Azure Updates: AI; Policy Analytics for Azure Firewall; Service retirements

Microsoft VP of industry AI Merav Davidson discussed the estimated 21 percent growth in AI use since last year. Microsoft is growing its partner ecosystem for this area and continues to tout Cloud for Healthcare, Cloud for Retail, and its responsible AI vision.

Senior product manager Mark Gakman encouraged customers to boost their security with Policy Analytics for Azure Firewall. The Policy Analytics option allows users to assess firewall flow logs, display traffic flows mapped to DNAT, network, and app rules, conduct single-rule analysis, and aggregate policy insights. Billing is per policy. Gakman wrote:

Policy Analytics surfaces the recommendations based on the actual traffic flows. You can review and apply the recommendations, including deleting rules which don’t match any traffic or prioritizing them lower. Alternatively, you can lock down the rules to specific ports matching traffic.

General availability announcements include Policy built-in definitions for Azure NetApp Files, backup and restore changes for App Service, Red Hat OpenShift landing zone accelerator, Functions Linux Elastic Premium plan expanded scale-out limits, and new NetApp Files regions and cross-region replication. Microsoft also issued other GA announcements: ExpressRoute FastPath support for Vnet peering and UDRs, Azure Sphere version 22.09, or Functions net framework support in the isolated worker model. Public previews include automatic backup for App Service Environment V2 and V3, Java 17 support in Functions, Maps Creator custom styling, and the start of billing for Monitor Logs data archive.