Kategorie: Microsoft Azure

CGG speeds geoscience insights on Azure HPC

A leader in geosciences, CGG has been imaging the earth’s subsurface for more than 85 years. Their products and solutions help clients locate natural resources. When a customer asked whether the cloud could speed the creation of the high-resolution reservoir models that they needed, CGG turned to Azure high performance computing (HPC).

CGG is a team of acknowledged imaging experts in the oil and gas industry. Their subsurface imaging centers are internationally acclaimed, and their researchers are regularly recognized with prestigious international awards for their outstanding technical contributions to the industry. CGG was an early innovator in seismic inversion, the technique of converting seismic survey reflection data into a quantitative description of the rock properties in an oil and gas reservoir. From this data, highly detailed models can be made, like the following image showing the classification of rock types in a 3D grid for an unconventional reservoir interval. These images are invaluable in oil and gas exploration. Accurate models help geoscientists reduce risk, drill the best wells, and forecast production better.

The challenge is to get the best possible look beneath the surface. The specialized software is compute-intensive, and complex models can take hours or even days to render.

Figure 1. An advanced seismic model, using CGG’s Jason RockMod.

Azure provides the elasticity of compute that enables our clients to rapidly generate multiple high-resolution rock property realizations with Jason RockMod for detailed reservoir models.”

– Joe Jacquot, Strategic Marketing Manager, CGG GeoSoftware

The challenge: prove it in the cloud

An oil and gas company in Southeast Asia asked CGG to work with them to find the optimum way to deploy reservoir characterization technology for their international team. The customer also wondered if they could take advantage of the cloud to save on hardware costs in their datacenter, where they already ran leading-edge CGG geoscience software solutions. They knew the theory of the cloud’s elasticity and on-demand scalability were familiar with its use in oil exploration, but they didn’t know if their applications would perform as well in the cloud as they did on-premises.

In a rapidly moving industry, performance gains translate to speedier decision making, accelerated exploration, and development timelines, so the company asked CGG to provide a demonstration. As geoscience experts, CGG wanted to show their software in the best possible light. They turned to the customer advisors at AzureCAT (led by Tony Wu) for help creating a proof of concept that demonstrated how the cloud capacity could help the company get insights faster.

Demo 1: CGG Jason RockMod

CGG Jason RockMod overcomes the limitations of conventional reservoir characterization solutions with a geostatistical approach to seismic inversion. The outcome is accurate reservoir models so in depth that geoscientists can use them to predict field reserves, fluid flow patterns, and future production.

The company wanted to better understand the scale of the RockMod simulation in the cloud, and wondered whether the cloud offered any real benefits compared to running the simulations on their own workstations.

Technical teams from CGG and AzureCAT looked at RockMod as a big-compute workload. In this type of architecture, computationally intensive operations such as simulations are split across CPUs in multiple computers (10 to 1,000s). A common pattern is to administer a cluster of virtual machines, then schedule and monitor the HPC jobs. This do-it-yourself approach would enable the company to set up their own cluster environment in Azure virtual machine scale sets. The number of VM instances can automatically scale per demand or on a defined schedule.

RockMod creates a family of multiple equi-probable simulation outputs, called realizations. In the proof of concept tests for their customer, CGG ran RockMod on a Microsoft Windows virtual machine on Azure. It served as the master node for job scheduling and distribution of multiple realizations across several Linux-based HPC nodes in a virtual machine scale set. Scale sets support up to 1,000 VM instances or 300 custom VM images, more than enough scale for multiple realizations.

An HPC task generates the realizations, and the speed depends on the number of CPU cores or non-hyperthreading more than the processor speed. AzureCAT recommended non-hyperthreading cores as the best choice for application performance. From a storage perspective, the realizations are not especially demanding. During testing, the storage IO rate went up to a few hundred megabytes per second (MB/s). Based on these considerations, CGG chose the cost-effective DS14V2 virtual machine with accelerated networking, which has 16 cores and 7 GB per core.

“Azure provided the ideal blend of HPC and storage performance and price, along with technical support that we needed to successfully demonstrate our high-end reservoir characterization technology on the cloud. It was a technical success and paved the way for full-scale commercial deployment.”

– Joe Jacquot, Strategic Marketing Manager, CGG GeoSoftware

Figure 2. Azure architecture of CGG Jason RockMod.

Benchmarks and benefits

A typical project is about 15 GB in size and includes more than three million seismic data traces. Some of the in-house workstations could render a single realization within a day or two, but the goal was to run 30 realizations by taking advantage of the cloud’s scalability. The initial small scale test ran one realization on one HPC node, which took just under 12 hours to complete. That was within the target range, and now the CGG team needed to see what would happen when they ran at scale.

To test the linear scalability of the job, they first ran eight realizations on eight nodes. The results were nearly identical to the small scale test run. The one realization to one node formula seemed to work. For the sake of comparison, they tried running 30 realizations on just eight nodes. That didn’t work so well, the tests were nearly four times slower.

The final test ran 30 realizations on 30 nodes, one realization to one node. The results were similar to the small scale test, and the job was completed in just over 12 hours. This scenario was tested several times to validate the results which were consistent. The test was a success.

Demo 2: CGG InsightEarth

In their exploration and development efforts, the company also used CGG InsightEarth, a software suite that accelerates 3D interpretation and visualization.

The interpretation teams at the company were using several InsightEarth applications to locate hydrocarbon deposits, faults and fractures, and salt bodies all of which can be difficult to interpret. They asked CGG to compare the performance of the InsightEarth suite on Azure to their workstations on premises. Their projects were typically 15 GB in size, with more than three million seismic data traces.

InsightEarth is a powerful, memory-intensive application. To get the best performance, the application must run on a GPU-based computer, and to get the best performance from GPUs, efficient memory access is critical. To meet this requirement on Azure, the team of engineers from CGG and AzureCAT looked at the specialized, GPU-optimized VM sizes that are available. The Azure NV-series virtual machines are powered by NVIDIA Tesla M60 GPUs and the NVIDIA GRID technology with Intel Broadwell CPUs, which are suited for compute-intensive visualizations and simulations.

The GRID license gives the company the flexibility to use an NV instance as a virtual workstation for a single user, or to give 25 users concurrent access to the VM running InsightEarth. The company wanted the collaborative benefits of the second model. Unlike a physical workstation, a cloud-based GPU virtual workstation would allow them all to view the data after running a pre-processing or interpretation step because all the data was in the cloud. This would streamline their workflow, eliminating the need to move the data back on premises for that task.

The initial performance tests ran InsightEarth on an NV24 VM on Azure. The storage IO demand was moderate, with rates around 100 MB/s. However, the VM’s memory size proved to be a bottleneck. The amount of data that could be loaded from the memory was limited, and the performance wasn’t as good as the more powerful GPU setup used on premises.

Next, the team ran a similar test using an ND-series VM. This type is specifically designed to offer excellent performance for AI and deep learning workloads, where huge data volumes are used to train models. They chose an ND24-size VM with double the amount of the memory and the newer NVIDIA Tesla P40 GPUs. This time, the results were considerably better than NV24.

From an infrastructure perspective, storage also matters when deploying high-performance applications on Azure. The team implemented SoftNAS, a type of storage that supports both the Windows and Linux VMs used in the overall solution. SoftNAS also suits the lower to mid-range storage IO demands for these simulation and interpretation workloads.

Figure 3. Azure Architecture for InsightEarth

Summary

GPUs and memory-optimized VMs provided the performance that the company needed for both Jason Rockmod and InsightEarth. Better yet, Azure gave them the scale they needed to run multiple realizations in parallel. In addition, they deployed GPUs to both software solutions, giving the CGG engineers a standard front end to work with. They set up access to the Azure resources through an easy-to-use portal based on Citrix Cloud, which also runs on Azure.

CGG’s customer, the oil and gas company, was delighted with the results. Based on the results of the benchmark tests, the oil and gas company decided to move all of their current CGG application workload to Azure. The cloud’s elasticity and Azure’s pay-per-use model were a compelling combination. Not only did the Azure solution perform, it proved to be more cost-effective compared to the limited scalability they could achieve with their computing power on-premises.

Company:
CGG

Microsoft Azure CAT Technical Lead:
Tony Wu

Quelle: Azure

Enable receipt understanding with Form Recognizer’s new capability

One of the newest members of the Azure AI portfolio, Form Recognizer, applies advanced machine learning to accurately extract text, key-value pairs, and tables from documents. With just a few samples, it tailors its understanding to supplied documents, both on-premises and in the cloud. 

Introducing the new pre-built receipt capability

Form Recognizer focuses on making it simpler for companies to utilize the information hiding latent in business documents such as forms. Now we are making it easier to handle one the most commonplace documents in a business, receipts, “out of the box.”  Form Recognizer’s new pre-built receipt API identifies and extracts key information on sales receipts, such as the time and date of the transaction, merchant information, the amounts of taxes, totals, and more, with no training required.

Streamlining expense reporting

Business expense reporting can be cumbersome for everyone involved in the process. Manually filling out and approving expense reports is a significant time sink for both employees and managers. Aside from productivity lost to expense reporting, there are also pain points around auditing expense reports. A solution to automatically extract merchant and transaction information from receipts can significantly reduce the manual effort of reporting and auditing expenses.

Given the proliferation of mobile cameras, modern expense reports often contain images of receipts that are faded, crumpled up, or taken in suboptimal lighting conditions. Existing receipt solutions often target high quality scanned images and are not robust enough to handle such real-world conditions.

Enhance your expense reporting process using the pre-built capability

Form Recognizer eases common pain points in expense reporting, delivering real value back to business. By using the receipt API to extract merchant and transaction information from receipts, developers can unlock new experiences in the workforce. And since the pre-built model for receipts works off the shelf without training, it reduces the speed to deployment.

For employees, expense applications leveraging Form Recognizer can pre-populate expense reports with key information extracted from receipts. This saves employees time in managing expenses and travel that they can focus on their core roles. For central teams like finance within a company, it also helps expense auditing by using the key data extracted from receipts for verification. The optical character recognition (OCR) technology behind the service can handle receipts that are captured in a wide variety of conditions,  including smartphone cameras, reducing the amount of manual searching and reading of transaction documents required by auditors.

Our customer: Microsoft’s internal finance operations

The pre-built receipt functionality of Form Recognizer has already been deployed by Microsoft’s internal expense reporting tool, MSExpense, to help auditors identify potential anomalies. Using the data extracted, receipts are sorted into low, medium, or high risk of potential anomalies. This enables the auditing team to focus on high risk receipts and reduce the number of potential anomalies that go unchecked.

MSExpense also plans to leverage receipt data extraction and risk scoring to modernize the expense reporting process. Instead of identifying risky expenses during auditing, such automated processing can flag potential issues earlier in the process during the reporting or approval of the expenses. This reduces the turnaround time for processing the expense and any reimbursement.

“The pre-built receipt feature of Form Recognizer enables our application not only to scale from sampling 5 percent of receipts to 100 percent, but more importantly to streamline employee expense report experience by auto-populating/creating expense transactions, creating happy path to payment, receipt data insights to approver managers, giving employees time back to be used in value-add activities for our company. The service was simple to integrate and start seeing value.“

—Luciana Siciliano, Microsoft FinOps (MSExpense)

Learn more

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 40

We continue to expand the Azure Marketplace ecosystem. For this volume, 212 new offers successfully met the onboarding criteria and went live. See details of the new offers below:

Applications

2Care: 2CARE is a healthcare solution that easily captures the services provided to patients or inhabitants. This application is available only in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria.

A10 Lightning ADC: A10 Lightning Application Delivery Controller (ADC) is a cloud-native solution that optimizes the delivery and security of cloud-native applications and services.

Actian Vector Analytic Database Community Edition: Actian Vector is a developer-friendly high-performance analytics engine that requires minimal setup, provides automatic tuning to reduce database administration effort, and enables highly responsive end-user BI reporting.

Advanced Load Balancer ADC for Azure: Loadbalancer.org Advanced Load Balancer ADC for Azure provides layer 4/7 load balancing for Azure, automatically distributing incoming application traffic across Azure-hosted workloads.

AIMS 14 Day Free Trial: AIMS simplifies and automates the monitoring and analytics of Microsoft enterprise IT products and technologies using AI and machine learning.

AIMS AIOps Free Performance Assessment: AIMS provides a deep IT system and application performance assessment report delivered as a 15-20-page PowerPoint presentation identifying the state of your environment with recommended actions based on AI findings.

AIMS Innovation: AIMS simplifies and automates the monitoring and analytics of Microsoft enterprise IT products and technologies using AI and machine learning.

aiScaler Load Balancer & Site Acceleration: aiScaler is an application delivery controller with an emphasis on accelerating dynamic sites. It is a single, easily configured virtual appliance that provides traffic management, dynamic site acceleration, and DDoS protection.

Allscripts dbMotion: The dbMotion solution aggregates data from disparate source systems, harmonizes the information, and delivers it in an actionable format at the point of care, within the provider’s native workflow.

Alteryx Designer: Alteryx Designer empowers data analysts by combining data preparation, data blending, and advanced analytics – predictive, statistical, and spatial – in an easy-to-use, drag-and-drop user interface.

AMO CA: AMO CA, formerly known as AuthentiCA, is a cloud-based certificate authority service that allows users to easily issue certificates and manage queries, renewals, and revocations.

AnalyticsCreator data warehouse automation: AnalyticsCreator automates the design, creation, maintenance, and deployment of Azure SQL Data Warehouse.

Appcelerator Arrow API Builder: Appcelerator Arrow API Builder is an opinionated framework for building and deploying Node.js applications to the cloud. With Arrow Builder, developers can quickly connect, model, transform, and optimize data from any source.

AppDynamics Application Performance Management: AppDynamics is a leading application performance management solution for modern applications in the cloud and data center that allows organizations to rapidly troubleshoot, diagnose, and scale apps in Azure.

AppScale: The AppScale platform enables developers to focus solely on business logic in order to rapidly build scalable apps, cleanly separating it from deployment and scaling logic.

Apptimized Packaging Tool: Hosted on Azure, the Apptimized Packaging Tool delivers everything needed to discover, create, test, and manage application packages in the cloud.

Aras Innovator PLM Suite: Aras Innovator is an enterprise-scale product lifecycle management (PLM) suite on Azure providing complete item and document management, configuration and change management, project and program management, and more.

Asianux Server 4 SP6: Asianux Server 4 integrates advanced Linux technologies to deliver more value to enterprise users with high capability, reliability, and improved security.

Asitis Cloudware: Asitis Cloudware on Azure is a cloud-based factoring platform that helps your factoring business succeed – whether you have a startup or an already established company and want to grow.

Atomic Secure Docker for Ubuntu: With Atomic Secure Docker for Ubuntu, the operating system, device, application, and containers all inherit protection from the hardened kernel for entire classes of cyberattacks.

AudioCodes One Voice Operations Center: AudioCodes One Voice Operations Center is a voice network management solution that combines the management of voice network devices and quality of experience monitoring into a single, intuitive web-based application.

Autopilot BPM Solution: Autopilot is an Azure-based platform that allows companies to speed up the implementation and roll-out of electronic form and workflow solutions.

Avalanche TTX: Avalanche TTX allows you to easily create and deliver engaging scenarios so that employees can experience and learn from difficult situations before they happen in real life. The system has wide application across many industries.

Avi Vantage ADC: Load Balancer, GSLB and WAF: Avi Vantage delivers an enterprise-grade, software-defined solution composed of a smart load balancer, an intelligent web application firewall, and an elastic service mesh for container applications.

Aviatrix Companion Gateway-v2: This model removes the requirement to download the Aviatrix Gateway image to your Azure account to greatly reduce deployment time. Aviatrix Companion Gateway works with Aviatrix Cloud Controller version 3.1 or later.

Avik Cloud: Avik Cloud is a data pipeline as a service for big data management, including data integration, data profiles, data replication, machine learning, and more.

Axway MailGate: Axway MailGate assists in fully protecting your enterprise – from sanitizing inbound email, filtering and encrypting outbound messages, securing and managing shared files, and securing mobile device channels.

Azul Zulu for Azure – Java 7 on Ubuntu 18.04: Azul Zulu for Azure is a collection of certified builds of OpenJDK that are fully compliant and compatible with the Java SE standard on x64 reference architecture systems.

Azul Zulu for Azure – Java 7 on Windows 2019: Azul Zulu for Azure is a collection of certified builds of OpenJDK that are fully compliant and compatible with the Java SE standard on x64 reference architecture systems.

Azul Zulu for Azure – Java 8 on Ubuntu 18.04: Azul Zulu for Azure is a collection of certified builds of OpenJDK that are fully compliant and compatible with the Java SE standard on x64 reference architecture systems.

Azul Zulu for Azure – Java 8 on Windows 2019: Azul Zulu for Azure is a collection of certified builds of OpenJDK that are fully compliant and compatible with the Java SE standard on x64 reference architecture systems.

Azul Zulu for Azure – Java 11 on Ubuntu 18.04: Azul Zulu for Azure is a collection of certified builds of OpenJDK that are fully compliant and compatible with the Java SE standard on x64 reference architecture systems.

Azul Zulu for Azure – Java 11 on Windows 2019: Azul Zulu for Azure is a collection of certified builds of OpenJDK that are fully compliant and compatible with the Java SE standard on x64 reference architecture systems.

Barracuda CloudGen Firewall for Azure: The Barracuda CloudGen Firewall for Azure fills the functional gaps between cloud infrastructure security and a defense-in-depth strategy by providing protection where the application and data reside.

BioGraph Engine: The BioGraph Engine by Spiral Genetics is designed to address the issues associated with large-scale genome sequencing projects using Illumina next-generation whole genome sequencing data.

BlockApps Multinode Blockchain – Enterprise Edition: BlockApps provides enterprise blockchain development solutions based on Ethereum. Its client, written in Haskell, provides a highly scalable Ethereum-compliant blockchain with an industry standard RESTful API.

BPM – Document Management: AuraPortal Helium's fast, easy, mobile, and secure document management module is designed for the cloud and built with the user in mind.

CB CRM to SharePoint Permissions Replicator: CB Dynamics CRM to SharePoint Permissions Replicator closes security gaps and keeps your documents safe by automatically synchronizing Dynamics CRM privileges with SharePoint permissions.

CERTIFY: Certify helps you optimize, control, and follow your certification process while respecting the methodologies imposed by ISO 14971 and IEC 62366 and creating standards reports in line with the expectations of testing laboratories and auditors.

CFD Direct From the Cloud: CFD Direct From the Cloud is a complete platform providing OpenFOAM (open source computational fluid dynamics) and supporting software running on the latest long-term support version of Ubuntu Linux.

Chartio: Chartio is a cloud-based business analytics solution designed to enable data analysts and business users in marketing, sales, operations, and finance to access, explore, transform, and visualize their data.

ChartWise CDI: ChartWise CDI is an award-winning clinical documentation improvement solution integrated across the healthcare continuum that increases efficiency and reduces risk with a proven, fast ROI.

Cloud Web Environment: Genesys Cloud Web Environment is a preconfigured cloud infrastructure and Open .NET stack for developers and teams to rapidly provision a working development environment in 15 minutes and start coding.

CloudAMQP: CloudAMQP supplies fully managed RabbitMQ servers and clusters, ranging from virtual hosts on a shared cluster to dedicated high-performance, high-availability clusters.

CloudCheckr – The Cloud Management Company: CloudCheckr is a unified cloud governance solution for Azure offering control and clarity for leading organizations to manage and optimize their public cloud investments.

CloudForte for Azure: CloudForte for Azure enables the management and governance of Azure public cloud environments, the acceleration and adoption of Azure and Azure-native services, and cloud-native modernization and development.

CloudMonix: CloudMonix extends Azure by providing fine-grained control over monitoring, auto-scaling, and automation (self-healing) services in a simple, powerful experience.

ComUnity Citizen Engagement Platform: The ComUnity Citizen Engagement Platform simplifies the way government organizations build and operate inclusive digital ecosystems that are data driven and run on all mobile devices and digital channels.

Conduit: Make data-driven decisions with Conduit from Blueprint Technologies, a lightweight and secure solution that connects data sources to any BI visualization. Conduit unifies your data analytics initiatives and enables real-time delivery of your data.

D'Amo: D’Amo is a database encryption solution suitable for any operation environment that provides secured encryption key management and addresses compliance issues.

DataCore Cloud Replication: DataCore Cloud Replication uses Azure as a remote replication location to safeguard your highly available data center, helping you take advantage of the scalability, agility, and cost-efficiencies of Azure.

DayOne Collaboration Solution: DayOne is a user-friendly, intuitive portal based on a Windows service running on Azure that connects to and synchronizes objects between Office 365 tenants you target.

Derdack Enterprise Alert: Derdack Enterprise Alert automates alert notification processes and response workflows, enabling fast, reliable, and effective response to incidents threatening the continuity of services and operations.

DEvent SaaS: DEvent is an innovative modeling solution that allows insurance companies to efficiently calculate their reserves with respect to Solvency II, ORSA, or IFRS 17.

DeviceHive: DeviceHive provides the communication layer, control software, and multi-platform libraries to bootstrap development of smart energy, home automation, remote sensing, telemetry, remote control and monitoring software, and more.

Digital Signup: Digital Signup is a cloud-based class registration solution designed for educational organizations that have one or more workarounds associated with their class registration, enrollment, and payment processing programs.

DisasterNet: DisasterNet is a tool to easily unify and share information in the event of a disaster. Consolidate and centralize disaster information reported from various means and sources to help prevent delayed decision making. This application is available only in Japanese.

Doberman Managed Service: Emyode Doberman enables you to retain control over your business applications’ rapid evolution despite the exponential increase in technological complexity. This application is available only in English and French.

Docker Engine – Enterprise for Azure: Docker Engine – Enterprise for Azure bootstraps all recommended infrastructure to start using Docker on Azure automatically so that users don't need to think about rolling their own instances, setting up security groups, or load balancing.

Dyadic EKM Server Image: Dyadic Enterprise Key Management (EKM) lets you manage and control keys in any application deployed on Azure. It is easy to deploy and maintain and delivers greater levels of security and control for your crypto keys in the cloud.

Dynatrace OneAgent: Dynatrace OneAgent provides immediate information on application, infrastructure, and service problems by analyzing how application services interact and visualizing the impact on overall application performance.

easydoct: easydoct is a web platform for managing appointments and boosting efficiency and productivity in healthcare organizations. This application is available only in French.

EJBCA Enterprise Cloud Edition: EJBCA Enterprise Cloud Edition is a powerful certificate issuance and management system for issuing and enabling full lifecycle control of digital certificates and certificate authorities, registration authorities, and validation authorities.

Enterprise Password Vault: Employing the latest Azure technology, Enterprise Password Vault (EPV) securely stores your enterprise passwords with the ability to control permission levels within your organization. EPV also audits access to your security resources.

Essentia: Essentia is a big data toolkit that provides improved data visibility, management, and analytics of cloud-based data lakes. Use cases include log analytics, web analytics, Internet of Things analytics, and hybrid-cloud data visibility.

FidelityEHR: FidelityEHR facilitates communication and sharing of information between team members; assists in the supervision and evaluation of staff performance; and provides real-time monitoring of costs, services, implementation, and outcomes.

flexHR: flexHR on Azure delivers comprehensive "hire to retire" functions for human capital management with insightful analytics such as wage versus revenue, output per man-hour trend, and more.

Gomedisys: Gomedisys helps centralize, organize, and manage the operational and administrative information of health service providers (clinics, hospitals, medical centers, doctors' offices, etc.), at any level of complexity. This application is available only in Spanish.

GrowthEnabler Personalized Intelligence: The GrowthEnabler AI- and algorithm-based global intelligence platform provides enterprises a fast way to leverage disruptive technologies, business models, and digital product innovations born out of the global startup economy.

H2O.ai Sparkling Water for HDInsight: With Sparkling Water, users can drive computation from Scala/R/Python and utilize the H2O Flow UI, providing an ideal machine learning platform for application developers.

Habilect: Habileсt is a multifunctional medical system that provides biomechanical diagnostics of body movements to prescribe therapy exercises and motivate patients both in the clinic and at home.

Hanu Managed Azure: Get peace of mind and make the most of your Azure investment with Hanu Managed Azure services, including 24/7 proactive monitoring and notification, configuration management, and security management.

HEDDA.IO: HEDDA.IO enables you to build a knowledge base and use it to perform a variety of critical data quality tasks, including the correction, enrichment, and standardization of data.

HERE Maps & Location Services: This template deploys HERE’s enterprise-grade maps and location services as serverless functions.

HERE Maps & Location Services for Data Streams: This template deploys HERE’s enterprise-grade maps and location services as serverless functions with an Azure Event Hub and Azure Cosmos DB used in real-time data streaming and processing for data-intensive applications.

HERE Maps & Location Services for WebApp backends: This template deploys HERE’s enterprise-grade maps and location services as serverless functions with a service bus and Azure Cosmos DB used as data processing back-ends for web applications.

Hinemos ver.6.1.2 with Cloud Management Feature: Hinemos is an integrated operations management solution that provides the features you need to manage complex IT systems.

Human Capital Management Software Suite: The CatalystOne Human Capital Management Software Suite is ideal for midsize to large organizations and supports processes throughout the entire employee lifecycle.

Humanify Insights Platform: The Humanify Insights Platform is a cloud-based customer and employee data platform that provides brands with a 360-degree view of customers’ needs, behaviors, and preferences.

Hydra Holistic Conservation: Hydra Holistic Conservation helps you transform data into value across the entire conservation community, including park managers, security teams, tourism departments, ecologists and scientists, anti-poaching units, and more.

Hyperglance: Automatic cloud architecture diagram: Hyperglance provides complete Azure cloud visibility with a built-in rules engine. See identified resources and their dependencies on a real-time, interactive Azure diagram that is scalable and easy to understand.

ICE: Hybrid Cloud Advisory Service Assessment UAE: Intertec will divide your application ecosystem into private managed, Azure reserved instances, VM scale sets, app scale sets, app services, and DevOps sandbox environments for cost savings and a comprehensive migration.

ICE: NetApp (BYOL) Storage on Azure as a Service: Intertec is pleased to present storage architecture in partnership with NetApp that gives you enterprise-grade data management features and cost savings along with the financial flexibility and reliability of Azure.

ICE: Remote Workplace Suite: Intertec's ICE: Remote Workplace Suite helps improve business efficiency while ensuring full compliance on data retention.

Icinga 2: Shadow-Soft Icinga 2 master on CentOS is community code built on CentOS and installed and configured to monitor directly connected Linux and Windows hosts.

Iguazio Data Science Platform: The Iguazio platform streamlines data science to production and drives fast time to value for application development based on machine learning, enabling data scientists to focus on delivering better and more powerful solutions.

Imperva-Incapsula: Imperva Incapsula secures and accelerates websites by bolstering the built-in security features of Azure with a web application firewall, DDoS mitigation, and intelligent bot protection for any website or application in a pure or hybrid Azure environment.

Improvement Platform-Nuventive: The Improvement Platform utilizes Microsoft Power BI and Office 365 as key architectural components. It is designed to help higher education communities plan more consistently, collaborate more effectively, and make smarter decisions.

Info ASPEN: Info ASPEN is a log data anonymization and data storage service on Azure that provides organizations with a simple solution for GDPR requirements for log data anonymization, pseudonymization, and log storage.

Informatica Big Data Management 10.2.2 BYOL: Informatica Big Data Management provides data management solutions to quickly and holistically integrate, govern, and secure big data for your business.

Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog 10.2.2 BYOL: Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog provides a machine-learning-based discovery engine to scan and catalog data assets across the enterprise – across clouds, on-premises, and big data anywhere.

Intellicus BI Server V18.1 (100 Users): Intellicus BI Server on Azure is an end-to-end self-service BI platform that provides advanced reporting and analytics capabilities; a semantic layer; and integrated extract, transform, and load capabilities.

Intellicus BI Server V18.1 (50 Users): Intellicus BI Server on Azure is an end-to-end self-service BI platform that provides advanced reporting and analytics capabilities; a semantic layer; and integrated extract, transform, and load capabilities.

Ishlangu Load Balancer ADC BYOL: The Ishlangu Load Balancer ADC offers advanced application delivery and security for organizations using Azure. Ishlangu is simple to deploy, easy to manage, and provides instant results.

Jenkins With Ubuntu Server 18.04 Lts: Jenkins is an open source automation server written in Java that helps automate the non-human part of the software development process, with continuous integration and facilitating the technical aspects of continuous delivery.

KACE Asset Management Appliance: The KACE Asset Management Appliance provides comprehensive, flexible software and hardware asset management capabilities across a variety of platforms and helps you play a strategic role in supporting cost controls.

Kemp 360 Central (BYOL): Kemp 360 Central application delivery management and analytics offers a single point to manage your application delivery infrastructure.

Kinetica Active Analytics Platform: Kinetica is a GPU-accelerated, in-memory analytics database that delivers real-time response to queries on large, complex, and streaming data sets. Its fully distributed architecture and simplified data structures lead to more predictable scale-out.

LANSA Scalable License: LANSA Scalable License provides users with a machine image and an Azure Resource Manager template for constructing a production-ready Windows stack to deliver LANSA web, mobile, and desktop capabilities.

Learn It Live – Population Health and Wellness: Learn It Live is a complete health wellness learning platform for HR/benefits departments, health-focused organizations, insurance companies, and content distribution networks to leverage for their members.

Linux Chef Extension (1.2.3): Install the Chef client on your virtual machine and bootstrap to your Chef server.

Magazine: Mavention Magazine is an easy way to create a digital magazine for your customers and employees. The platform is based on SharePoint as its content management system.

Magento on Ubuntu powered by IAANSYS: Magento is a feature-rich e-commerce platform built on open source technology that provides online merchants with flexibility and control over the look, content, and functionality of their e-commerce store.

Mail2Cloud Archive & Collaboration: Mail2Cloud Archive & Collaboration provides manual or automatic capture of emails (message and attachments) from one or more accounts in an organization to cloud storage.

Mailjet Email Service: Mailjet's RESTful API and intuitive toolkit give developers and marketers a scalable cloud-based email infrastructure that includes sending, deliverability, and comprehensive analytics to help get the most out of each email, recipient, and inbox.

Managed cPanel Server: Media3 Managed cPanel Server provides a fully managed Linux server with the latest version of cPanel installed running Centos 7 as the operating system.

Master Data Management: Maestro Server V6: The Profisee Maestro Server V6 virtual machine delivers all the power of Profisee Base Server with Golden Record Management, SDK, workflows, and integrator.

Matillion ETL for Snowflake: Expect a significant reduction in development time and maintenance with Matillion’s intuitive UI and data transformation approach designed to take full advantage of Snowflake’s storage capacity and multi-clustered processing power.

Mavention Make: Create new sites and groups in Office 365 based on templates and update existing SharePoint sites and groups with Mavention Make. This application is available only in Dutch.

Mavention Screen: Mavention Screen uses SharePoint as a content management solution, making it easy to display existing information on screens while narrowcasting without the need to re-enter content. This application is available only in Dutch.

Mavention Workspace: Bring all your Microsoft Teams and SharePoint sites and groups to one place with Mavention Workspace to give users a clear overview of all their collaboration spaces. This application is available only in Dutch.

ME Password Manager Pro 100 admins, 25 keys: ManageEngine Password Manager Pro is a web-based privileged identity management solution that lets you manage privileged identity passwords, SSH keys, and SSL certificates from a simple, consolidated platform.

ME Password Manager Pro 25 admins, 25 keys: ManageEngine Password Manager Pro is a web-based privileged identity management solution that lets you manage privileged identity passwords, SSH keys, and SSL certificates from a simple, consolidated platform.

Meetingsbooker Simple Meetings: Meetingsbooker Simple Meetings moves booking and tracking meeting spend from an offline, labor-intensive process to a fast online solution, transforming the way your company books venues and saves on meetings.

Mendix Pro: Mendix's visual, model-driven development approach enables more users, from professional developers to citizen developers, to rapidly build web and mobile applications.

M-Files: M-Files provides a next-generation intelligent information management platform that improves business performance by helping people find and use information more effectively.

Migrato Intelligent Content Classifier: The Migrato Intelligent Content Classifier enables you to classify scanned documents, documents on shares, and more. It uses AI and machine learning to allow for minimal user intervention. This application is available only in the Netherlands.

mijin BaaS on Azure 2: The mijin blockchain platform creates a secure data-sharing environment with high performance, zero downtime, and unfalsifiable data while reducing the cost of conventional infrastructure.

miyabi: The miyabi blockchain platform detects abnormal transactions before block generation, thereby enhancing the security as a distributed ledger. This application is available only in Japanese.

MyGet – Hosted NuGet, NPM, Bower, Maven and Vsix: MyGet provides hosted NuGet, NPM, Bower, Maven, and VSIX feeds for individual developers, open source projects, and corporate development teams.

Netgate TNSR Secure Network Platform: TNSR is a high-performance, software-based packet processing platform that enables a broad array of secure networking use cases. It features a highly scalable open source firewall, router, and VPN platform.

NVIDIA Quadro Virtual Workstation – WinServer 2019: Quickly spin up a VM running on Windows Server 2019 and easily configure it with the NVIDIA GPU instance, vCPU, memory, and storage you need without having to purchase physical hardware and infrastructure.

OFAC Search API: OFAC Search API offers fast, flexible, and accurate SDN name search through a simple API. Results can be formatted in XML or JSON.

Official MEAN Machine – Mean.io app out-of-the-box: This leading web development framework allows for rapid set up and deployment of web apps, websites, web services, and APIs, offering a set of hand-picked tools enabling developers to focus on development.

OpenFrame: OpenFrame is a complete mainframe rehosting solution that lets you take (lift) your existing mainframe assets and move (shift) them to an open system platform quickly and with minimal risk.

OPNsense Firewall/Router/VPN/IDPS: OPNsense is a fully featured security platform that secures your network with features such as inline intrusion prevention, virtual private networking, two-factor authentication, captive portal, and filtering web proxy.

OpsLogix OMS Oracle Collector: Consolidate Oracle monitoring, auditing, and log analytics into Microsoft Operations Management Suite with the OpsLogix OMS Oracle Collector for a holistic view of your Oracle environment.

OutSystems Azure AD: Enable enterprise single sign-on throughout all OutSystems applications in your organization, allowing users to sign in using their organizational accounts hosted in Azure Active Directory.

Perfect Finder: Manage a diverse device ecosystem and reduce the work of IT personnel. Perfect Finder has three main functions: procurement, asset management, and support. This application is available only in Japanese.

Perfion PIM – Add-in for Business Central: Perfion offers product information management (PIM) fully integrated into Dynamics 365 Business Central. Work directly with real-time ERP data such as prices and inventories from the same place you manage all other product data.

Plesk WordPress Edition Premium: Plesk WordPress Edition enables you to create a managed WordPress offer with everything you need. It is ready to deploy out-of-the-box configurations that come with preconfigured settings and our top extensions pre-installed.

Power Analytics: Power Analytics is an online app for managers in midsize and large businesses who plan to implement a KPI-based BI system. The application provides insights and interactive dashboards based on corporate KPIs. This application is available only in Russian.

PrestaShop Kickstart Template: PrestaShop is an open source e-commerce web application that helps provide a better shopping cart experience for merchants and their customers. The solution is extendable and written in PHP to provide unlimited product customization.

ProActive Workflows & Scheduling: ProActive Workflows & Scheduling is a job scheduler based on workflows. It enables enterprise batch processing and job scheduling to optimize the execution of all types of workloads.

Project Hub: Project Hub helps organizations structure documentation for current and past projects with a well-organized portal where customers see their projects presented visually. This application is available only in Dutch.

ProjectTools Business Productivity Products: ProjectTools comprises Engage Plus, Empower Plus, and Optimise Plus, providing a cloud-based method of gathering project or asset data in real time and storing it for remote access and analysis.

ptarmigan for Azure: ptarmigan is a solution that is compliant with the Lightning Network specification (BOLT) and published on Azure Marketplace for easy deployment on Azure.

PubSub+ Cloud Enterprise Accounts: Leading enterprises use PubSub+ Cloud messaging as a service to enable event-driven microservices, stream data from on-premises to the cloud, build IoT applications, integrate web streaming or mobile apps, and more.

PubSub+ Cloud Standard Accounts: Leading enterprises use PubSub+ Cloud messaging as a service to enable event-driven microservices, stream data from on-premises to the cloud, build IoT applications, integrate web streaming or mobile apps, and more.

quasardb cluster: Supporting a large selection of languages with open-source APIs, quasardb enables users to work on terabytes of data effortlessly thanks to its simple key/value model combined with instant tag-based lookups.

Questica Budget for Healthcare: Questica works with hospitals and healthcare facilities to better enable data-driven budgeting and decision-making while increasing data accuracy, saving time, and improving stakeholder trust.

Questica Budget for Higher Education: Questica Budget is a fully featured, multi-user web-based operating, salary, and capital budgeting and performance measurement tool that integrates seamlessly with your existing financial, HR, and student information systems.

Questica Budget for Local Government: By seamlessly integrating with existing financial, ERP, and other systems, Questica Budget is an easy-to-use, comprehensive, and collaborative cloud-based solution for operating, capital, and salary budget preparation and management.

Questica Budget for Primary & Secondary Edu / K-12: Questica’s multi-user school budgeting and performance management software simplifies the assembly, tracking, analyzing, and reporting of operating, salary, and capital budgets.

RancherOS: RancherOS is a Linux distribution that runs the Docker daemon as process ID 1 and all services as system containers.

RapidMiner Server: RapidMiner Server makes it easy to share, reuse, and operationalize models and results created in RM Studio. Its central repository, dedicated computational power, and flexible deployment options support analytic teamwork and help rapidly put results into action.

RavenHQ: RavenHQ is the official RavenDB hosting platform. Its fully managed cloud of RavenDB servers and scalable plans mean you won’t have to worry about installation, updates, availability, performance, security, or backups again.

Raygun: Raygun provides effortless error tracking for your applications, helping you find problems and fix bugs faster. With just a line or two of code, Raygun works with all major mobile and web programming languages in a matter of minutes.

Riverbed SteelCentral Controller for SteelHead: Manage, configure, and monitor Riverbed products from a single web application and centralize enterprise-level policy management and reporting for greater control over global network deployments.

Safetica DLP: Safetica is a cost-effective, easy-to-use data loss prevention (DLP) solution. It protects sensitive data and covers all major data leak channels (email, cloud, external devices, websites, social media, clipboard, and printer media).

Saviynt for Azure: Saviynt's comprehensive cloud identity and access governance solution secures all data, infrastructure, and critical application assets under a single, unified platform.

SendGrid Email Delivery: SendGrid's proven platform successfully delivers over 18 billion transactional and marketing related emails each month for Internet and mobile-based customers as well as more traditional enterprises.

Signature 365: Signature 365 is a marketing tool that offers efficient central management of employee e-signatures in Microsoft Outlook, with all employee information stored and selected from Active Directory.

Sitecore Managed Service on Azure: RDA’s Sitecore Managed Service on Azure is a comprehensive offering that keeps your digital solutions performing at the highest levels, allowing you to focus on providing exceptional experiences to your customers.

Solix Common Data Platform: The Solix Common Data Platform is big data management solution for modern data-driven enterprises. It leverages leading open source big data technologies to help companies better manage and process structured and unstructured data.

SureSpot: SureSpot allows motorists to easily make reservations at parking facilities without cash or waiting in long lines. Motorists can reserve a parking spot at any of SureSpot's participating facilities and rest assured that they will have a place to park when they arrive.

System Answer: Targeting the education sector, System Answer features centralized management of hybrid cloud environments, problem analysis/predictive detection, and security measures including integrated log management. This application is available only in Japanese.

TAAP Healthcare – Discharge Management System: The TAAP Healthcare – Discharge Management System removes paper and spreadsheets, allows data to be captured in real time, and enables healthcare professionals to make actionable decisions based on real-time data.

Taxcel BI App: The Taxcel BI web app automatically converts SPED files to dashboards without the need for integration with your ERP system, helping you gain insight into your business through Power BI visualizations. This application is available only in Portuguese.

Teradata Server Management: Teradata Server Management monitors Teradata Vantage instances and generates alerts related to database and operating system errors and operational state changes, increasing efficiency in Teradata environment server management.

Teradata Unity with IntelliSphere: Teradata Unity is a key enabling technology for synchronization and workload routing between Teradata Vantage systems that provides active-active database availability with near-zero recovery time objectives/recovery point objectives.

The Deep Learning Reference Stack: The Deep Learning Reference Stack is an integrated, open source stack optimized for Intel Xeon Scalable platforms. This community release helps ensure AI developers have easy access to all features and functionalities of Intel platforms.

theStore2 Retail Lab: theStore2 is a virtual studio for fast prototyping of trade and category management concepts, consumer pretests, advanced analytics, and sales force training.

Tibero 6 Enterprise Edition: Tibero 6 is a high-performance, highly secure, highly scalable relational database management system for enterprises that want to fully leverage their mission-critical data.

Tibero 6 Standard Edition: Tibero 6 is a high-performance, highly secure, highly scalable relational database management system for enterprises that want to fully leverage their mission-critical data.

Tieto Intelligent Wellbeing: Tieto Intelligent Wellbeing is an AI-based data-driven product family for healthcare and welfare that makes decision making faster and more accurate while increasing the efficiency and reliability of health and wellbeing services.

TmaxSoft WebtoB 5 Enterprise Edition: The WebtoB web server delivers fast, stable processing by consuming fewer resources through optimized service request distribution (multiplexing) via a single process.

UnderStand IoT: Edge UnderStand is a standalone device equipped with high quality sensors that constantly monitor and measure multiple parameters. The readings are then transmitted to a cloud-based server and are available immediately.

UniKix Mainframe Re-hosting Software: With UniKix Mainframe Re-hosting Software, you can run mission-critical online and batch workloads on cost-effective Azure platforms. The solution preserves existing application investments and extends the benefits of distributed platforms.

UXP Security Server: UXP Security Server acts as a gateway between an organization’s information system and the UXP infrastructure. Supporting SOAP and REST messages, it enables you to establish seamless, secure communication between organizations.

ViewPoint Cloud: ViewPoint Cloud is cloud-based software for permitting, licensing, and code enforcement operations. The all-in-one platform offers a user-friendly experience for public applicants integrated with workflow automation for department staff.

Vishaka – PoSH Compliance: Vishaka is a regulatory solution designed to help organizations based in India comply with India’s PoSH Act 2013 mandate. Vishaka boosts awareness through online trainings, policies, surveys, and annual compliance reports.

VNS3 (Firewall/Router/VPN): Cohesive Networks VNS3 is a security and network routing virtual appliance built for Azure to support most Internet Protocol Security data center solutions.

Vormetric Tokenization Server 2.3.0.400: Vormetric Vaultless Tokenization with Dynamic Data Masking dramatically reduces the cost and effort required to comply with security policies and regulatory mandates while making it easy to protect other sensitive data.

WAPPLES SA: WAPPLES SA is a cloud-based web security solution for protecting business applications from attacks by analyzing HTTP/HTTPS traffic using the COCEP logic-based detection engine.

WaWa Office: Targeting the education sector, WaWa Office is highly expandable groupware that uses a corporate LAN to streamline information sharing and communication. This application is available only in Japanese.

WellLine SaaS: WellLine is a knowledge graph for wells that establishes and enriches asset timelines, enabling oil and gas companies to create a powerful digital knowledge layer for wells.

WHOOG: A management solution for staff replacement in the health sector based on employee volunteering, WHOOG is revolutionizing the management of planned or urgent replacement needs. This application is available only in French.

Wormhole Campus: Distance learning and training platform Wormhole Campus is used by hundreds of companies, governments, and educational institutions to manage, develop, and market online training programs. This application is available only in Spanish.

Xytech MediaPulse: The MediaPulse facility management system has over 30 integrated and highly configurable modules designed to support project management, rental management, asset management, and personnel scheduling.

ZAML: Zest Automated Machine Learning (ZAML) empowers financial institutions with the tools to build, document, and monitor machine learning credit underwriting models in production, enabling them to be compliant with federal regulations.

Zerto: Zerto protects your private cloud infrastructure by deploying disaster recovery in Azure and helps create hybrid cloud environments by integrating your on-premises infrastructure with public clouds.

Zerto Virtual Replication: Zerto Virtual Replication protects your private cloud infrastructure by deploying disaster recovery in Azure and helps create hybrid cloud environments by integrating your on-premises infrastructure with public clouds.

Consulting Services

Advanced Azure Identity Management: 1-Hr Briefing: Identity management in the cloud offers a wide range of benefits. This 1-hour briefing will show you how to integrate your on-premises identity with Azure.

Azure Cloud Roadmap + BluePrint: 4-Week Assessment: Work with BlueSilverShift to build a customized roadmap for your journey to the Azure cloud. More than a simple cloud readiness assessment, this solution delivers a blueprint for implementation and long-term success.

Azure Data Center Migration: 1-Hr Briefing: Microsoft Gold partner TWE Solutions will brief you on the pros and cons of moving infrastructure and services to the cloud, providing a high-level overview of the benefits and best practices for migration.

Azure Disaster Recovery: 1-Hr Briefing: This briefing from partner TWE Solutions provides information on the benefits of using Azure to implement a disaster recovery plan for your data and IT services, touching on cloud security and failover testing.

AzureReady Managed Services: 1-Wk Briefing: Microsoft Gold partner 3Cloud will manage your Azure services with a focus on efficiency, cost control, and support. This briefing will review your infrastructure and deliver a design of your base Azure architecture.

Citrix on Azure: 5 Day Proof of Concept: Coretek Services will work with you to implement or extend your use of Azure with a proof-of-concept Citrix environment. By the end of the engagement, you will have a PoC app or desktop environment to leverage for testing.

Data Migration to Power BI: 3-Day Proof of Concept: TwoConnect can help you migrate your data to Azure and create Power BI dashboards that streamline all your sources and enable you to easily visualize and analyze data with greater speed, efficiency, and understanding.

Data Science & Engineering: 1-Hr Briefing: The Data Analysis Bureau offers a discovery session to help you understand how data science can drive value to your business using your Azure architecture, helping to improve operational collaboration and business efficiency.

Data Science & Machine Learning: 1 Day Workshop: The Data Analysis Bureau delivers a tailored, one-day data discovery workshop to accelerate your data science and machine learning projects with your key business stakeholders.

Device Management System: 2-Weeks Assessment: This offer from Microsoft Gold partner Communication Square delivers an assessment of application requirements, user personas, and business goals to help IT directors work toward a more productive user experience.

Device Management System: 2-Weeks Proof of Concept: This PoC from Microsoft Gold partner Communication Square delivers a production environment demo to help IT directors support a diverse mobile ecosystem, protect data, and deliver a productive user experience.

First Line Workers System-1 Hour Briefing: This briefing from Communication Square will help you better understand how to promote first line workers' remote participation in town halls, enable employees to build on the work of others, and tap into data for new insights.

First Line Workers System-1 Week Assessment: This assessment by Communication Square will deliver a production environment demo of an ideal use case of First Line Workers System, a scalable Azure solution that helps connect a workforce utilizing voice, video, and chat.

First Line Workers System-2 Week Proof of Concept: This PoC from Communication Square delivers a fully functional, five-user setup of First Line Workers System, a productive Azure-based solution that helps connect a workforce utilizing voice, video, and chat.

First Line Workers System-4 Week Implementation: This offer from Communication Square implements First Line Workers System, an Azure- and cloud-based productivity solution that helps IT directors connect to their workforce utilizing voice, video, and chat.

HIPPA Ready Healthcare System: 2-Weeks PoC: This proof of concept from Communication Square shows how businesses can securely work with remote customers and define who can access data and what they can do with it. This is a fully functional setup for up to five users.

HIPPA Ready Healthcare System: 1 Week Assessment: This assessment from Communication Square will help a business explore HIPAA Ready Healthcare System as a solution to ensure communication and collaboration are compliant per industry-defined standards.

Integration Scoping Workshop – 6 Day: Black Marble consultants will assess existing integration interfaces, review how to move into the cloud with Azure Logic Apps, and develop a technical document outlining an adoption plan.

IoT / AI: 80 Hour Assessment in Manufacturing: System One Digital will visit your plant to assess areas of opportunity, summarize the ROI of an IoT/AI project, and demonstrate how Azure technologies can be used.

Machine Learning: 1-Hr Briefing: This discovery session from The Data Analysis Bureau will help you understand how to utilize your Azure architecture to accelerate your machine learning projects to return value to your business and improve your business productivity.

Mainframe Migration: 6-Wk Assessment: This assessment from Asysco enables the analysis of mainframe systems and planning for Azure migration along with key requirements and risks. You will receive a migration plan and target architecture for required Azure components.

Managed Azure Governance: 2-Day Assessment: Blue Silver Shift will show you in two days how to achieve a stress-free Azure governance and cost containment strategy, implementation, and monthly monitoring, with a focus on maximizing the return on your investment.

Quick Azure Diagnostic – 3-Wk assessment: This assessment by FX Innovation will help you understand the impact of Azure, ensure the right resources are in place, and find out the security mechanisms and governance approach that can maximize your investment.

Secure Communication System: 4-Week Implementation: This deep, Azure-based engagement from Communication Square leads to a robust implementation of Secure Communication System, a phone solution that utilizes a cloud-based unified communication solution.

SQL 2008 Migration Assessment – 1 to 5 days: Emyode’s Migration Assessment is a complete review of your context, challenges, databases, and applications, creating a high-level architecture and global action plan for a successful migration.

SQL 2008 Migration w/real scenario (PoC) 1-5 days: On July 9, 2019, all support for SQL 2008 will end. Emyode will demonstrate a scenario of migrating your database in Azure as a proof of concept, validating and ensuring all the steps work within your context.

SQL 2008 Migration Workshop & Demo 1 day Briefing: Understand your options and the benefits of leveraging SQL 2008 EOS and migrating to Azure with Emyode's comprehensive one-on-one workshop and demonstration of the migration process.

Value Discovery Approach: 6 weeks assessment: The Infosys Value Discovery Approach focuses on data collection and technical discovery to baseline the mainframe portfolio for Azure migration. The objective is evaluating the landscape from business and technical aspects.

Website/eCommerce Azure Migration: 5-hour Imp.: Atmosera will help you evaluate website workloads, performance, and architecture to develop the optimal Azure environment. You will receive a detailed report and a roadmap that highlights investment options and tradeoffs.

Quelle: Azure

Scale action groups and suppress notifications for Azure alerts

In Azure Monitor, defining what to monitor while configuring alerts can be challenging. Customers need to be capable of defining when actions and notifications should trigger for their alerts, and more importantly, when they shouldn’t. The action rules feature for Azure Monitor, available in preview, allows you to define actions for your alerts at scale, and allows you to suppress alerts for scenarios such as maintenance windows.

Let’s take a closer look at how action rules (preview) can help you in your monitoring setup!

Defining actions at scale

Previously you could define what action groups trigger for your alerts while defining an alert rule. However, the actions that get triggered, whether it is an email that is sent or a ticket created in a ticketing tool, are usually associated with resource on which the alert is generated rather than the individual alert rule.

For example, for all alerts generated on the virtual machine contosoVM, I would typically want the following.

The same email address to be notified (e.g. contosoITteam@contoso.com)
Tickets to be created in the same ITSM tool

While you could define a single action group such as contosoAG and associate it with each and every alert rule authored on contosoVM, wouldn’t it be easier if you could easily associate contosoAG for every alert generated on contosoVM, without any additional configuration?

That’s precisely what action rules (preview) allow you to do. They allow you to define an action group to trigger for all alerts generated on the defined scope, this could be a subscription, resource group, or resource so that you no longer have to define them for individual alert rules!

Suppressing notifications for your alerts

There are often many scenarios where it would be useful to suppress the notifications generated by your alerts. This could be a planned maintenance window or even the suppression of notifications during non-business hours. You could possibly do this by disabling each and every alert rule individually, with complicated logic that accounts for time windows and recurrence patterns or you can get all of this out of the box by using action rules (preview).

Working on the same principle as before, action rules (preview) also allow you to define the suppression of actions and notifications for all alerts generated on a defined scope, which could be a subscription, resource group, or resource, while the underlying alert rules would continue to monitor. Furthermore, you have the capability to configure both the period as well as recurrence for the suppression, all out of the box! With this you could easily setup notification suppression based on your business requirements, which could be anything from suppression for all weekends such as a maintenance window, to suppression between 5pm – 9am everyday or normal business hours.

Filters for more flexibility

While you can easily define action rules (preview) to either author actions at scale or suppress them, action rules come with additional knobs and levers in the form of filters that allow you to fine tune what specific subset of your alerts the action rule acts on.

For example, going back to the example of suppressing notifications during non-business hours. Perhaps you might still want to receive notifications if there is an alert with severity zero or one, while the rest are suppressed. In such a scenario, I can define a severity filter as part of my action rule, which defines that the rule does not apply to alerts with severity of zero or one, and thus only applies to rules with severity of two, three or four.

Similarly, there are additional filters that provide even more granular definitions from the description of the alert to string matching within the alert’s payload. You can learn more about the supported filters by visiting our documentation, “Action rules (preview).”

Next steps

To best leverage action rules, we recommend reading the documentation which goes into more detail about how to configure action rules (preview), example scenarios, best practices, and FAQs. It is recommended to use action rules (preview) in conjunction with action groups, which have the common alert schema enabled to define consistent alert consumption experiences across different alert types. You can also learn more by reading our documentation, “How to integrate the common alert schema with Logic Apps” which goes into more details on how you can setup an action group with a logic app using the common schema, that integrates with all your alerts.

We are just getting started with action rules (preview), and we look forward to hearing more from you as we evolve the feature towards general availability and beyond. Keep the feedback coming to azurealertsfeedback@microsoft.com.
Quelle: Azure

Thanks for 10 years and welcome to a new chapter in SQL innovation

Tomorrow, July 9, 2019, marks the end of extended support for SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2. These releases transformed the database industry, with all the core components of a database platform built-in at a fraction of the cost of other databases. We saw broad adoption across applications, data marts, data warehousing, and business intelligence. Thank you for the ten amazing years we’ve had together.

But now support for the SQL Server 2008 and R2 versions is ending. Whether you prefer the evergreen SQL of Azure SQL Database managed instance which never needs to be patched or upgraded, or if you need the flexibility and configurability of SQL Server hosted on a Azure Virtual Machine with three free years of Extended Security Updates, Azure provides the best choice of destinations to secure and modernize your database.

Customers are moving critical SQL Server workloads to Azure

Customers like Allscripts, Komatsu, Paychex, and Willis Towers Watson are taking advantage of these innovative destinations and migrating their SQL Server databases to Azure. Danish IT solutions provider KMD needed a home for their legacy SQL Server in the cloud. They had to migrate an 8-terabyte production database to the cloud quickly and without interruption to its service. Azure SQL Database managed instance allowed KMD to transfer their production data with minimal downtime and no code changes.

“We moved our SQL Server 2008 to Azure SQL Database managed instance, and it has been a great move for us. Not only do we spend less time on maintenance, but we now run a version of SQL that is always current with no need for upgrade and patching.”

– Charlotte Lindahl, Project Manager, KMD

Azure SQL Database offers differentiated value to customers including:

Chose the only cloud with evergreen SQL. Azure SQL Database compatibility levels mean that you can move your on-premises workloads to managed SQL without worrying about application compatibility or performance changes. Customers who move to SQL Database never have to worry about patching, upgrades, or end of support again.
Host larger SQL databases than any other cloud with Azure SQL Database Hyperscale. Hyperscale is a highly scalable service tier for SQL databases that adapts on-demand to your workload's needs. With Hyperscale, databases can achieve the best performance for workloads of unlimited size and scale.
Harness the power of artificial intelligence to monitor and secure your workloads. Trained on millions of databases, the intelligent security and performance features in Azure SQL Database mean consistent and predictable workload performance. In addition to intelligent performance, SQL database customers get peace of mind with automatic threat detection, which identifies unusual log-in attempts or potential SQL injection attacks.
Move to the most economical cloud database for SQL Server, Azure SQL Database managed instance. With the full surface area of your on-premises SQL Server database engine and with an anticipated ROI of 212 percent and a payback period of as little as 6 months1, only SQL Database managed instance cements its status as the most cost effective service for running SQL in the cloud. SEB is a technology company providing software, solutions, and services specializing in managing group benefit solutions and healthcare claims processing. They chose Azure not only for its cost reduction compared to on-premises, but its more than 90 compliance offerings as well.

"With SQL Server 2008 approaching end of support, SEB needed to migrate two critical business applications that contained sensitive health and PII information. In Azure, we were able to get three years of Extended Security Updates for application VMs, and move the data to Azure SQL Database which significantly decreased both management and infrastructure spend. Azure's compliance certifications for HIPAA, PCI and ISO-27k, as well as data residency in Canada, were critical in meeting our regulatory requirements.”

– Mario Correia, Chief Technology Officer, SEB Inc.

See how Hyperscale in Azure SQL Database is enabling customer innovation.

SQL innovation remains our focus now and in the future

Microsoft continues to invest in innovation with SQL Server 2019 and Azure SQL Database. Our priority is to future proof your database workloads. Today, I am excited to announce new innovation across on-premises and in the cloud:

Preview of Azure SQL, a simplified portal experience for SQL databases in Azure: Coming soon, Azure SQL will provide a single pane of glass through which you can manage Azure SQL Databases and SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines. In Azure SQL, customers will be able to register their self-installed (custom image) SQL VMs using the Resource Provider to access benefits like auto-patching, auto-backup, and new license management options.
Preview of SQL Server 2019 big data clusters: Available later this month, the SQL Server 2019 big data clusters preview combines SQL Server with Apache Spark and Hadoop Distributed File System for a unified data platform that enables analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) over all data, relational and non-relational. Early Adoption Program participants like Startup Systems Imagination Inc. are already using big data cluster to solve challenging AI and machine learning problems.  

“With SQL Server 2019 big data clusters, we can solve for on-demand big data experiments. We can analyze cancer research data coming from dozens of different data sources, mine interesting graph features, and carry out analysis at scale.”

– Pieter Derdeyn, Knowledge Engineer, Systems Imagination Inc.

Get started with SQL in Azure

As we reach end of support for SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2, and with just six more months until the end of support for Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2, there’s never been a better time to secure and modernize these older workloads by moving them to Azure. Secure, manage, and transform your SQL Server workloads with the latest data and AI capabilities:

Find the best destination for your SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2.
Get started on your Azure migration with the Data Migration Guide. 

 

1The Total Economic Impact™ of Microsoft Azure SQL Database Managed Instance, a Forrester Consulting Study, 10/25/2018. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/resources/forrester-tei-sql-database-managed-instance/en-us/
Quelle: Azure

Automate MLOps workflows with Azure Machine Learning service CLI

This blog was co-authored by Jordan Edwards, Senior Program Manager, Azure Machine Learning

This year at Microsoft Build 2019, we announced a slew of new releases as part of Azure Machine Learning service which focused on MLOps. These capabilities help you automate and manage the end-to-end machine learning lifecycle.

Historically, Azure Machine Learning service’s management plane has been via its Python SDK. To make our service more accessible to IT and app development customers unfamiliar with Python, we have delivered an extension to the Azure CLI focused on interacting with Azure Machine Learning.

While it’s not a replacement for the Azure Machine Learning service Python SDK, it is a complimentary tool that is optimized to handle highly parameterized tasks which suit themselves well to automation. With this new CLI, you can easily perform a variety of automated tasks against the machine learning workspace, including:

Datastore management
Compute target management
Experiment submission and job management
Model registration and deployment

Combining these commands enables you to train, register their model, package it, and deploy your model as an API. To help you quickly get started with MLOps, we have also released a predefined template in Azure Pipelines. This template allows you to easily train, register, and deploy your machine learning models. Data scientists and developers can work together to build a custom application for their scenario built from their own data set.

The Azure Machine Learning service Command-Line Interface is an extension to the interface for the Azure platform. This extension provides commands for working with Azure Machine Learning service from the command-line and allows you to automate your machine learning workflows. Some key scenarios would include:

Running experiments to create machine learning models
Registering machine learning models for customer usage
Packaging, deploying, and tracking the lifecycle of machine learning models

To use the Azure Machine Learning CLI, you must have an Azure subscription. If you don’t have an Azure subscription, you can create a free account before you begin. Try the free or paid version of Azure Machine Learning service to get started today.

Next steps

Learn more about the Azure Machine Learning service.

Get started with a free trial of the Azure Machine Learning service.
Quelle: Azure

Azure FXT Edge Filer now generally available

Scaling and optimizing hybrid network-attached storage (NAS) performance gets a boost today with the general availability of the Microsoft Azure FXT Edge Filer, a caching appliance that integrates on-premises network-attached storage and Azure Blob Storage. The Azure FXT Edge Filer creates a performance tier between compute and file storage and provides high-throughput and low-latency network file system (NFS) to high-performance computing (HPC) applications running on Linux compute farms, as well as the ability to tier storage data to Azure Blob Storage.

Fast performance tier for hybrid storage architectures

The availability of Azure FXT Edge Filer today further integrates the highly performant and efficient technology that Avere Systems pioneered to the Azure ecosystem. The Azure FXT Edge Filer is a purpose-built evolution of the popular Avere FXT Edge Filer, in use globally to optimize storage performance in read-heavy workloads.

The new hardware model goes beyond top-line integration with substantial updates. It is now being manufactured by Dell and has been upgraded with twice as much memory and 33 percent more SSD. Two models with varying specifications are available today. With the new 6600 model, customers will see about a 40 percent improvement in read performance over the Avere FXT 5850. The appliance now supports hybrid storage architectures that include Azure Blob storage.

Edge filer hardware is recognized as a proven solution for storage performance improvements. With many clusters deployed around the globe, Azure FXT Edge Filer can scale performance separately from capacity to optimize storage efficiency. Companies large and small use the appliance to accelerate challenging workloads for processes like media rendering, financial simulations, genomic analysis, seismic processing, and wide area network (WAN) optimization. Now with new Microsoft Azure supported appliances, these workloads can run with even better performance and easily leverage Azure Blob storage for active archive storage capacity.

Rendering more faster

Visual effects studios have been long-time users of this type of edge appliance, as their rendering workloads frequently push storage infrastructures to their limits. When one of these companies, Digital Domain, heard about the new Azure FXT Edge Filer hardware, they quickly agreed to preview a 3-node cluster.

“I’ve been running my production renders on Avere FXT clusters for years and wanted to see how the new Azure FXT 6600 stacks up. Setup was easy as usual, and I was impressed with the new Dell hardware. After a week of lightweight testing, I decided to aim the entire render farm at the FXT 6600 cluster and it delivered the performance required without a hiccup and room to spare.”

Mike Thompson, Principal Engineer, Digital Domain

Digital Domain has nine locations in the United States, China, and India.

Manage heterogeneous storage resources easily

Azure FXT Edge Filers help keep analysts, artists, and engineers productive, ensuring that applications aren’t affected by storage latency. And storage administrators can easily manage these heterogeneous pools of storage in a single file system namespace and through a single mountpoint. Users access their files from a single mount point, whether they are stored in on-premises NAS or in Azure Blob storage.

Expanding a cluster to meet growing demands is as easy as adding additional nodes. The Azure FXT Edge Filer scales from three to 24 nodes, allowing even more productivity in peak periods. This scale helps companies avoid overprovisioning expensive storage arrays and enables moving to the cloud at the user’s own pace.

Gain low latency hybrid storage access

Azure FXT Edge Filers deliver high throughput and low latency for hybrid storage infrastructure supporting read-heavy HPC workloads. Azure FXT Edge Filers support storage architectures with NFS and server message block (SMB) protocol support for NetApp and Dell EMC Isilon NAS systems, as well as cloud APIs for Azure Blob storage and Amazon S3.

Customers are using the flexibility of the Azure FXT Edge Filer to move less frequently used data to cloud storage resources, while keeping files accessible with minimal latency. These active archives enable organizations to quickly leverage media assets, research, and other digital information as needed.

Enable powerful caching of data

Software on the Azure FXT Edge Filers identifies the most in-demand or hottest data and caches it closest to compute resources, whether that data is stored down the hall, across town, or across the world. With a cluster connected, the appliances take over, moving data as it warms and cools to optimize access and use of the storage.

Get started with Azure FXT Edge Filers

Whether you are currently running Avere FXT Edge Filers and are looking to upgrade to the latest hardware to increase performance or expanding your clusters or you are new to the technology, the process to get started is the same. You can request information by completing this online form or by reaching out to your Microsoft representative.

Microsoft will work with you to configure the optimal combination of software and hardware for your workload and facilitate its purchase and installation.

Resources

Azure FXT Edge Filer preview blog

Azure FXT Edge Filer product information

Azure FXT Edge Filer documentation

Azure FXT Edge Filer data sheet
Quelle: Azure