The biggest developments in Azure as Microsoft's year-end nears

Although the calendar year is far from over, Microsoft's fiscal year is drawing to a close. For partners, ISVs and customers, June offers an opportunity to look back at the important changes to products and look forward to the changes ahead. MSCloudNews reached out to Microsoft partners to find out about the most significant changes we've seen in recent months.

Adam Mansfield, director of services for UpperEdge, told MSCN that he observed that Azure's growth amid the Covid-19 pandemic was accompanied by more customers shifting to a hybrid cloud model, using Azure along with AWS and Google Cloud Platform.

Overall, customers we’re working with have expanded their use of Azure over the last year.  Many that initially started small with Azure have accelerated their use, which has resulted in often making significant pre-commitments to account for their accelerated use, as well as their expected use moving forward.  Under a popular model, many customers pay an upfront fee to Microsoft based on a forecasted amount of usage and then draw down on the pre-commitment they made to Microsoft over a set period of time based on actual use.  Consider a calling card as an example.  The problem, for some companies, is that they needed to rush through the process to accommodate immediate needs and could be left with paying for more than they needed without an ability to “roll-over’ the unused minutes/fees. 

But while hybrid cloud has certainly received a lot of attention over the fiscal year, it's not the only theme that Microsoft pushed. Blogger Phil Strazzula, who spearheads SelectSoftware Reviews, said: