Azure Updates: Private Link for API Management; Z-code; New datacenter

Microsoft senior program manager Fernando Meijia encouraged customers to secure APIs with Private Link support for API Management. An API façade can act as a “front door” for external apps to access data. According to Meijia, API Management assists with unlocking legacy assets, creating API-based integrations, support multi-channel user experiences, and supporting B2B integrations. It also supports virtual network injection to deploy components in a VNet.

Principal program manager Vijay Kanchanahalli shared ways to accelerate large graphics workloads with NVads A10 v5. Microsoft launched GPU partitioned VMs in 2019 and customers asked for similar capabilities for NVIDIA GPUs. The new offering encompasses AMD EPYCTM 74F3(V) processors and virtualized NVIDIA A10 Tensor Core GPU, available in-preview.  

According to Microsoft team member Jennifer Langston, Microsoft is upgrading Translator with Z-code for AI, which is intended to improve machine translation.

“Our goal is to help everyone and every organization on the planet to communicate better, and to achieve that goal there are really two important dimensions — we want the quality of translations to be as good as possible and we want to support as many languages as possible,” stated Xuedong Huang, Microsoft technical fellow and Azure AI chief technology officer. Customers should be on the lookout for an upcoming AI in government Art of the Possible virtual presentation on March 30.

Microsoft shared numerous upcoming capability retirements. For instance, five major networking services including Virtual Network, ExpressRoute gateway, Application Gateway, and VPN Gateway are poised for retirement August 31, 2024.