Azure Updates: App management; AI cloud infrastructure; Firewall; IoT

Microsoft shared the details of its digital transformation initiative with the NBA. The NBA IT Application Development Group consolidated apps with Azure, relocating apps from on-prem to the cloud and accelerating development. It was able to speed up its processes by using App Service to streamline provisioning, configuration, security, and scalability. The NBA also set up containers with AKS, deployed workstreams with DevOps, and relied on Microsoft United Support.

According to senior product manager Sherry Wang, purpose-built cloud infrastructure is often needed for AI scenarios. To meet growing GPU and HPC demand, Microsoft has teamed up with NVIDIA to create purpose-built supercomputers  for rapid scale-up with InfiniBand interconnected NVIDIA Ampere A100 Tensor Core GPUs. Going forward, Microsoft hopes to reduce total cost of ownership, improve ROI forecasting, and deliver significant performance improvements.

Microsoft announced new Azure Firewall capabilities. New regions are generally available in Qatar central, China North and China East. IDPS private ranges are GA, while Single Click, Enhanced Threat Intelligence, and KeyVault with no internet exposure are all in preview.