Azure Updates: Asynchronous refresh; Nuance acquisition; Key Vault; Data Lake Storage

CVP Rohan Kumar shared that Microsoft was named a leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Cloud DBMS Platforms. He wrote:

We continue to invest in our Azure SQL family of databases to provide flexible options for app migration, modernization, and development. With up to 16 TB of storage, memory-optimized hardware, and native Azure Virtual Network support, SQL Managed Instance enables organizations to modernize their most mission-critical workloads onto a fully managed service—while providing the best of on-premises SQL Server features and functionality. 

Microsoft announced the launch of asynchronous refresh for Power BI, in public preview. The new REST API adds auto retries and batched commits, with the goal of improving processing reliability.

In 2021, Microsoft hosted its first virtual Research Summit event, and recapped some of its recent research initiatives, including Optics for Cloud, Microsoft Turing’s T-ULRv5, or the Swin Transformer.