Azure Updates: Machine Learning; Cognitive Search; Monitor; Log Analytics; GitHub Actions

The Azure team spent the past week focusing its attention on Machine Learning, Cognitive Search and GitHub capabilities, with an eye to helping DevOps teams and strengthening knowledge mining options.

Partner group program manager Erez Barak discussed the potential value of Azure Machine Learning for customers. A number of key announcements came out of the recent Ignite conference. For customers that missed the updates, Microsoft is providing a drag-and-drop designer, together with automation for highly iterative tasks, lifecycle management with MLflow standards and more advanced RBAC.

Product marketing manager Prachi Jain shared details about Microsoft's capabilities in Cognitive Search. Research indicates that up to 80 percent of data is unstructured. Cognitive Search is Microsoft's response to knowledge mining needs. It is already in widespread use with customers and partners. For example, The Atlantic magazine is using it to digitally transform its archives, whereas PwC, Archive360, Wix and OrangeNXT have used it to develop solutions for customers. Microsoft partner, BA Insight, is using Cognitive Search and Azure AI to build its Search for Workplace solution. The offering prompts users with recommendations, connecting to content repositories, apps and databases with out of the box connectors and SDKs.

Microsoft made numerous small but important announcements in recent days. Among general updates, the NetApp Files QoS capacity pool is returning, Oracle WebLogic Server for Azure VMs is available,