Kategorie: Microsoft Azure

Beyond the printed form: Unlocking insights from documents with Form Recognizer

Data extraction from printed forms is by now a tried and true technology. Form Recognizer extracts key value pairs, tables and text from documents such as W2 tax statements, oil and gas drilling well reports, completion reports, invoices, and purchase orders. However, real-world businesses often rely on a variety of documents for their day-to-day needs that are not always cleanly printed.

We are excited to announce the addition of handwritten and mixed-mode (printed and handwritten) support. Starting now, handling handwritten and mixed-mode forms is the new norm.

Extracting data from handwritten and mixed-mode content with Form Recognizer

Entire data sets that were inaccessible in the past due to the limitations of extraction technology now become available. The handwritten and mixed-mode capability of Form Recognizer is available in preview and enables you to extract structured data out of handwritten text filled in forms such as:

Medical forms: New patient information, doctor notes.
Financial forms: Account opening forms, credit card applications.
Insurance: Claim forms, liability forms.
Manufacturing forms: Packaging slips, testing forms, quality forms.
And more.

By using our vast experience in optical character recognition (OCR) and machine learning for form analysis, our experts created a state-of-the-art solution that goes beyond printed forms. The OCR technology behind the service supports both handwritten and printed. Expanding the scope of Form Recognizer allows you to tap into previously uncharted territories, by making new sources of data available to you. You may extract valuable business information from newly available data, keeping you ahead of your competition.

Whether you are using Form Recognizer for the first time or already integrated it into your organization, you will now have an opportunity to create new business applications:

Expand your available data set: If you are only extracting data from machine printed forms, expand your total data set to mixed-mode forms and historic handwritten forms.
Create one application for a mix of documents: If you use a mix of handwritten and printed forms, you can create one application that applies across all your data.
Avoid manual digitization of handwritten forms: Original forms may be fed to Form Recognizer without any pre-processing, extracting the same key-value pairs and table data you would get from a machine-printed form to reduce costs, errors, and time.

Our customer: Avanade

Avanade values people as their most important asset. They are always on the lookout for talented and passionate professionals to grow their organization. One way they find these people is by attending external events, which may include university career fairs, trade shows, or technical conferences to name a few. 

During these events they often take the details of those interested in finding out more about Avanade, as well as their permission to contact them at a later date. Normally this is completed with a digital form using a set of tablets. But when the stand is particularly busy, they use a short paper form that attendees can fill in with their handwritten details. Unfortunately, these forms needed to be manually entered into the marketing database, requiring a considerable amount of time and resources. With the volume of potential new contacts at these events, multiplied by the number of events Avanade attends, this task can be daunting.

Azure Form Recognizer’s new handwritten support simplifies the process, giving Avanade peace of mind knowing no contact is lost and the information is there for them immediately.

In addition, Avanade integrated Form Recognizer as a skill within their cognitive search solution, enabling them to quickly use the service in their existing platform and follow-up with new leads, while their competitors may be spending time digitizing their handwritten forms.

“Azure Form Recognizer takes a vast amount of effort out of the process, changing the task from data entry to data validation. By integrating Form Recognizer with Azure Search, we are also immediately able to use the service in our existing platforms. If we need to find and check a form for any reason, for example to check for a valid signature there, we can simply search by any of the fields like name or job title and jump straight to that form. In our initial tests, using Form Recognizer has reduced the time taken to digitize the forms and double check the entries by 35 percent, a number we only expect to get better as we work to optimize our tools to work hand in hand with the service, and add in more automation.” – Fergus Kidd, Emerging Technology Engineer, Avanade

Getting started

To learn more about Form Recognizer and the rest of the Azure AI ecosystem, please visit our website and read the documentation.

Get started by contacting us.

For additional questions please reach out to us at formrecog_contact@microsoft.com
Quelle: Azure

Azure Marketplace new offers – Volume 42

We continue to expand the Azure Marketplace ecosystem. For this volume, 86 new offers successfully met the onboarding criteria and went live. See details of the new offers below:

Applications

360°VR Museum: The 360°VR Museum is a virtual exhibition platform that allows users to view HD 360-degree re-creations of local and international exhibitions where visitors can move around freely using a mouse or touch screen input. This application is available only in Korean.

Apache Airflow Helm Chart: Apache Airflow is a tool to express and execute workflows as directed acyclic graphs. It includes utilities to schedule tasks, monitor task progress, and handle task dependencies.

Apache Superset (Ubuntu): Websoft9 Superset stack is a preconfigured, ready-to-run image for running the Apache Superset data exploration and visualization web application on Azure.

Ataccama ONE: Data Quality Management: Employ smart, automated metadata discovery algorithms to know the state of your data quality; empower data users to make smarter, more informed decisions; and prevent costly mistakes with Ataccama ONE.

Avid Media Composer Azure Test Drive: Experience editing in the cloud with Avid Media Composer on Azure. This Test Drive includes one NV12 virtual machine with Avid Media Composer 2018.12, sample media, and Teradici Cloud Access software installed.

CallidusCloud Workflow: CallidusCloud Workflow includes everything you need to organize, automate, execute, and analyze business processes to connect people, data, and daily activities.

CentOS 6.10: This secure, cost-efficient, and quick to deploy distribution of Linux is based on CentOS and provided by Northbridge Secure. Enjoy the power of Microsoft Azure from any device in a matter of hours.

Citrix ADC 13.0: Providing operational consistency and a smooth user experience, Citrix ADC is an enterprise-grade application delivery controller that delivers your applications quickly, reliably, and securely – with deployment and pricing flexibility to meet your unique needs.

Citynet: Citynet is a monthly subscription-based SaaS application that enables cities to upload their unstructured city council data to Azure, where it's automatically and semantically indexed and made available for natural language querying.

cleverEAI by Sunato: cleverEAI monitors all BizTalk integration processes. View your workflows in real time, analyze, and reprocess failed instances immediately. This VM image contains a complete BizTalk environment, configured automatically by the cleverEAI installation package.

CMFlex: The CMFlex SaaS solution can be operated in different browsers and devices via the web, allowing you to manage your business from anywhere with accurate, real-time information. This application is available only in Portuguese.

Compliant FileVision: Compliant FileVision is a policy management solution that empowers you to implement consistent, efficient, and sustainable processes for managing the lifecycle of corporate policies and standards, incidents, service improvement requests, and procedures.

Data Protector: Micro Focus Data Protector is an enterprise-grade backup and DR solution for large, complex, heterogeneous IT environments. Built on a scalable architecture that combines security and analytics, it enables users to meet continuity needs reliably and cost-effectively.

FileMage Gateway: FileMage Gateway is a secure cloud file transfer solution that seamlessly connects legacy SFTP, FTPS, and FTP protocols to Azure Blob Storage.

Forms Connect: Forms Connect enables you to digitize paper processes by capturing images and data and storing them in Office 365. This solution is ideal for HR and finance teams looking to solve the challenges of capturing information from the field and moving it to Azure.

Global Product Authentication Service: Global Product Authentication Service is an innovative cloud‐based brand protection, track-and-trace, and consumer engagement service that drives business value by addressing challenges organizations face when operating in global markets.

Graylog (Ubuntu): Websoft9 Graylog stack is a preconfigured, ready-to-run image for running log systems on Azure. Graylog captures, stores, and enables real-time analysis of terabytes of machine data.

HealthCloud: The HealthCloud platform enables organizations and partners to easily develop highly interoperable solutions across the healthcare value chain. Its API-driven methodology delivers consolidated health data and patient-centric records from a wide range of sources.

Hibun Information Leak Prevention Solution: Protect confidential data from various information leaks, including theft, loss of device, insider fraud, and information theft by targeted cyberattacks.

Hyperlex: Hyperlex is a Software-as-a-Service solution for contract management and analysis with AI that identifies legal documents and their important information for retrieval, saving your organization considerable time and resources. This application is available only in French.

Hysolate for Privileged User Devices: Privileged Access Workstations (PAWs) provide a dedicated operating system for sensitive tasks that is protected from attacks and threat vectors. Hysolate makes PAWs practical to adopt at scale without degrading productivity.

Hystax Backup and Disaster Recovery to Azure: Hystax Backup and Disaster Recovery to Azure delivers consistent replication, storage-agnostic snapshots, and orchestration functionality with enterprise-grade recovery point objective and recovery time objective.

Imago.ai Intelligent Chatbot: Intelligent Chatbot on Microsoft Azure includes an interactive chatbot interface allowing clients to plug into any digital media as well as a dashboard that combines user behaviors and history to provide business insights.

InnGage Citypoints: InnoWave’s InnGage Citypoints gamification application on Microsoft Azure recognizes and rewards citizens who adopt good citizenship practices.

Intellicus BI Server V18.1 (25 Users – Linux): Intellicus BI Server on Microsoft Azure is an end-to-end self-service business intelligence platform that offers advanced reporting and analytics capabilities, a semantic layer, and integrated ETL capabilities.

Intellicus BI Server V18.1 (50 Users – Linux): Intellicus BI Server on Microsoft Azure is an end-to-end self-service business intelligence platform that offers advanced reporting and analytics capabilities, a semantic layer, and integrated ETL capabilities.

Intellicus BI Server V18.1 (100 Users – Linux): Intellicus BI Server on Microsoft Azure is an end-to-end self-service business intelligence platform that offers advanced reporting and analytics capabilities, a semantic layer, and integrated ETL capabilities.

Jamcracker CSB Service Provider Version 7.0.3: This solution automates order management, provisioning, and billing and can be easily integrated to support enterprise ITSM, billing, ERP, and identity systems including Active Directory and Active Directory Federation Services.

Jenkins (Ubuntu): Jenkins is an automation server with a broad plugin ecosystem for supporting practically every tool as a part of the delivery pipeline. Websoft9 Jenkins stack is a preconfigured, ready-to-run image for running Jenkins on Azure.

Jenkins on Windows Server 2016: Jenkins is a leading open source CI/CD server that enables the automation of building, testing, and shipping software projects. Jenkins on Windows Server 2016 includes all plugins needed to deploy any service to Azure.

KNIME Server Small: KNIME Server, KNIME's flagship collaboration product, offers shared repositories, advanced access management, flexible execution, web enablement, and commercial support. Share data, nodes, metanodes, and workflows throughout your company.

Knowage Community Edition (Ubuntu): Websoft9 Knowage is a preconfigured, ready-to-run image for deployment Knowage on Azure. Knowage Community Edition includes all analytical capabilities and guarantees a full end user experience.

Lustre on Azure: Lustre on Azure is a scalable, parallel file system built for high performance computing (HPC). It is ideally suited for dynamic, pay-as-you-go applications from rapid simulation and prototyping to peak HPC workloads.

Machine Translation: Tilde Machine Translation offers custom systems to fit each client's needs, delivering human-like translations that help save time and money, facilitate processes, and maximize sales.

NGINX Plus Enterprise Edition: NGINX Plus brings enterprise-ready features such as application load balancing, monitoring, and advanced management to your Azure application stack, helping you deliver applications with the performance, security, and scale of Azure.

Odoo Community Edition (Ubuntu): Websoft9 Odoo stack is a preconfigured, ready-to-run image for Odoo on Azure. The Odoo suite of web-based, open source business apps includes CRM, website builder, e-commerce, warehouse management, project management, and more.

OMNIA Low-code Platform: Model your applications using a business language based on economic theory, greatly reducing your product's development cycles from conception to deployment.

Omnia Retail: Omnia is a leading SaaS solution for integrated dynamic pricing and online marketing automation. It helps retailers regain control, save time, and drive profitable growth.

OXID eShop e-commerce platform: ESYON's OXID SaaS solution on Azure offers powerful, modern shop software with many out-of-the-box functions for B2B, B2C, and internationalization.

Package Be Cloud RGDP Azure – PIA: Designed to facilitate your compliance process, Be Cloud's tool can be adapted to your specific needs or to your business sector. This application is available only in French.

POINTR – Customer & Marketing Analytics: POINTR is a customer and marketing analytics application built using Microsoft Azure and Power BI. It delivers customer intelligence and actionable insights from personalized marketing campaigns via an intuitive interface.

Population Health Management Solution: BroadReach creates simple solutions to complex health challenges. By combining expert consulting and powered Vantage technologies, BroadReach gives clients the innovative edge to transform health outcomes.

Portability: Onecub is a personal data portability tool for the GDPR right to portability (article 20), providing companies with an all-in-one service to offer controlled, innovative portability to their clients.

Postgres Pro Enterprise Database 11: Postgres Pro Standard Database comes with SQL and NoSQL support. Postgres Pro Enterprise Database contains more features on top of Postgres Pro Standard Database to work with large databases and process lots of transactions.

Power BI voor Exact Online: Power BI for Exact Online is a powerful business analysis application configured and optimized for Exact Online's business administration and accounting environment. This application is available only in the Netherlands.

Power BI voor Twinfield: Power BI for Twinfield is a powerful business analysis application configured and optimized for Twinfield's business administration and accounting environment. This application is available only in the Netherlands.

Realtime Sales Radar: Track developments and sales figures of your online platforms in real time with the help of this HMS consulting service and data collection in the Azure cloud.

ReportServer on Ubuntu: Websoft9 offers a preconfigured and ready-to-run image for ReportServer, a modern and versatile business intelligence (OSBI) platform, on Azure.

SentryOne Test: SentryOne Test (formerly LegiTest) is a comprehensive, automated data testing framework that allows you to test all your data-centric applications in an easy-to-use platform.

Service Management Automation X: Micro Focus SMAX is an application suite for service and asset management, built from the ground up to include machine learning and analytics.

Snyk Cloud Security Platform: This Snyk solution lets developers securely use open source software while accelerating migration to Azure of micro-services and containerized and serverless workloads.

Social Intranet Analytics – with Netmind Core: Get a detailed overview of the use, acceptance, multilocation collaboration, and interactions on your social intranet with Netmind Core from Mindlab.

sospes: Sospes allows staff to report workplace incidents (injuries, property damage, environmental hazards, security threats) and generates management and regulatory reports.

StoreHippo: StoreHippo is a SaaS e-commerce platform used by customers across more than 15 countries and 35 business verticals. StoreHippo offers scalability and flexibility for next-gen businesses.

SyAudit for Medical Record Audits: This solution from SyTrue scans medical records and highlights key data by record type to let auditors quickly validate findings through a modernized workflow.

Tidal Migrations – Premium Insights for Database: Analyze your databases and uncover roadblocks to Azure cloud migration with this add-on to your Tidal Migrations subscription.

Trac – Issue Tracking System (Ubuntu): This stack from Websoft9 is a preconfigured image for Trac on Azure. Trac is an enhanced wiki and issue tracking system for software development projects.

Unsupervised Anomaly Detection Module: This IoT Edge Module (with Python) from BRFRame automatically categorizes dataset anomalies, eliminating manual work that can take time and lead to inaccuracies.

Video Inteligencia para Seguridad y Prevención: This video analytics solution acts as the brain of a security system, enabling decision-making in real time. This application is available only in Spanish.

VM Explorer: Micro Focus VM Explorer is an easy-to-use and reliable backup solution, offering fast VM and granular restore, replication, and verification of VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V environments.

winsafe: Winsafe from Nextronic is an IoT dashboard platform that can locate static or mobile end-devices positioned in outdoor or indoor areas without a dedicated infrastructure.

Consulting Services

Advanced DevOps Automation with CI/CD: 10-Day Imp.: Leveraging InCycle’s Azure DevOps Accelerators, InCycle cloud architects will ensure customers realize modern CI/CD pipelines, IT governance, and minimum time to production.

App Modernization Implementation – 3-Week Imp.: Based on InCycle’s proprietary Modern App Factory approach and Accelerators, InCycle’s Azure architects will analyze your environment, co-define your goals, and develop a cloud adoption strategy and roadmap.

Application Portfolio Assessment – Briefing: 1-day: HCL Technologies' free one-day briefing ensures customers understand HCL’s Cloud Assessment Framework and how it performs assessment in a proven methodology for migration to Microsoft Azure.

Azure AI & Bots: 2-Hr Assessment: This Neudesic assessment will provide a recommendation on how Microsoft Azure can be used to meet a key business need with an AI-powered bot using Neudesic's agile, repeatable approach to accelerate delivery time and value.

Azure Architecture Assessment – 2-day workshop: In this assessment, Cloud Valley's cloud architects gather functional and operational requirements, see how they align with your current business goals, and propose a technological solution.

Azure back-up and DR workshop – 2.5 days: Acora's team will review your on-premises or cloud environment to provide a recommended approach for migrating to Azure Backup and Azure Site Recovery.

Azure Cloud Readiness: 2-Week Assessment: Emtec evaluates business processes and technology infrastructure to assess current investments and identify potential areas that are ripe for successful cloud migration and adoption.

Azure Management Services: 10-Wk Implementation: Catapult Systems' Azure Management Services allow users to continuously optimize their cloud environment. In this assessment, Catapult helps you pick the option that best fits the objectives for your cloud environment.

Azure Migration – 2 Day Assessment: This Third I assessment is driven by an in-depth review of your existing solution architecture to help identify a suitable modern data warehouse to match your solution needs.

Azure Migration: 2.5 day Workshop: Acora will review your technical capability and readiness for a migration to Azure and provide recommendations on the cost, resources, and time needed to move with minimal downtime.

Citrix Workspace on Azure: 5 Day Proof of Concept: Get a custom proof of concept of Citrix Cloud Workspace Integrated with Microsoft Azure along with design and cost estimates to enable your organization to move forward with the solution.

Cloud Foundation Assessment: 6 Wk Assessment: This Anglepoint assessment will help you optimize your environment before you migrate to the cloud to ensure the most cost-effective solution that maximizes throughput and availability.

Cloud Journey Assessment – 4 Weeks: In this four-week assessment, Dedalus will determine the Azure dependencies for each of your applications to prioritize which applications and systems are the best candidates for migration.

Cloud Migration – 8 week implementation: CloudOps will help develop an Azure migration and cloud-native strategy that meets your current workload and security requirements while enabling you to scale to the future needs of your business.

Cloud Optimized WAN Engagement: 4-day Assessment: Equinix will help develop a customized WAN strategy focusing on improved latency, performance, security, and flexibility while providing clear insights into your expected return on investment or total cost of ownership.

DataDebut Cloud Analytics: 5-Day Proof of Concept: This POC engagement helps boost your understanding of cloud concepts and offerings so that you can identify potential future value of enhancing your data platform, define your path to cloud-native data analytics, and more.

DataGuide Cloud Analytics Intro: 1-Day Assessment: Intended for solution architects, project and program managers, and key stakeholders, this free engagement gives your organization an overview of Azure data analytics and how they can greatly enhance your data estate.

DataVision Project Discovery: 5-Day Assessment: This Azure data project discovery provides in-depth analysis, design, and planning, enabling you to employ future-proof architectures, identify the best approach for the rationalization of existing data assets, and more.

Equinix Cloud Exchange: 2-day Implementation: Equinix's Cloud Enablement services make it easy to complete the setup and configuration necessary to activate your connection to the Azure cloud.

ExpressRoute Connectivity Strategy: 3-day Workshop: This Equinix workshop empowers customers to implement an Azure ExpressRoute connectivity strategy tailored for their specific needs and is a fast-track path to optimized Azure consumption.

Onboarding Services – USA: 4 weeks implementation: Anunta's Onboarding Services on Azure ensure end-to-end management of virtual desktop workload transition to the cloud, including implementation, Active Directory configuration, image creation, app configuration, and more.

Palo Alto Test Drive on Azure: 1/2 Day Workshop: See how easy it is to securely extend your corporate datacenter to Azure using Palo Alto Networks Next Generation VM-Series firewalls with security features to protect applications and data from threats.

Predica Azure Migration 5-Day Proof of Concept: In this cloud migration proof of concept, Predica will guide you through the process of workload migration, ensuring you get the most from your Microsoft Azure implementation.

Security & Compliance Assessment – 4 Wk Assessment: This Logicworks offering will help you assess your Azure environment against compliance frameworks and receive automated reporting, vulnerability scanning, and a remediation roadmap to help you improve security.

Spyglass/Azure Security – 10 Wk. Implementation: Catapult's Spyglass service jump-starts your cloud security by deploying Microsoft's security tools and leveraging security experts, best practices, and centralized security dashboards.

Quelle: Azure

PyTorch on Azure: Full support for PyTorch 1.2

Congratulations to the PyTorch community on the release of PyTorch 1.2! Last fall, as part of our dedication to open source AI, we made PyTorch one of the primary, fully supported training frameworks on Azure. PyTorch is supported across many of our AI platform services and our developers participate in the PyTorch community, contributing key improvements to the code base. Today we would like to share the many ways you can use PyTorch 1.2 on Azure and highlight some of the contributions we’ve made to help customers take their PyTorch models from training to production.

PyTorch 1.2 on Azure

Getting started with PyTorch on Azure is easy and a great way to train and deploy your PyTorch models. We’ve integrated PyTorch 1.2 in the following Azure services so you can utilize the latest features:

Azure Machine Learning service – Azure Machine Learning streamlines the building, training, and deployment of machine learning models. Azure Machine Learning’s Python SDK has a dedicated PyTorch estimator that makes it easy to run PyTorch training scripts on any compute target you choose, whether it’s your local machine, a single virtual machine (VM) in Azure, or a GPU cluster in Azure. Learn how to train Pytorch deep learning models at scale with Azure Machine Learning.
Azure Notebooks – Azure Notebooks provides a free, cloud-hosted Jupyter notebook server with PyTorch 1.2 pre-installed. To learn more, check out the PyTorch tutorials and examples.
Data Science Virtual Machine – Data Science Virtual Machines are pre-configured with popular data science and deep learning tools, including PyTorch 1.2. You can choose a variety of machine types to host your Data Science Virtual Machine, including those with GPUs. To learn more, refer to the Data Science Virtual Machine documentation.

From PyTorch to production

PyTorch is a popular open-source deep learning framework for creating and training models. It is built to use the power of GPUs for faster training and is deeply integrated with Python, making it easy to get started. However, deploying trained models to production has historically been a pain point for customers. For production environments, using Python for the core computations may not be suitable due to performance and multi-threading requirements. To address this challenge, we collaborated with the PyTorch community to make it easier to use PyTorch trained models in production.

PyTorch’s JIT compiler transitions models from eager mode to graph mode using tracing, TorchScript, or a mix of both. We then recommend using PyTorch’s built-in support for ONNX export. ONNX stands for Open Neural Network Exchange and is an open standard format for representing machine learning models. ONNX models can be inferenced using ONNX Runtime. ONNX Runtime is an inference engine for production scale machine learning workloads that are open source, cross platform, and highly optimized. Written in C++, it runs on Linux, Windows, and Mac. Its small binary size makes it suitable for a range of target devices and environments. It’s accelerated on CPU, GPU, and VPU thanks to Intel and NVIDIA who have integrated their accelerators with ONNX Runtime.

In PyTorch 1.2, we contributed enhanced ONNX export capabilities:

Support for a wider range of PyTorch models, including object detection and segmentation models such as mask RCNN, faster RCNN, and SSD
Support for models that work on variable length inputs
Export models that can run on various versions of ONNX inference engines
Optimization of models with constant folding
End-to-end tutorial showing export of a PyTorch model to ONNX and running inference in ONNX Runtime

You can deploy your own PyTorch models to various production environments with ONNX Runtime. Learn more at the links below:

Deploy to the cloud
Deploy to Windows apps
Deploy to Linux IoT ARM device

Next steps

We are very excited to see PyTorch continue to evolve and improve. We are proud of our support for and contributions to the PyTorch community. PyTorch 1.2 is now available on Azure—start your free trial today.

We look forward to hearing from you as you use PyTorch on Azure.
Quelle: Azure

Microsoft Azure available from new cloud regions in Switzerland

UBS Group, Swiss Re Group, Swisscom, and others turn to Microsoft for their digital transformations

Today, we’re announcing the availability of Azure from our new cloud regions in Switzerland. These new regions and our ongoing global expansion are in response to customer demand as more industry leaders choose Microsoft’s cloud services to further their digital transformations. As we enter new markets, we work to address scenarios where data residency is of critical importance, especially for highly regulated industries seeking the compliance standards and extensive security offered by Azure.

Additionally, Office 365—the world’s leading cloud-based productivity solution—and Dynamics 365 and Power Platform—the next generation of intelligent business applications and tools—will be offered from these new cloud regions to advance even more customers on their cloud journeys.  

Trusted Microsoft cloud services

Microsoft cloud services delivered from a given geography, such as our new regions in Switzerland, offer scalable, highly available, and resilient cloud services while helping enterprises and organizations meet their data residency, security, and compliance needs. We have deep expertise protecting data and empowering customers around the globe to meet extensive security and privacy requirements by offering the broadest set of compliance certifications and attestations in the industry.

Accelerating cloud adoption in Switzerland

In Switzerland, where we’ve been operating for 30 years, Azure is now available from new cloud datacenter regions located near Zurich and Geneva. More than 30 customer and partner organizations are already using these Azure services. Companies becoming more efficient, innovative, and productive through their usage of Azure in Switzerland include:

UBS Group, the world’s largest wealth manager, is using Microsoft Azure cloud technology to modernize many critical business applications, to leverage digital channels, and to rethink how its global workforce collaborates.
The Swiss Re Group, one of the world’s leading providers of reinsurance, insurance, and other forms of insurance-based risk transfer, has chosen us as a strategic partner and preferred public cloud provider. Through their use of technology and our partnership, Swiss Re strives to make insurance simpler and more accessible than ever.
Swisscom, the national telecommunications provider, is now offering its customers managed public cloud services delivered via our global infrastructure and new Swiss cloud regions. Swisscom will be the first Swiss telecommunications provider to offer ExpressRoute, a secure, highly available, high-performance, and private connection to Azure services.

Additional customers now taking advantage of Azure services in this new region include BKW, City of Zug, die Mobiliar, Exploris Health, and Skyguide to name a few.

These types of investments help us deliver on our continued commitment to serve our customers, reach new ones, and elevate their businesses through the transformative capabilities of the Microsoft Azure cloud platform.

Please contact your Microsoft representative to learn more about opportunities in Switzerland or follow this link to learn about Microsoft Azure.
Quelle: Azure

Latency is the new currency of the Cloud: Announcing 31 new Azure edge sites

Providing users fast and reliable access to their cloud services, apps, and content is pivotal to a business’ success.

The latency when accessing cloud-based services can be the inhibitor to cloud adoption or migration. In most cases, this is caused by commercial internet connections that aren’t tailored to today’s global cloud needs. Through deployment and operation of globally and strategically placed edge sites, Microsoft dramatically accelerates the performance and experience when you are accessing apps, content, or services such as Azure and Office 365 on the Microsoft global network.

Edges optimize network performance through local access points to and from the vast Microsoft global network, in many cases providing 10x the acceleration to access and consume cloud-based content and services from Microsoft.

What is the network edge?

Solely providing faster network access isn’t enough, and applications need intelligent services to expedite and simplify how a global audience accesses and experiences their offerings. Edge sites provide application development teams increased visibility and higher availability to access services that improve how they deliver global applications.

Edge sites benefit infrastructure and development teams in multiple key areas

Improved optimization for application delivery through Azure Front Door (AFD.) Microsoft recently announced AFD, which allows customers to define, manage, accelerate, and monitor global routing for web traffic with customizations for the best performance and instant global failover for application accessibility.
An enhanced customer experience via high-bandwidth access to Azure Blob storage, web applications, and live video-on-demand streams. Azure Content Delivery Network delivers high-bandwidth content by caching objects to the consumer’s closest point of presence.
Private connectivity and dedicated performance through Azure ExpressRoute. ExpressRoute provides up to 100 gigabits per second of fully redundant bandwidth directly to the Microsoft global network at select peering locations across the globe, making connecting to and through Azure a seamless and integrated experience for customers.

New edge sites

Today, we’re announcing the addition of 31 new edge sites, bringing the total to over 150 across more than 50 countries. We’re also adding 14 new meet-me sites to Azure ExpressRoute to further enable and expand access to dedicated private connections between customers’ on-premises environments and Azure.

More than two decades of building global network infrastructure have given us a keen awareness of globally distributed edge sites and their critical role in a business’ success.

By utilizing the expanding network of edge sites, Microsoft provides more than 80 percent of global GDP with an experience of sub-30 milliseconds latency. We are adding new edges every week, and our ambition is to provide this level of performance to all of our global audience.

This expansion proves its value further when workloads move to the cloud or when Microsoft cloud services such as Azure, Microsoft 365, and Xbox are used. By operating over a dedicated, premium wide-area-network, our customers avoid transferring customer data over the public internet, which ensures security, optimizes traffic, and increases performance.

New edge sites

Country

City

Colombia

Bogota

Germany

Frankfurt
Munich

India

Hyderabad

Indonesia

Jakarta

Kenya

Nariobi

Netherlands

Amsterdam

New Zealand

Auckland

Nigeria

Lagos

Norway

Stavanger

United Kingdom

London

United States

Boston
Portland

Vietnam

Saigon

Upcoming edge sites

Country

City

Argentina

Buenos Aires

Egypt

Cairo

Germany

Dusseldorf

Israel

Tel Aviv

Italy

Rome

Japan

Tokyo

Norway

Oslo

Switzerland

Geneva

Turkey

Istanbul

United States

Detroit
Jacksonville
Las Vegas
Minneapolis
Nashville
Phoenix
Quincy (WA)
San Diego

New ExpressRoute meet-me sites

Country

City

Canada

Vancouver

Colombia

Bogota

Germany

Berlin
Dusseldorf

Indonesia

Jakarta

Italy

Milan

Mexico

Queretaro (Mexico City)

Norway

Oslo
Stavanger

Switzerland

Geneva

Thailand

Bangkok

United States

Minneapolis
Phoenix
Quincy (WA)

With this latest announcement, Microsoft continues to offer cloud customers the fastest and most accessible global network, driving a competitive advantage for organizations accessing the global market and increased satisfaction for consumers.

Explore the Microsoft global network to learn about how it can benefit your organization today.
Quelle: Azure

Harnessing the power of the Location of Things with Azure Maps

The Internet of Things (IoT) is the beginning of accessing planetary-scale insights. With the mass adoption of IoT and the very near future explosion of sensors, connectivity, and computing, humanity is on the cusp of a fully connected, intelligent world. We will be part of the generation that realizes the data-rich, algorithmically deterministic lifestyle the world has never seen. The inherent value of this interconnectedness lies within the constructs of human nature to thrive. Bringing all of this information together with spatial intelligence has been challenging to say the least. Until today.

Today, we’re unveiling a cross-Azure IoT collaboration simplifying the use of location and spatial intelligence used in conjunction with IoT messaging. The result is the means for customers to use Azure IoT services to stay better informed about their “things” in terms of space. Azure IoT customers can now implement IoT spatial analytics using Azure Maps. Providing spatial intelligence to IoT devices means greater insights into not just what’s happening, but where it’s happening.

Azure Maps provides geographic context for information and, as it pertains to IoT, thus geographic insights based on IoT information. Customers are using Azure Maps and Azure IoT for monitoring movement of assets and cross reference the “things” with their location. For example, assume a truck is delivering refrigerated goods from New York City to Washington DC. A route is calculated to determine the path and duration the truck should take to deliver the goods. From the route, a geofence can be created and stored in Azure Maps. The black box on the truck tracking the vehicle would provide Azure IoT Hub to determine if the truck ever leaves the predetermined path. If it does, this could signal that something is wrong—a detour could be disastrous for refrigerated goods. Notifications of detours could be setup and communicated through Azure Event Grid and sent over email, text, or a myriad of other communication mediums.

When we talk about Azure IoT, we often talk about data (from sensors) which leads to insights (when computed) which leads to actions (a result of insights). With The Location of Things, we’re now talking about data from sensors which leads to insights which leads to actions and where they are needed. Knowing where to take actions has massive implications in terms of cost efficacy and time management. When you know where you have issues or opportunities, you can then make informed decisions of where to deploy resources, where to deploy inventory, or where to withdraw them. Run this over time and with enough data and you have artificial intelligence you could deploy at the edge to help with real-time decision making. Have enough data coming in fast enough and you’d be making decisions fast enough to predict future opportunities and issues—and where to deploy resources before you need them.

Location is a powerful component of providing insights. If you have a means of providing location via your IoT messages you can start doing so immediately. If you don’t have location natively, you’d be surprised at how you can get location associated with your sensors and device location. RevIP, Wi-Fi, and cell tower triangulation all provide a means of getting location into your IoT messages. Get that location data into the cloud and start gaining spatial insights today.
Quelle: Azure

Azure Load Balancer becomes more efficient

Azure introduced an advanced, more efficient Load Balancer platform in late 2017. This platform adds a whole new set of abilities for customer workloads using the new Standard Load Balancer. One of the key additions the new Load Balancer platform brings, is a simplified, more predictable and efficient outbound connectivity management.

While already integrated with Standard Load Balancer, we are now bringing this advantage to the rest of Azure deployments. In this blog, we will explain what it is and how it makes life better for all our consumers. An important change that we want to focus on is the outbound connectivity behavior pre and post platform integration as this is a very important design point for our customers.

Load Balancer and Source NAT

Azure deployments use one or more of three scenarios for outbound connectivity, depending on the customer’s deployment model and the resources utilized and configured. Azure uses Source Network Address Translation (SNAT) to enable these scenarios. When multiple private IP addresses or roles share the same public IP (public IP address assign to Load Balancer, used for outbound rules or automatically assigned public IP address for standalone virtual mahines), Azure uses port masquerading SNAT (PAT) to translate private IP addresses to public IP addresses using the ephemeral ports of the public IP address. PAT does not apply when Instance Level Public IP addresses (ILPIP) are assigned.

For the cases where multiple instances share a public IP address, each instance behind an Azure Load Balancer VIP is pre-allocated a fixed number of ephemeral ports used for PAT (SNAT ports), needed for masquerading outbound flows. The number of pre-allocated ports per instance is determined by the size of backend pool, see the SNAT algorithm section for details.

Differences between legacy and new SNAT algorithms

The platform improvements also involved improvements in the way the SNAT algorithm works in Azure. The table below does a side-by-side comparison of these allocation modes and their properties

 
Legacy SNAT Port Allocation
(Legacy Basic SKU Deployments)
New SNAT Port Allocation
(Recent Basic SKU deployments and Standard SKU deployments)

Applicability
Services deployed before September 2017 use this allocation mode
Services deployed after September 2017 use this allocation mode.

Pre-allocation
160
(smaller number for tenants larger than 300 instances)

For SNAT port allocation according to the back-end pool size and the pool boundaries, visit SNAT port pre-allocation.

In case outbound rules are used, the pre-allocation will be equal to the ports defined in the outbound rules. If the ports are exhausted on a subset of instances they will not be allocated any SNAT ports.

Max ports
No ceiling;
Dynamic, on-demand allocation of a small number of ports until all are exhausted.
No throttling of requests.
All available SNAT ports are allocated dynamically on-demand.
Some throttling of requests is applied (per instance per sec.)

Scale up

Port re-allocation is done.

Existing connections might drop on re-allocation.

Static SNAT ports are always allocated to the new instance.

If backend pool boundary is changed, or ports are exhausted, port reallocation is done.

Existing connections might drop on re-allocation.

Scale Down
Port re-allocation is done.
If backend pool boundary is changed, port reallocation is done to allocate additional ports to all.

Use Cases

Noisy neighbors could consume all ports and starve remaining instances/tenants.
Management of Port allocation is nearly impossible without any throttling.

Much better customization & control over the SNAT port allocation.
Higher pre-allocation to cover the majority of customer scenarios.
highly predictable port allocation and application behavior.

Platform Integration & impact on SNAT port allocation

We’re working on the integration of the two platforms to extend reliability and efficiency and enable capabilities like telemetry and SKU upgrade for the customers. As a result of this integration, all the users across Azure will be moved to the new SNAT port allocation algorithm. This integration exercise is in progress and expected to finish before Spring 2020.

What type of SNAT allocation do I get after platform integration?

Let’s categorize these into different scenarios:

Legacy SNAT port allocation is the older mode of SNAT port allocation and is being used by deployments made before September 2017. This mode allocates a small number of SNAT ports (160) statically to instances behind a Load Balancer and relies on SNAT failures and dynamic on-demand allocations afterwards.

After platform integration, these deployments will be moved to the new SNAT allocation in the new platform as described in section A above. However, we’ll ensure a port allocation equal to a maximum of <Static port allocation, Dynamic port allocation in older platform> in the new platform after migration.

New SNAT port allocation mode in the older platform was introduces in early 2018. This mode is same as the new SNAT port allocation Mode described above.

After platform integration, these deployments will remain unchanged, ensuring the preservation of SNAT port allocation from the older platform.

How does it impact my services or my existing outbound flows?

In majority of the cases, where the instances are consuming less than the default pre-allocated SNAT ports, there will be no impact to the existing flows.
In a small number of the customer deployments, which are using a significantly higher number of SNAT ports (received via Dynamic allocation), there might be a temporary drop of a portion of flows, which depend on additional dynamic port allocation. This should auto-correct within a few seconds.

What should I do right now?

Review and familiarize yourself with the scenarios and patterns described in Managing SNAT port exhaustion for guidance on how to design for reliable and scalable scenarios.

How do I ensure no disruption for upcoming critical period?

The platform integration & resulting port allocation algorithm is an Azure platform level change. However, we do understand that you are running critical production workloads in Azure and want to ensure this level of service logic changes are not implemented during critical periods and avoiding any service disruption. In such scenarios, please create a Load Balancer support case from the portal with your deployment information, and we’ll work with you to ensure no disruption to your services.
Quelle: Azure

Preview of custom content in Azure Policy guest configuration

Today we are announcing a preview of a new feature of Azure Policy. The guest configuration capability, which audits settings inside Linux and Windows virtual machines (VMs), is now ready for customers to author and publish custom content.

The guest configuration platform has been generally available for built-in content provided by Microsoft. Customers are using this platform to audit common scenarios such as who has access to their servers, what applications are installed, if certificates are up to date, and whether servers can connect to network locations.

Starting today, customers can use new tooling published to the PowerShell Gallery to author, test, and publish their own content packages both from their developer workstation and from CI/CD platforms such as Azure DevOps.

For example, if you are running an application on an Azure virtual machine that was developed by your organization, you can audit the configuration of that application in Azure and be notified when one of the VMs in your fleet is not compliant.

This is also an important milestone for compliance teams who need to audit configuration baselines. There is already a built-in policy to audit Windows machines using Microsoft’s recommended security configuration baseline.  Custom content expands the scenario to content from a popular source of configuration details, group policy. There is tooling available to convert from group policy format to the desired state configuration syntax used by Azure Policy guest configuration. Group policy is a common format used by organizations that publish regulatory standards, and a popular tool for enterprise organizations to manage servers in private datacenters.

Finally, customers that are publishing custom content packages can include third party tooling. Many customers have existing tools used for performing audits of settings inside virtual machines before they are released to production. As an example, the gcInSpec module is published as an open source project with maintainers from Microsoft and Chef. Customers can include this module in their content package to audit Windows virtual machines using their existing investment in Chef InSpec.

For more information, and to get started using custom content in Azure Policy guest configuration see the documentation page ”How to create Guest Configuration policies.”
Quelle: Azure