Azure Updates: Load Balancer; Service retirements; Bring your own IP; Radio access networks; Front Door

Microsoft announced that it is deepening its partnership with SAP, adopting the RISE with SAP solution to support large SAP ERP migrations internally. Joao Couto VP of Microsoft's SAP business unit, wrote:

We constantly strive to improve the user experience, simplify the automation and integration of SAP S/4HANA on the Microsoft Cloud, and accelerate customers’ business transformation. This partnership puts both SAP and Microsoft in a strong position to continue driving the best outcomes for customers with solutions from SAP in the public cloud.

Product manager Irene Huang explored how to manage port forwarding for backend pools with Azure Load Balancer. Port forwarding allows users to connect VMs with the Load Balancer front end IP address and access VMs in a VNet using an inbound NAT rule. It is possible to have both load balancing rules and inbound NAT rules on the same Load Balancer. In a bid to improve the customer experience, Microsoft is introducing port management for backend pool to inbound NAT rules.

The US and the European Commission brokered the new Trans-Atlantic Data Privacy Framework. Previously in 2020 the European Court of Justice invalidated the Privacy Shield framework. New framework addresses the court’s concerns about US national security-related data collection and redress for European citizens. Microsoft shared a statement of what it plans to do under the new framework: