Azure Updates: Cost Management; Surgical risk; IoT Hub; Multivalue Traffic Manager

Microsoft program manager Michael Flanakin shared Cost Management updates to close out the month of May. Microsoft rebranded Azure Cost Management and Billing as Microsoft Cost Management, added anomaly detection and a variety of accuracy enhancements. The cost analysis preview offers ways to view the costs of child resources. Meanwhile, the team issued documentation, videos, and learning updates, as well as new options to review the costs of Azure Lab Services. Referring to the child resources capability, Flanakin wrote:

For those paying close attention, you may also notice the change in row count. Classic cost analysis shows 53 rows where every resource is broken out on its own and the cost analysis preview only shows 25 rows. This comes down to the different resources that are being grouped together, making it easier than ever to get that at-a-glance summary of your costs. In addition to SQL servers, you’ll also see other services with child resources, like App Service, Synapse, VNet gateways, and more. Each of these will similarly be shown grouped together in the cost analysis preview.

Microsoft profiled two British surgeons using Azure to spot surgical risks in patients. At any given time the UK’s National Health Service has six million people awaiting treatment, and the organization has endured staffing shortages brought on by the pandemic, and needed to find a way to accelerate its case load with surgical risk predictions. Using the responsible AI dashboard in Machine Learning, surgeons were able to gain a better understanding of why AI reached a certain recommendation about a patient. The AI model weighs factors like age, medical history, smoking, and other lifestyle risks to accelerate pre-surgery assessments.