partner—for your needs.

Source: microsoft.com

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Tackle large volumes of data with new solution from SLB for Azure Data Manager for Energy

As the energy industry continues to innovate, companies find themselves balancing the ever-growing demand for energy with the desire to work toward more efficient, sustainable operations. Decision makers spread across the globe rely on accurate data to improve confidence and minimize risk, so harnessing the power of data has become a central tenant of energy companies’ success as they push to evolve. However, different types of data and the variety of file types that energy companies manage daily make it difficult to access and analyze the data efficiently.

That is why energy companies around the world are using Microsoft technologies, including Azure Data Manager for Energy. This cloud-based OSDU® Data Platform maximizes customer performance by being truly interoperable across the exploration and production data landscape. It can integrate with industry datasets, applications, and other cloud services, which makes it easier for employees throughout an organization to access the data they need quickly and efficiently. These sources may include other data platforms for asset performance, the internet of things (IoT), or production, but also databases that may still be deployed on-premises before migration to the cloud can take place. Data siloes slow productivity and complicate workflows—optimizing access to high quality data is crucial for success.

The Microsoft partner ecosystem is a key component in how Microsoft delivers technology, services, and cloud-to-edge solutions for our customers. SLB—one of Microsoft’s strategic partners in the energy sector—designed the Enterprise Data Solution to work seamlessly with Azure Data Manager for Energy, easing data ingestion, management, and discoverability for domain applications.

Enterprise Data Solution from SLB facilitates day-to-day workflows

Designed to reduce the friction of dealing with large volumes of data traditionally stored in different silos, Enterprise Data Solution from SLB features a user-friendly, inclusive interface that facilitates the process of data ingestion, curation, and accessibility. Enterprise Data Solution from SLB allows customers to unlock data with a single click instead of running multiple steps to get the same results. This makes it easier for a variety of end users to ingest different data types and formats and access data faster. In addition, the curation of data along this pipeline is aided by several AI-enhanced tools, from more streamlined unstructured data ingestion, data quality control, contextualization, and data mastering, reducing the need for manual intervention.

Both traditional and new energy technical workflows are optimized when data and application interoperability are achieved. For example, handling large volumes of seismic data (access, ingestion, and streaming) can be dramatically improved with Enterprise Data Solution from SLB. The typical cost for handling these workloads is also reduced significantly, speeding up workflows and allowing users to incorporate as much diverse domain data as possible. Geoscientists and engineers can run more scenarios in different applications, compare results with their colleagues, and ultimately liberate the most accurate data quickly.

“Having the Enterprise Data Solution from SLB working with ADME is transformative. Workflow efficiency is vastly increased, and decision-making accelerated to levels that are impossible to achieve without it. Pairing the two technologies enables AI to work at full effect in the energy sector. AI plays a dual role, it enhances data quality, accessibility, and utilization, which in turn enables it to drive innovation across the entire planning to operations life cycle.”

—Jamie Cruise, Product Leader, SLB

Key features of Enterprise Data Solution from SLB

The key features of Enterprise Data Solution from SLB include:

Ingest: Collect, ingest, and stage data easily from desktop or other file sources for document transcription and parsing. For example, you can use a cloud-style file drop for changes to files and get automated translation into the correct schema. This is increasingly aided by AI to reduce human workload requirements.

Curate: Data quality is at the heart of many of the challenges in the industry and causes a lot of wasted time. The Enterprise Data Solution from SLB accelerates curation and refining of datasets into trusted data products, liberating them with streamlined tools for data quality so they’re ready for consumption. These tools include AI for quality control and mastering.

Discover: Ready-to-use data products enable quick data-asset analysis and screening online for quick-to-create collections and consumption from domain workflows. Locating and accessing quality data is critical for decision-making. Enterprise Data Solution from SLB enables workflows to access the right data for stakeholders to easily discover, visualize, and use.

Consume: The Enterprise Data Solution from SLB makes it easy for analysts and others to access trusted data products from within their familiar applications and workflows, whether that is the Delfi™ digital platform, Petrel™ subsurface software, or Techlog™ wellbore software. With an intuitive user interface that’s accessible from a web browser, full data lineage, and project versioning are always available in an optimized format. Data can be shared and consumed in workflows such as seismic processing, machine learning seismic interpretation, and machine learning property modeling. In addition, this data is now easily consumable in machine learning workbenches such as Delfi Data Science or tooling available in Microsoft Azure. This cuts time to decision and action, critical components for a smooth production workflow.

Unlock downstream advantages within the Microsoft ecosystem

Once data is in Azure Data Manager for Energy, it conforms to the OSDU® Technical Standard and is a reliable platform for other applications to consume and re-ingest data iteratively. The interoperability of Azure Data Manager for Energy improves accessibility, traceability, and validity of data, allowing domain users and data scientists to deliver business outcomes faster.

Enterprise Data Solution from SLB helps customers take full advantage of Azure Data Manager for Energy by making it more efficient to ingest large amounts of quality, trusted, and traceable data into the platform. Ultimately, Azure Data Manager for Energy’s interoperability empowers customers by harmonizing data that can be leveraged across the Microsoft ecosystem.

Once this data is in the platform, there are many opportunities to take advantage of Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service to drive additional insights and efficiencies further downstream in Microsoft 365 applications. For example, end users can extract tables directly from ingested documents and generate Open XML documents that are ready to use in Microsoft Excel, where they can be more easily visualized.

Source: microsoft.com

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Azure multicloud networking: Native and partner solutions

Enterprise customers are increasingly adopting multiple cloud providers—per a recent Gartner Survey, By 2027, over 90% of enterprises will adopt multicloud models, up from 80% in 2023, for differentiated capabilities and interoperability and to mitigate vendor lock-in risks. The intentional drivers for this trend include data sovereignty, which refers to the legal requirement to store data within a specific geographic location, and cost optimization, which allows businesses to select the most cost-effective cloud provider for each workload. The other intentional drivers include product selection, geographical reach, while the unintentional drivers include shadow IT, line of business (LOB) owner-driven cloud selection, and mergers and acquisitions.

This multicloud strategy demands enterprise cloud architects to design and enable hybrid clouds that can connect, operate, and govern multiple cloud environments securely and efficiently.

Microsoft Azure has long anticipated such an evolution and has been building and evolving its networking services, such as Azure ExpressRoute and Azure Virtual WAN and management and orchestration solutions, such as Azure Arc, to provide seamless, multicloud connectivity as well as centralized management of multicloud resources.

With Azure’s multicloud enabled networking and management services, Azure enterprise customers can evolve their enterprise cloud network architecture from hybrid cloud to hybrid multicloud and with Azure as their “hub” cloud while the other connected clouds as their “spoke” clouds.

Azure Arc for multicloud orchestration and management

Azure Arc is a hybrid and multicloud management solution, enabling customers to take advantage of Azure management services (Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Update Management, Azure Monitor, and more) no matter where the environment is running. Since its launch in November 2019, Azure Arc is being leveraged by thousands of enterprises to manage their servers, Kubernetes clusters, databases, and applications across on-premises, multicloud, and edge environments, providing customers with a single way to manage their infrastructure.

Microsoft is investing more in this space with the goal of making it easy for customers to discover, visualize, and manage their multicloud estate. These additional Azure Arc multicloud capabilities are leveraged by other services such as Azure Virtual WAN and Defender for Cloud, so customers can easily connect and secure their multicloud environments.

Azure networking services for enabling multicloud connectivity

Azure networking services span the full breadth of cloud networking capabilities, features, and functions, covering cloud network virtualization and segmentation, private, high-performance hybrid networking, secure application delivery, and network security, and they serve as the important building block for an enterprise cloud architecture and means for enterprise cloud consumption.

While these services help enterprises optimally leverage Azure with highest security, performance, and reliability, enterprises can now leverage Azure’s network services and management tools to access, interconnect, and consume workloads across other clouds.

For connectivity to and from other CSPs (AWS, GCP, OCI, Alibaba), Azure offers three fundamental services offered with a wide range of speeds and feeds.

1. Direct internet peering

2. Azure VPN and Virtual WAN

3. Azure ExpressRoute

Figure 1: Azure as a hub cloud

Direct internet peering with other CSPs

Many workloads depend on cross cloud connectivity over Public IP. Microsoft operates one of the largest wide area networks in the world. With more than 200 edge point of presence (PoPs) and more than 40,000 peering connections, Microsoft is deeply connected to other clouds and service providers providing best in class Public IP to Public IP connectivity. Microsoft connects to AWS and GCP in 50 different locations across the world with multiple terabits of capacity in some locations. All the traffic between other clouds and Microsoft is carried within Microsoft global backbone until it is handed off or back to the destination CSPs network. Traffic between other clouds and Microsoft goes via dedicated private network interconnect (PNI). This private network interconnect is built on high availability architecture, providing both low latency and higher reliability.

Microsoft is also working with other cloud and service providers to build next-generation solutions, which would increase the capacity significantly, reduce the time to provision capacity, and remove the single location dependency. Recently we announced our partnership with Lumen on Exa-Switch program. This technology is built to deliver high-capacity networks while reducing the time to deliver the capacity between clouds and service providers.

Azure VPN and Virtual WAN for multicloud connectivity

One of the most common and prevalent ways to interconnect resources between public clouds is over the internet using a site-to-site VPN. All public cloud providers offer IPSec VPN gateway as a service and this service is widely used by Azure customers  to set up a private cloud-to-cloud connection. As an example, interconnecting resources in Azure Virtual Networks using Azure VPN Gateway and AWS Virtual Private Cloud (VPCs) using AWS virtual private gateway is described in this how to guide by Azure.

Azure Virtual WAN is an Azure native networking service that brings many networking, security, and routing functionalities together to provide a single operational interface for Azure customers to build a managed global transit cloud network, interconnecting and securing customers’ Azure Virtual Networks and on-premises sites using various network connectivity services such as site-to-site and point-to-site VPN, virtual network (VNet) connections, ExpressRoute, and Azure Firewall.

Using Azure Virtual WAN’s site-to-site VPN, Azure customers can connect VPCs in other CSPs to the Azure Virtual WAN Hub. While this type of VPN connection currently needs to be set up manually, Azure Virtual WAN is extending and enhancing this site-to-site VPN connection service to enable managed multicloud VPN connections for VWAN hub.

In addition, Azure Virtual WAN integrates and supports many independent software vendors (ISV) partners’ software defined wide area network (SDWAN) and VPN services under the Network Virtual Appliance (NVA) in VWAN hub partner program and the combined solutions can be used to build multicloud connections between Azure and other CSPs such as AWS and GCP. Some of these partner offers are described in the multicloud partners solution section below.

Azure ExpressRoute service for multicloud

Azure ExpressRoute lets you extend your on-premises networks into the Microsoft Cloud over a private connection via a connectivity provider (ExpressRoute Provider Model) or directly (ExpressRoute Direct model). ExpressRoute has a constantly growing ecosystem of connectivity providers and systems integrator partners. 

Azure currently offers a native multicloud connectivity service to interconnect Azure and Oracle Clouds. While this native service was built to support Azure customers that want highspeed, secure connections between their Oracle applications on Oracle Cloud and Azure Cloud, this type of native multicloud highspeed interconnection service to other CSPs is currently being planned.

Meanwhile, many of the ExpressRoute partners offer innovative multicloud interconnect service offers such that Azure customers could cross-connect Azure ExpressRoute with other CSP’s highspeed private connection services. Some of these partner offers are described below by the partners themselves.

Azure partner solutions for enabling multicloud connectivity

Alongside Azure native network services there are a number of Azure Networking ISV, Cloud Exchange Platform (CXP), and Marketplace Partners that offer many innovative services that are able to fulfill the diverse multicloud networking needs of our enterprise customers.

While this blog does not cover all of the ISV and CXP partners (Azure marketplace for a full list of multicloud ISV and CXP solutions), here are some partners in no particular order, that offer  multicloud networking solutions that are leveraged by a number of our customers to build connectivity between their workloads in Azure and workloads in other CSPs.

Aviatrix

The Aviatrix Secure Cloud Networking Platform enables Azure customers to securely interconnect workloads in Azure with workloads in other CSPs and on-premises workloads. Aviatrix solves common customer challenges around optimizing cloud costs for data transfer, accelerating M&A customer onboarding, and providing distributed security enforcement with consistent policies across multicloud environments. 

Alkira

For customers using Azure, Alkira offers an elegant approach for onboarding cloud applications onto their network. Alkira achieves this through its Cloud Exchange Point (CXP) hosted in Azure, which not only helps onboarding VNETs in Azure but it can also onboard workloads running in other CSPs.

Prosimo

Prosimo’s Full Stack Cloud Transit is built for enterprises to connect networks, applications, platform as a service (PaaS), and users into a unified network fabric across public and private clouds. The solution provides a transformative set of tools to rapidly adopt native services from cloud service providers and elevate them to meet the sophisticated requirements for enterprises with advanced networking features such as overlapping IP addresses, service insertion, and namespace segmentation. The solution is delivered as a service yet under the enterprise’s own control, with an elastic scaling approach that meets their operational flexibility and compliance needs.

Arrcus

Azure cloud customers can use Arrcus FlexMCN solution to build secure connectivity with micro-segmentation between their workloads in Azure VNets to other CSPs such as AWS and ensure a consistent network policy across clouds. Arrcus FlexMCN solution allows segment routing-based traffic engineering (SR-TE) to deliver application aware performance and route optimization.

Cisco Systems

Cisco enables control and security while driving agility and innovation across multicloud and hybrid environments.  Catalyst SD-WAN’s Cloud OnRamp simplifies, automates, and optimizes cloud connectivity while ensuring secure connections to Azure. It leverages built-in automation with Azure Virtual WAN for interregional, branch to cloud, and hybrid-cloud/mulitcloud connectivity.

Equinix

Equinix Fabric Cloud Router makes it easy to connect applications and data across different clouds—solving the hard problems enterprises face today.

Cloud-to-cloud—gain the performance benefits of a private network without the hassle and costs of a physical router, spin up routing virtually with reliable, high bandwidth connections between multiple cloud providers and avoid backhauling traffic.

Megaport

The Megaport platform enables private access from Azure to hundreds of services across the globe including AWS, Oracle, Google, and IBM Cloud. Common multicloud architectures for Azure include connectivity to your private data center environments, as well as cloud-to-cloud peering with other hyperscalers and cloud service providers. Easily connect at one of more than 850 Megaport-enabled data center locations to ensure your network is no longer a cumbersome but necessary evil, but a simple and flexible way to drive innovation across your business.

Azure’s multicloud networking services

In conclusion, as enterprises increasingly adopt a multicloud strategy, Azure, along with its ecosystem partners, provides flexible solutions for connecting and consuming cloud resources from other CSPs. Azure’s multicloud networking services, such as ExpressRoute, Virtual WAN, and Azure Arc, enable seamless, secure, and high-performance connections between Azure and other CSPs. Additionally, Azure’s partner solutions offer innovative services to meet the diverse multicloud networking requirements of enterprise customers. By using Azure as the hub cloud of their enterprise cloud architecture, customers can benefit from Azure’s multicloud capable networking and management services to transform their enterprise cloud network architecture from hybrid cloud to hybrid multicloud.

Source: microsoft.com

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Navigate a seamless cloud modernization with Microsoft assessment tools

As businesses increasingly migrate their operations to the cloud, the need for comprehensive assessments of IT environments is imperative. These assessments not only aid in understanding the existing infrastructure but also play a pivotal role in formulating strategic decisions that align with organizational goals. However, navigating the intricacies of an IT environment and determining the optimal cloud strategy can be a daunting task, fraught with challenges.

Recognizing these pain points, Microsoft offers a suite of tools and solutions designed to empower businesses in assessing their IT landscapes, facilitate informed decision-making, and ultimately enable a seamless modernization of their cloud strategy. Assessments are not a one-size-fits-all solution, and every company’s needs will be different. That’s why in this blog we’ll investigate the many assessments Microsoft offers and break down the rationale for pursuing each.

What assessments does Microsoft offer?

The inherent complexities and the rapidly changing nature of technology can make it difficult for organizations to independently conduct thorough assessments, leading to potential oversights and suboptimal decision-making. Recognizing the diverse challenges faced by businesses in assessing their IT environments, we took a proactive approach in providing a suite of assessment options for any organization in need of a helping hand:

Self-Directed Assessments: Adopt, optimize, and combine Microsoft products and services using a self-guided, streamlined questionnaire experience that is designed to help you identify areas to improve with actionable recommendations. Jump to the Self-Directed Assessments section.

Customer Success Team Assessments: Customers with existing Microsoft Unified Support contracts can get expert help with a variety of assessments to make the most out of your Microsoft products and services. These assessments are designed to evaluate the customer’s current usage, identify opportunities for improvement, and provide recommendations to enhance your experience. Jump to the Customer Success Team Assessments section.

Azure Expert Assessment: Customers without a Microsoft Unified Support contract can now complete free assessments through this new Azure offering and collaborate with certified Azure Experts worldwide, all through an automated online portal. Jump to the Azure Expert Assessments section.

How does an assessment help my cloud modernization?

The type of assessment you decide to pursue depends on your objectives, timeline, and resources, but the benefits of conducting any assessment are many:

• Clarity on current state: Conducting an assessment provides a clear understanding of your company’s IT environment, including infrastructure, applications, and workloads.
• Identifying security vulnerabilities: Assessments help identify potential proactive measures to enhance data protection and privacy.
• Application compatibility analysis: Evaluate the compatibility of existing applications with cloud environments, ensuring a seamless transition and optimal performance during migration.
• Optimizing performance: Gain insights into the performance of servers, workloads, and other components, allowing for optimizations that enhance efficiency and resource utilization.
• Cost optimization: Assessments can highlight opportunities for cost optimization by identifying redundant resources, underutilized assets, and potential areas for cloud resource consolidation.
• Strategic decision-making: The information gathered from assessments serves as a foundation for strategic decision-making, enabling businesses to align their cloud strategy with overall organizational goals.
• Risk mitigation: Identify and mitigate potential risks associated with cloud adoption, ensuring a smooth and secure transition without compromising data integrity or system stability.
• Scalability planning: Assessments provide valuable insights into the scalability requirements of your IT environment, aiding in the development of plans that accommodate future growth and evolving business needs.

Self-Directed Assessments

Now that we’ve reviewed the many ways your company can benefit from assessing your IT environment, let’s take a deep dive into the types of assessments offered by Microsoft.

Our Self-Directed Assessments are designed to empower businesses of all sizes to gain a comprehensive understanding of their current IT infrastructure and identify areas for improvement. These free, online assessments can provide clarity on the existing state of your organization’s technology infrastructure. Whether it’s evaluating server workloads, identifying security vulnerabilities, or assessing application compatibility, these tools offer a detailed analysis that forms the foundation for strategic decision-making.

These assessments are particularly beneficial for businesses that:

• Are new to cloud computing and seek to assess their readiness for cloud adoption.
• Have existing cloud environments and strive to optimize performance and resource utilization.
• Are considering migrating to Microsoft Azure and want to evaluate their compatibility.
• Have specific concerns about security, compliance, or governance in their cloud environments.

Conducting a Self-Directed Assessment:

Thanks to a user-friendly interface and detailed guidance, running a self-guided assessment is a streamlined process. The first step involves navigating to the Microsoft Assessment page, where you’ll find an array of assessments related to Microsoft products and services, catering to different aspects of IT environments.

1. Browse available assessments: The platform offers a diverse range of assessments, from Azure migration assessments to security and compliance evaluations. You can choose the assessments that align with your specific objectives and concerns.

Note: The following screenshots present steps for completing the Azure Well-Architected Review. Microsoft differentiates between the terms “assessment” and “review” in that a review is comprised of multiple assessments.

2. Access assessment tools: Our assessments are equipped with tools that facilitate data collection and analysis. These tools may include scripts, questionnaires, and diagnostic tools tailored to the focus of the assessment.

3. Run the assessment: Following the provided instructions, run the assessments on your existing infrastructure. The tools will gather relevant data, providing insights into areas such as performance, security, and compliance.

4. Review results and recommendations: Once the assessment is complete, you’ll receive detailed reports outlining the current state of your IT environment. These reports not only highlight existing strengths but also pinpoint areas that may require attention or optimization.

5. Formulate a strategic roadmap: Armed with the insights gained from the assessment, you can now formulate a strategic roadmap for your cloud journey. This may involve optimizing existing processes, addressing security concerns, or outlining a phased migration plan to Microsoft Azure.

It’s good practice to engage key members of your IT team and business units to participate in the assessment process and allow ample time to complete the assessment thoroughly and thoughtfully.

Should you encounter any challenges or have questions, you can reach out to your certified Azure partner. They can offer guidance or even run the assessment for you. Browse the Assessments portal to determine to advance your projects, cloud skills, and general adoption of Azure

Customer Success Team Assessments

For complex, transformative journeys such as cloud migration or optimizing existing cloud infrastructure, having the expertise of a team well-versed in the nuances of Azure is akin to having a compass in uncharted waters. Imagine a dedicated cadre of Azure Experts meticulously examining your setup, identifying opportunities for improvement, and guiding you toward a more efficient and robust cloud environment.

An assessment from a Microsoft customer success team offers technical guidance on your cloud adoption or optimization, setting a foundation for reliable future Azure workloads. Over the course of multiple days, a customer success team can walk you through a personalized plan of action, adopting and implementing recommendations and addressing blockers. You’ll get practical implementation experience, learn from presentations and demonstrations, and participate in group discussions.

For more on how Microsoft can offer high-level guidance and best practices to help you maintain and improve secure, reliable, performant, cost-optimized, and operationally excellent Azure applications, contact your Customer Success Accounts Manager or Microsoft partner today.

Azure Expert Assessment

 If you are looking for hands-on support when you assess cloud migration and optimization scenarios and do not have a Unified contract, Azure recently launched a new, free offering to assist you. Azure Expert Assessment connects you with certified Azure Experts worldwide to expiate assessments with automated scheduling, tooling setup, and customized reports. Choose from a variety of assessment topics, including FinOps, Azure Well-Architected Framework Reviews, SQL server migration, and Windows server migration.

Through Azure Expert Assessment, you can request a personalized evaluation to guide your cloud adoption strategy in collaboration with certified Azure Experts. You’ll be paired with an expert who’s not only well-versed in scenarios similar to your business case, but adept in overall Azure practices to provide broader cloud consultation. We also designed automation throughout the assessment process, from the scheduling tool to data collection to personalized reports.

Claim your free assessment on the Azure Expert Assessment homepage. The process is simple:

• Initiate an assessment in the online portal.
• Complete a readiness checklist and provide calendar availability.
• Collaborate with an assigned Azure Expert during a virtual session to set up Azure Migrate and other migration tools.
• Collect and analyze data and prepare for your assessment report.
• Upon completion, the expert will prepare and send a final report and schedule a final briefing call.
• Receive vouchers for additional Azure offers upon marking the assessment complete.

Register for a free assessment today to claim your voucher and embark on your cloud journey with confidence.

Skilling assessments from Microsoft Learn

Evaluations of existing IT infrastructure aren’t the only types of assessments Microsoft offers. Microsoft Learn is our comprehensive online learning platform that empowers individuals with the knowledge and skills needed to effectively use our solutions and tools. From Azure cloud to data science to AI, these free, interactive learning paths provide learners with a tangible gauge of their proficiency in specific Microsoft technologies and related domains.

Embarking on a journey to master Microsoft technologies is an exciting endeavor, and Microsoft Learn practice assessments stand out as invaluable tools on this learning path. These assessments are not just checkpoints; they are gateways to a deeper understanding, offering learners an opportunity to apply their knowledge in real-world scenarios. This not only boosts confidence but also reinforces the application of knowledge, ensuring that what is learned in theory seamlessly translates into practical, job-ready skills.

Additionally, the immediate feedback provided by these assessments serves as a personalized guide, pinpointing areas for improvement and guiding learners on their continuous learning journey. Moreover, Microsoft Learn practice assessments are a key component in the journey towards earning certifications. They align closely with the exam objectives, offering learners a chance to gauge their readiness and refine their skills in alignment with industry-recognized standards.

Empower your cloud journey with our assessment tools

Microsoft’s assessments empower businesses to take control of their cloud journey, gain valuable insights into their IT environments, and make informed decisions that drive innovation and growth. By embracing these assessments, businesses can navigate the complexities of cloud adoption and optimize their IT infrastructures for success.

Source: microsoft.com

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Streamline workflows with DevOps solutions from GitHub and Azure

DevOps platforms have demonstrated immense importance in accelerating software delivery and fostering collaboration between development and operations teams. In the fast-paced landscape of software development, the culture of DevOps has been widely recognized and adopted as it unites people, processes, and technologies. The joint solution of GitHub and Azure, combined with the power of Visual Studio, can create order for previously staggered workflows and delayed deployments.

Microsoft has been recognized as a Leader by Gartner® and placed furthest for Completeness of Vision on the Magic Quadrant for DevOps platforms. Combined as a single DevOps solution, GitHub and Azure DevOps can address dev productivity challenges like slow coding, compromised quality, and mundane, repeatable tasks.

Microsoft is committed to accelerating developer productivity with its full developer stack

Microsoft offers an additional cloud development environment aside from GitHub Codespaces. Microsoft Dev Box gives developers self-service access to secure, high-performance workstations in the cloud that are preconfigured and ready-to-code for their projects. Dev Box enables developer teams to tailor their workstation to their projects with compute options to support even the most demanding workloads and integrations with tools like Visual Studio to deliver a seamless developer experience.

When an organization adopts GitHub and Azure DevOps, it encompasses more than just a set of tools that work well together. GitHub Enterprise is an enterprise-ready software development platform designed for the complex workflows of modern development. It’s no wonder it’s adopted by 90% of the Fortune 100. Azure DevOps supports a collaborative culture and set of processes that bring together developers, project managers, and contributors to create software. Together, development teams can seamlessly use their GitHub repositories with integrations with a variety of Azure DevOps services.

Organizations can also easily integrate Visual Studio, the most widely used integrated development environment (IDE) on the market, for an even more productive workflow and seamless build.

When procured jointly under one license, your team will experience:

• Smarter collaboration:
• GitHub and Azure DevOps facilitate smarter collaboration among teams by integrating features such as code reviews embedded in every pull request, timeline-style interfaces, integrated issue tracking, and project boards. This fosters a dynamic environment where teams seamlessly collaborate, ensuring a unified and efficient workflow.
• Streamlined security:
• GitHub Enterprise empowers organizations to enforce robust security policies without burdening existing processes. Integration with the organization’s authentication systems and centralized permission management ensures a secure development ecosystem. With GitHub Advanced Security (GHAS), vulnerabilities are identified and rectified proactively, preventing them from reaching production. Plus, GHAS notifies teams if secrets are exposed in the codebase, enhancing the overall security posture.
• Simpler administration:
• GitHub Enterprise offers versatility in deployment options. Whether on in-house servers or private/public cloud infrastructure, the platform provides multiple deployment pathways. This flexibility is complemented by advanced monitoring tools and activity dashboards, offering full visibility into projects and teams. Simpler administration becomes a reality, allowing organizations to manage their development environment with ease and efficiency.
• Increased scalability:
• GitHub Enterprise is engineered with workflow and administration features tailored for scalability to support organizations in their growth. High availability and load balancing features ensure that the platform seamlessly scales alongside your organization’s expanding needs. As the demands increase, GitHub Enterprise easily offers a scalable foundation for success.

What’s next for engineering and development teams

A more recent evolution from DevOps principles is platform engineering. This new approach helps scale DevOps efforts across teams by standardizing development toolsets used across the organization and providing developers with self-service, on-demand access to deploy the resources they need via a secure, centrally managed platform. Platform engineering empowers developers to achieve scale by eliminating toil and reducing cognitive load while making it easier for admins to meet broader operational and organizational standards.

Many organizations have already adopted this mindset and have implemented their own internal platform engineering teams. In fact, Gartner projects that “By 2026, 80% of large software engineering organizations will establish platform engineering teams as internal providers of reusable services, components and tools for application delivery.”

Teams can leverage building blocks from Microsoft and its myriad of tools to create their own personalized, optimized, and secure developer experiences.

Microsoft also leads AI innovation with the most widely adopted AI developer tool—GitHub Copilot. GitHub Copilot now works within Visual Studio, enabling developers to stay in their workflow and complete tasks faster with the help of multi-line suggestions prompted by existing code and code comments. Building new functionality, writing unit tests, and learning new technologies has never been easier, streamlining the software development lifecycle (SDLC) like never before. The most recent feature added to this tool is Copilot Chat, enabling the rise of natural language as the new universal programming language for every developer on the planet.

With each of these platforms—DevOps and platform engineering—and continued innovation in AI through Copilot and Copilot Chat, Microsoft is helping guide development teams to success and foster a culture of continuous improvement and streamlined, satisfying developer experiences. Leveraging the Microsoft portfolio for DevOps workflows and platforms, organizations experience seamless, secure, yet flexible solutions to build next-gen applications where they want, when they want.

As organizations continue to navigate the dynamic landscape of DevOps and platform engineering, Microsoft will remain at the forefront, year over year. To unlock the full potential, download the report and learn more about the power of Microsoft DevOps solutions.

Source: microsoft.com

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