Kategorie: Microsoft Azure

Azure Cost Management now generally available for Pay-As-You-Go customers!

We are excited to announce the general availability of Azure Cost Management features for all Pay-As-You-Go and Azure Government customers that will greatly enhance your ability to analyze and proactively manage your cloud costs. These features will allow you to analyze your cost data, configure budgets to drive accountability for cloud costs, and export pre-configured reports on a schedule to support deeper data analysis within your own systems. This release for Pay-As-You-Go customers also provides invoice reconciliation support in the Azure portal via a usage csv download of all charges applicable to your invoices.

New feature

Azure Usage Download for invoice reconciliation

As a part of this general availability for Pay-As-You-Go customers, we are now providing usage download capabilities in the Azure portal. This downloadable csv file can be used to reconcile your charges with your monthly invoice.

Your usage download file can also be accessed by a new API that is now available for developers. To learn more about developing on top of our APIs, including Usage Download, please visit our Azure REST API documentation.

Generally available features

The features below are now generally available for Pay-As-You-Go and Azure Government customers within the Azure portal. Log into the Azure portal and test them out today! If you are a Government customer, log into the Azure Government portal.

Cost analysis

This feature allows you to track costs over the course of the month and offers you a variety of ways to analyze your data. To learn more about how to use Cost Analysis, please visit our documentation, “Quickstart: Explore and analyze costs with Cost analysis.”

Budgets

Use budgets to proactively manage costs and drive accountability within your organization. To learn more about using Azure budgets please visit our documentation, “Tutorial: Create and manage Azure budgets.”

Exports

Export all of your cost data to an Azure storage account using our new exports feature. You can use this data in external systems and combine it with your own data to maximize your cost management capabilities. To learn more about using Azure exports please visit our documentation, “Tutorial: Create and manage exported data.”

GA data limitations

The GA release of the features identified above has a few limitations that are identified below. We expect to bring many of these features to you soon so stay tuned for announcements of future releases!

Feature support for Pay-As-You-Go customers is available for native Azure resources only. Resources available via the Azure Marketplace, including recurring charges, will be supported in upcoming releases.
Cost management data for Pay-As-You-Go customers is currently only available from September 2018 and later. Data prior to this date can be accessed via the Usage Details API.
Feature support for Azure Reserved Instances is not currently available for Pay-As-You-Go or Azure Government customers and will be incorporated into upcoming releases.
Feature support for the Power BI Content Pack is not currently available for Pay-As-You-Go customers and will be incorporated into upcoming releases.

Follow us on Twitter @AzureCostMgmt for exciting cost management updates.
Quelle: Azure

Azure.Source – Volume 79

Preview | Generally available | News & updates | Technical content | Azure shows | Events | Customers, partners, and industries

 

Now in preview

Azure Container Registry now supports Singularity Image Format containers

We announced public preview support for storing Singularity Image Files (SIF) in Azure Container Registry based on the OCI Distribution based Container Registries specification. The Singularity project defines a new secure SIF file format which enables untrusted users to run untrusted containers in a trusted way. The work done in collaboration with Sylabs enables customers using Singularity to leverage their investments in Azure Container Registry and other OCI complaint registries, without having to run and maintain another SIF distribution library.

Move your data from AWS S3 to Azure Storage using AzCopy

AzCopy v10 (Preview) now supports Amazon Web Services (AWS) S3 as a data source. Copy an entire AWS S3 bucket, or even multiple buckets, to Azure Blob Storage using AzCopy. Previously, if you wanted to migrate your data from AWS S3 to Azure Blob Storage, you had to bring up a client between the cloud providers to read the data from AWS to then put it in Azure Storage. We addressed this issue in the latest release of AzCopy using a scale out technique thanks to the new Blob API.

Also in preview

 

Web Application Firewall for Azure Front Door is in preview
Pod security policy for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is now available in preview

Now generally available

Announcing general availability of Apache Hadoop 3.0 on Azure HDInsight

We announced the general availability of Apache Hadoop 3.0 on Azure HDInsight. Microsoft Azure is the first cloud provider to offer customers the benefit of the latest innovations in the most popular open source analytics projects, with unmatched scalability, flexibility, and security. With the general availability of Apache Hadoop 3.0 on Azure HDInsight, we are building upon existing capabilities with a number of key enhancements that further improve performance and security, and deepen support for the rich ecosystem of big data analytics applications.

Manage Azure HDInsight clusters using .NET, Python, or Java

We announced the general availability of the new Azure HDInsight management SDKs for .NET, Python, and Java. Azure HDInsight is an easy, cost-effective, enterprise-grade service for open source analytics that enables customers to easily run popular open source frameworks including Apache Hadoop, Spark, Kafka, and others.

Also generally available

 

Azure Front Door Service is now available
ExpressRoute Global Reach is now available
ExpressRoute Direct is now available
Azure Database for PostgreSQL Read Replica is now generally available
Azure Database for MariaDB: New compute options are now generally available

News & updates

Announcing Azure Government Secret private preview and expansion of DoD IL5

We announced a significant milestone in serving our mission customers from cloud to edge with the initial availability of two new Azure Government Secret regions, now in private preview and pending accreditation. In addition, we expanded the scope of all Azure Government regions to enable DoD Impact Level 5 (IL5) data, providing a cost-effective option for L5 workloads with a broad range of available services.

Microsoft open sources Data Accelerator, an easy-to-configure pipeline for streaming at scale

We announced that an internal Microsoft project known as Data Accelerator is now being open sourced. Data Accelerator for Apache Spark simplifies streaming big data using Spark. Data Accelerator has been used for two years within Microsoft for processing streamed data across many internal deployments handling data volumes at Microsoft scale. Offering an easy to use platform to learn and evaluate your streaming needs and requirements, we are excited to share this project with the wider community as open source.

Microsoft driving standards for the token economy with the Token Taxonomy Framework

We announced that the Token Taxonomy Initiative (TTI) is a milestone in the maturity of the blockchain industry, which brings together some of the most important blockchain platforms from the Ethereum ecosystem, Hyperledger and IBM, Intel, R3, and Digital Asset in a joint effort to establish a common taxonomy for tokens.

New Bot Framework v4 Template for QnA Maker

The QnA Maker service lets you easily create and manage a knowledge base from your data, including FAQ pages, support URLs, PDFs, and doc files. You can test and publish your knowledge base and then connect it to a bot using a bot framework sample or template. With this update we have simplified the bot creation process by allowing you to easily create a bot from your knowledge base, without the need for any code or settings changes.

Azure Updates

Learn about important Azure product updates, roadmap, and announcements. Subscribe to notifications to stay informed.

Technical content

Rewrite HTTP headers with Azure Application Gateway

We are pleased to share the capability to rewrite HTTP headers in Azure Application Gateway. With this, you can add, remove, or update HTTP request and response headers while the request and response packets move between the client and backend application. You can also add conditions to ensure that the headers you specify are rewritten only when the conditions are met. The capability also supports several server variables which help store additional information about the requests and responses, thereby enabling you to make powerful rewrite rules.

Machine Learning powered detections with Kusto query language in Azure Sentinel

As cyberattacks become more complex and harder to detect. The traditional correlation rules of a SIEM are not enough, they are lacking the full context of the attack and can only detect attacks that were seen before. This can result in false negatives and gaps in the environment. In addition, correlation rules require significant maintenance and customization since they may provide different results based on the customer environment. Advanced Machine Learning capabilities that are built in into Azure Sentinel can detect indicative behaviors of a threat and helps security analysts to learn the expected behavior in their enterprise. Here you will see three examples.

.NET application migration using Azure App Services and Azure Container Services

Designed for developers and solution architects who need to understand how to move business critical apps to the cloud, this online workshop series gets you hands-on with a proven process for migrating an existing ASP.NET based application to a container-based application. Join us live for 90 minutes on Wednesday and Fridays through May 3 to get expert guidance and to get your questions answered. At the end of this series you will have a good understanding of container concepts, Docker architecture and operations, Azure Container Services, Azure Kubernetes Services and SQL Azure PaaS solutions.

Automated Machine Learning: how do teams work together on an AutoML project?

In this article from Medium, the author shows you an automated machine learning use case (published on GitHub) and, specifically, how a data scientist, a project manager, and a business lead can use automated machine learning to improve team collaboration and learning, and facilitate the successful implementation of data science initiatives.

Uploading your JSON data to Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB API

If you have built an application and are currently storing the data in a static JSON file, you may want to consider the MongoDB API for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB. You will have the document data storage you require for your application with the full management of Microsoft Azure with Cosmos DB along with the ability to scale out globally. This will permit you to create replication to regions where your customers are.

Search Like a Boss with Azure Graph Query

Frank Boucher shows how to install the Azure Graph Query extension and explains why you should definitely care about it, and do a few simple queries across multiple Azure subscription.

Securing IoT Data Capture at its Source

What happens when devices only require your organization’s network for connectivity to pass through data or accept commands? Do those attempting to access the IoT devices only access the IoT devices or do they attempt to access other parts of the network now connected to the newly installed IoT device?  Enter the new realm of Shadow IT of which “off-the-shelf” IoT devices are being connected to company networks at the request of businesses without understanding the risks or notifying those who govern over the networks themselves, the IT Professional.

How to develop an IoT strategy that yields desired ROI

In an earlier post, we discussed why and how to get started with IoT, recommending that companies shift their mindset, develop a business case, secure ongoing executive sponsorship and budget, and seize the early-mover advantage. This post covers the six elements of crafting an IoT strategy that will yield ongoing ROI.

Azure shows

Episode 275 – Azure Foundations | The Azure Podcast

Derek Martin, a Technology Solutions Principal (TSP) at Microsoft talks about his approach to ensuring that customers get the foundational elements of Azure in place first before deploying anything else. He discusses why Microsoft is getting more opinionated, as a company, when advocating for best practices.

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Getting started with Azure App Configuration | Azure Friday

Azure App Configuration is a service that enables you to centralize your application configuration. Built on the simple concept of key-value pairs, this service provides manageability, availability, and ease-of-use. You can use Azure App Configuration to store and retrieve settings for applications, microservices, platforms, and CI/CD pipelines.

Real-time ML Based Anomaly Detection in Azure Stream Analytics | Internet of Things Show

Azure Stream Analytics is a PaaS cloud offering on Microsoft Azure to help customers analyze IoT telemetry data in real-time. Stream Analytics now has embedded ML models for Anomaly Detection, which can be invoked with simple function calls. Learn how you can leverage this powerful feature set for your scenarios.

Using Ethereum Logic Apps to publish ledger data to Azure Search | Block Talk

In this episode we use the Ethereum Logic App connector to push contract data into an Azure Search index. This makes contract data available to a wide range of Enterprise applications via simple search queries.

DevOps for ASP.NET Developers Pt. 1 – What is DevOps? | On .NET

DevOps is the union of people, process, and products to enable continuous delivery of value to our end users. Azure DevOps is everything you need to turn an idea into a working piece of software. In this first episode of the DevOps for ASP.NET Developers series, Abel and Jeremy introduce us the benefits of DevOps.

 

DevOps for ASP.NET Developers Pt. 2 – Source Control
DevOps for ASP.NET Developers Pt. 3 – Work Item Tracking

How to deploy monitored Azure App Services with Azure DevOps | Azure Makers Series

Learn to use Azure DevOps to configure continuous build and release for your web apps. With Application Insights, you'll even be able to monitor everything in real-time—from IDE all the way to production.

How to use Azure Resource Manager | Azure Tips and Tricks

In this edition of Azure Tips and Tricks, learn how to use Azure Resource Manager templates to describe your infrastructure and deploy it.

How to browse your resources in the Azure Portal | Azure Portal Series

The Azure Portal enables you to view and navigate to all your resources more easily. In this video, learn how to go through your Azure resources across locations and subscriptions and customize your views.

How to export your resources to CSV using the Azure Portal | Azure Portal Series

The Azure Portal enables you to customize the information you'd like to export. In this video, learn how easy it is to export your files to CSV.

Udi Dahan on Microservices | Azure DevOps Podcast

This week Udi Dahan, founder of NServiceBus, CEO of Particular Software, and Microsoft Regional Director, joins the Azure DevOps Podcast to discuss microservices and some of the trends, challenges, and problems in the software industry today. Udi gives his advice and recommendations to developers and teams on how to go about making decisions around microservices while giving examples of common mistakes and problems he often sees. He also gives advice on those looking to move forward with an existing legacy system they are trying to modernize as well as those who are looking to build something entirely new.

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Episode 7 – “Gaming” March Madness with Azure AI | AzureABILITY Podcast

Doyenne of Data Science Laura Edell visits the pod with new-word-crafter / AI-expert Anthony Franklin to talk about how to use Azure AI to "game" March Madness. During the episode we talk about all sorts of things related to Machine Learning and AI.

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Events

Put IoT in action to overcome public building safety challenges

IoT brings transparency to public safety initiatives. Advances in sensors, edge computing, and data analytics give stakeholders a more comprehensive, more immediate view of events as they unfold. Faster, smarter reactions potentially enhance public safety. Given the nature of public safety projects, however, IoT needs collaborative frameworks that provide community members with the network they need to work toward common goals together. This brings challenges that span hardware, software, networks, security, and platform management. Innovative companies are solving these problems, however. Learn how SoloInsight and Microsoft have created secure, manageable and economical IoT solutions for public safety by registering for the IoT in Action webinar, IoT and the New Safety Net. Get insights from industry experts and Microsoft partner SoloInsight around how transparent frameworks create secure buildings.

Customers, partners, and industries

Azure resources to assess risk and compliance

This post walks through some common recommendations for various functions in Financial Services organizations. It is vital for customers in the Financial Services Industry to deliver innovation and value to their customers while adhering to strict security and regulatory requirements. Azure is uniquely positioned to help global FSI customers meet their regulatory requirements and we understand the complexities of trying to innovate fast and effectively, while also ensuring that key regulations and compliance necessities are not overlooked.

Deploying Grafana for production deployments on Azure

Grafana is one of the popular and leading open source tools for visualizing time series metrics. Grafana has quickly become the preferred visualization tool of choice for developers and operations teams for monitoring server and application metrics. Grafana dashboards enable operation teams to quickly monitor and react to performance, availability, and overall health of the service. You can now also use it to monitor Azure services and applications by leveraging the Azure Monitor data source plugin, built by Grafana Labs.

Azure hybrid storage performance & rewrite HTTP headers with Application Gateway | Azure This Week – A Cloud Guru

In this Easter special of Azure This Week, Lars covers hybrid storage performance and a new app service migration assistant. Plus you can now rewrite HTTP headers with Application Gateway.

Quelle: Azure

Put IoT in action to overcome public building safety challenges

 

Transparency is an important part of public safety projects. Officials must know what is happening in real time, as well as be able to collaborate with others involved in the project. To create a collaborative and transparent environment, security officials are reinventing their approach to public safety, especially regarding the protection of public buildings. While keeping public buildings safe, smart, and secure is a top priority, it’s also a constant challenge.

Recent advancements in cloud computing, intelligent edge, artificial intelligence, and data analytics create many new opportunities for Internet of Things (IoT) devices to improve public safety. However, the seamless framework must work together, and device makers often run into challenges with hardware, software, networks, security, and platform management.

In this post, we’ll explore how IoT initiatives are solving these top public safety concerns. To learn more, be sure to attend Microsoft’s upcoming IoT in Action webinar, IoT and the New Safety Net.

Safe: Using IoT for visitor lifecycle management

With cyber criminals able to clone a radio frequency identification (RFID) badge in seconds, security officials are increasingly turning to IoT technology to prevent unauthorized access to government and other public buildings. Instead of viewing logical (physical) security and cybersecurity as separate issues, SoloInsight, a Microsoft partner, uses a multi-layered behavior-based approach that secures both physical and cyber assets, including check-in, PACS, elevators, parking, loading docks, machines, workstations, applications, websites, documents, and payments.

By using SoloInsight’s Cloudgate, built on Microsoft Azure, organizations can use self-service kiosks in low-traffic areas to provide a higher level of security than previously possible. A supply chain management and logistics solutions company uses the platform to capture a picture of each employee entering the building. If an employee’s face is not authenticated, they cannot enter the building. A traditional system would allow entry if the person had possession of an easily cloned proxy card.

Smart: Improving operations and creating a positive user experience

Because IoT devices collect a wide range of data, security officials can use the information to gain real-time insights and protect data. Self-serve kiosks can remember previous visitors and employees and immediately grant access to the building, which increases satisfaction. Additionally, IoT visitor management systems can deactivate access to the network and data when a person physically leaves the building. By using systems that connect both the physical and logical components, you can ensure unauthorized personnel are not using someone else’s credentials.

Building management can also use data to make decisions that drive efficiency, such as predicting visitor and employee traffic patterns. For example, housekeeping and maintenance work can be scheduled at times when most employees in a section of the building are not at work. When devices are part of an overall IoT platform, such as Microsoft Azure, data collected from devices can easily be stored in the cloud, used with artificial intelligence to predict what will likely happen in the future and off-loaded from the cloud to IoT devices.

Secure: Collecting and protecting data

As IoT devices receive and store information, they often include operational and personally identifiable information (PII) data. This makes it essential for platforms to securely store and manage all data collected. The Microsoft Azure Sphere platform includes three components that work together to bring the promise of a secured, connected future to microcontroller unit (MCU) devices everywhere and includes three components that work together to lock down device security: the Azure Sphere MCU, the built-in Azure Sphere OS, and the turnkey cloud security service.

One of the biggest challenges with IoT technology is the number of devices and access points, which often include mobile devices. Security officials need the ability to monitor the health of all IoT devices in real time and remove compromised devices from the network. With the sensitive nature of PII, security officials find that they require a platform with strict privacy controls, authorization levels, and compliance tools. With IoT devices built on a secure platform that uses the latest technology, public buildings can transform into smart buildings while continuing to provide both physical and logical safely.

Coming April 25, 2019: Make public safety collaborative with IoT

Discover how collaborative IoT can improve public safety by registering for the IoT in Action webinar, IoT and the New Safety Net. Get insights from industry experts and Microsoft partner SoloInsight around how transparent frameworks create secure buildings.
Quelle: Azure

How to develop an IoT strategy that yields desired ROI

This article is the second in a four-part series designed to help companies maximize their ROI on the Internet of Things (IoT). In the first post, we discussed how IoT can transform businesses. In this post, we share insights into how to create a successful strategy that yields desired ROI.

The Internet of Things (IoT) holds real promise for fueling business growth and operational efficiency. However, many companies experience challenges applying IoT to their businesses.

In an earlier post, we discussed why and how to get started with IoT, recommending that companies shift their mindset, develop a business case, secure ongoing executive sponsorship and budget, and seize the early-mover advantage. In this post, we’ll cover the six elements of crafting an IoT strategy that will yield ongoing ROI.

1. Have a vision of where you’re headed

IoT leaders benefit from having a vision for where they’re headed and how to commercialize IoT, whether it’s improving the customer experience, redesigning products, expanding a service business, or driving operational excellence. As with any business vision, making it a reality is a long game. IoT leaders and teams will gain insights slowly over a series of projects that stairstep to more significant gains.

“The advice I would give any organization is first and foremost, understand the problem. Fall in love with the problem, not the solution,” says Shane O’Neill, enterprise infrastructure architect and IoT lead for Rolls-Royce, in the Unlocking ROI white paper. Rolls-Royce has used IoT to transform their services business.

That’s sound advice because digital transformation isn’t easy. According to McKinsey, the first 15 or so IoT use cases typically provide modest payback but enable companies to develop the expertise they need to expand IoT’s footprint in their business. For IoT leaders, that can mean cost savings and new revenue gains of 15 percent or more.

2. Define what ROI means to you

It can be difficult to calculate the ROI for IoT projects because there are so many variables, and business processes that don’t exist in isolation. However, doing so will enable cross-functional IoT teams to win and keep executive sponsorship and demonstrate progress over time.

Here are some of the types of value companies are realizing on their IoT investments—gains that could be part of your ROI rationale. They include:

Avoiding unnecessary production costs by minimizing operational downtime and extending the usable lifespan of machinery.
Reducing production costs by capitalizing on automated processes, remote monitoring, proactive repair and replacement, and fewer break-fix incidents.
Protecting assets by securing costly, and multi-million-dollar equipment from diversion and theft.
Enabling smarter decision-making with data analytics that include edge insights, process automation, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning.
Optimizing energy use by identifying sources of waste and prioritizing sustainability initiatives.
Revolutionizing product and service development through access to test-and-learn processes, highly accurate customer analytics, brand-new digital-physical products, and subscription-based services.
Enabling customizations of products at the point of sale or later in the service lifecycle after customers have gained some experience with them.
Getting a competitive advantage, with the ability to execute rapidly based on real-time insights and connected services.

3. Get everyone on the same team

Ideally, IoT is an enterprise-wide collaborative effort that involves senior decision-makers, IT, operations technology, and lines of business. IT and operations can collaborate closely to determine how IoT devices and systems will be connected to each other, digital platforms and networks, and partners. They also need to decide how they will be monitored, managed, and secured.

Getting everyone aligned around the path forward helps companies avoid the temptation of connecting devices and running projects in isolation. Although new IoT platforms empower the business and IT alike to pilot projects, executing a series of independent efforts could invite technology chaos into the organization. Connected devices and IoT systems introduce a myriad of new endpoints that need to be managed appropriately and at scale to avoid creating cyber gaps and introducing the opportunity for data breaches.

Similarly, IoT leaders can communicate a plan for when and how they will serve the different lines of business and win their patience and cooperation. For lines of business, the wait could be years, not months, for an IoT project. Help business executives understand the strategic reasons, corporate priorities, better execution, and efficient scaling, among them.

4. Align strategy to real needs

When starting with IoT, it’s tempting to set a big and audacious goal. Yet, the reality is that companies will probably have more success if they start with something small and quantifiable and quickly solvable, and then build on it.

Take for example, a commercial fleet or logistics company that needs to improve its ability to locate its vehicles. By using IoT and GPS, workers can stage vehicles for maximal usability, stop wasting time searching for cars, and optimize the throughput of the fleet.

Over time, this same company could measure more of its data (vehicle speeds, starts and stops, turns, time to load and unload, and fuel use) to test new processes and institutionalize them. Employees could plan truck routes to maximize right turns, saving time and fuel use, service vehicles proactively to avoid flat tires, oil loss, and other issues, sequence arrivals to speed loading and unloading, and more. This is how the savings from IoT data, analytics, and reporting add up to big gains.

5. Collect only the data you need

Because of IoT’s ability to optimize processes, it’s tempting to connect everything and pan for gold in the torrents of data that result. However, the reality is that businesses analyze only a fraction of the data they possess.

Companies new to IoT as well as those that lack a data management practice often take time to analyze the data they really need—and whether they currently have access to it. If they do, the next step is to focus on data collection. Do you have access to the right information, or do you need strategy to collect something new? And be specific. Too much data can create unnecessary noise, making it difficult to understand and isolate what actually improved processes or why it didn’t.

Conversely, if companies don’t possess that data, they may need to commit to a phase zero data collection effort, connecting devices and waiting an appropriate period of time to create the historical trend and real-time data they will need to truly understand their processes.

6. Consider starting with services to prove the value of IoT

Today, IoT initiatives fall into two buckets. The first is to improve operational efficiency. But the more powerful and emerging trend is evolving to become a managed service provider. That’s because IoT data provides value that the business and customers can see, aligning partners around making improvements. In fact, optimizing services is the number one strategic IoT priority for companies today, according to McKinsey.

Rolls-Royce manufactures engines for commercial aircrafts, some 13,000 of which are in service around the world. Rolls-Royce has forged deeper connections with its customers and delivered real value by using IoT to help service their customer engines. The company uses the Microsoft Azure IoT platform and Azure AI to collect terabytes of data from large aircraft fleets, analyze them for operational anomalies, and plan relevant actions. Rolls-Royce’s services help airlines trim fuel consumption, service parts or replace them when needed, and minimize unplanned downtime that could cost millions of dollars across fleets.

“The Microsoft Azure platform makes it a lot easier for us to deliver on our vision without getting stuck on the individual IT components. We can focus on our end solution and delivering real value to customers rather than on managing the infrastructure,” says Richard Beesley, Senior Enterprise Architect of Data Services for Rolls-Royce.

Using IoT to increase efficiency

Although IoT can have almost limitless applicability to the business, its greatest value is helping companies use data to grow and operate with ruthless efficiency.

Consider this tale of two companies: Both have exceptional products that offer comparable new business capabilities. However, the first company has a reactive business model, with limited interactions with customers after the product buy. It’s still relying on a customer-initiated, break-fix service model.

The second company uses IoT to move further into its customers’ businesses, offering insights into how its products can be used for maximal value, automating manual processes, scheduling servicing proactively, and providing insight into other processes that can be fine-tuned for new business gains.

It’s easy to see which company is best positioned to cross-sell and upsell new products from its position as trusted partner. It’s easy to see which company will seize shares from its competitors and triumph in the digital economy. That’s why now is the time to lead—not lag—with IoT.

Need help? Read this white paper on how to maximize the ROI of IoT.

Download the white paper.
Quelle: Azure

Microsoft driving standards for the token economy with the Token Taxonomy Framework.

Today’s announcement of the Token Taxonomy Initiative (TTI) is a milestone in the maturity of the blockchain industry. 

The initiative brings together some of the most important blockchain platforms from the Ethereum ecosystem, Hyperledger and IBM, Intel, R3, and Digital Asset in a joint effort to establish a common taxonomy for tokens. Also joining are other standards bodies like FINRA, enterprises like J.P. Morgan, Banco Santander, and ING and companies pushing the boundaries in blockchain like ConsenSys, Clearmatics, Komgo, Web3 Labs, and others.

Over the past year, the Azure Blockchain engineering team has been working to understand the breadth of token use cases and found that a lack of industry standards was driving confusion amongst our enterprise customers and partners. We started building the Token Taxonomy Framework to help address this confusion, establish a base line understanding, and a path forward for our customers and partners to begin exploring use of tokens. We quickly realized that our efforts would be much more effective if we didn’t work in isolation, so we chose to contribute the framework and partner with our counterparts across the industry to expand the TTF and seed the industry with a common standard. As the Principal Architect for Azure Blockchain and an EEA Board Member, I will represent Microsoft in the release of the 1.0 framework and will act as the chair of the TTI, collaborating with all participants to ensure that the outcome establishes a foundation to rapidly accelerate the token economy.

A core principle driving this initiative is platform neutrality, which will ensure the standards we outline are agnostic to any company and empower the industry to innovate openly. This workgroup brings together a diverse set of thought leaders from across the blockchain community, including public cloud platforms, blockchain start-ups, and early adopters across industries. Each of us recognize both the power of the token economy and the challenges facing businesses looking to innovate in this nascent space. We hope that our initial work seeding the Token Taxonomy Initiative will provide a starting point for the community to build upon in the coming month by providing:

A definition of tokens and their use cases across industries.
A common set of concepts and terms that can be used by business, technical, and regulatory participants so they can speak the same language.
A composition framework for defining and building tokens.
Create a Token Classification Hierarchy (TCH) that is simple to understand.
Tooling meta-data using the TTF syntax to be able to generate visual representations of classifications and modeling tools to view and create token definitions mapped to the taxonomy eventually linking with implementations for specific platforms.
A sandbox environment for legal and regulatory requirement discovery and input.

While not specific to the Ethereum family of technologies, this work does draw from the working group’s experience building with the Ethereum ecosystem. As chair of the TTI, I invite everyone to participate and learn about the taxonomy as it is rolled out in the coming months and look forward to the continued innovation in this space.
Quelle: Azure

Announcing Azure Government Secret private preview and expansion of DoD IL5

Enabling government to advance the mission

Today we’re announcing a significant milestone in serving our mission customers from cloud to edge with the initial availability of two new Azure Government Secret regions, now in private preview and pending accreditation. Azure Government Secret delivers comprehensive and mission enabling cloud services to US Federal Civilian, Department of Defense (DoD), Intelligence Community (IC), and US government partners working within Secret enclaves.

In addition, we’ve expanded the scope of all Azure Government regions to enable DoD Impact Level 5 (IL5) data, providing a cost-effective option for L5 workloads with a broad range of available services. With our focus on innovating to meet the needs of our mission-critical customers, we continue to provide more PaaS features and services to the DoD at IL5 than any other cloud provider.

For more than 40 years we have prioritized bringing commercial innovation to the DoD. We also continue to help our customers across the full spectrum of government, including every state, federal cabinet agency, and military branch, modernize their IT to better enable their missions.

Microsoft is helping customers across the full spectrum of government, including departments in every state, all the federal cabinet agencies, and each military branch, modernize their IT to better achieve their missions.

Azure Government Secret now in private preview and pending accreditation

Azure Government Secret delivers comprehensive and mission enabling cloud services built with additional controls to support US agencies and partners with workloads classified by the US government at the Secret level. In addition, we’re continuing our commitment to deliver government workloads across the full range of data classifications.

Developed using the same foundational principles and architecture as Azure commercial cloud, the Azure Government Secret regions are built to maintain the security and integrity of classified workloads while enabling fast access to sensitive, mission-critical information. These dedicated datacenter regions are built with additional controls to meet the regulatory and compliance requirements for DoD Impact Level 6 (IL6) and Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Intelligence Community Directive (ICD 503) accreditation.

Azure Government Secret includes two separate Azure regions in the US located over 500 miles apart, providing geographic resilience in disaster recovery (DR) scenarios and faster access to services across the country. In addition, Azure Government Secret operates on secure, native connections to classified networks, with options for ExpressRoute and ExpressRoute Direct to provide private, resilient, high-bandwidth connectivity.

These new regions operated by cleared US citizens are built for IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, and Marketplace solutions, bringing the strength of commercial innovation to the classified space. These secure regions will deliver an experience that’s consistent with Azure Government, designed for ease of procurement and alignment with existing resellers and programs.

“Azure Government Secret will enable us to take applications in legacy IT environments and move them onto a scalable, high-performance platform. This will be a great opportunity to modernize services, making them more efficient and effective for our defense customers.”

Keith Johnson, Chief Technology Officer for the Defense and Intelligence Groups, Leidos

“Microsoft has edge capabilities available now and planned for Azure Government Secret that are just game changers.”

Kim Aftergood, Managing Director, Accenture Federal Services

For more information on the private preview program, Azure Government customers can reach out to their sales representative. Azure Government Secret is available to agencies and their partners with authorized access to a connected US Government classified network.

DoD IL5 scope expands to cover to all Azure Government regions

Based on mission owner feedback and evolving security capabilities, Microsoft has partnered with the DoD to expand the IL5 Provisional Authorization (PA) granted by the DoD to all Azure Government regions. This expanded coverage provides customers with more PaaS features and services at IL5 than any other cloud provider.

This expanded range of PaaS services means mission owners can leverage managed services to be more productive. For example, development teams can use Azure App Service to quickly create cloud apps using a fully managed platform, or Azure SQL Database for a fully managed relational cloud database service that provides the broadest SQL Server engine compatibility.

In addition, mission owners will benefit from decreased latency, expanded geo-redundancy, and additional options for DR and budget optimization. Today, more than 25 services are available across all Azure Government regions at IL5, and these new systems will accelerate access to new IL5 services as they become available in Azure Government.

Customers should note, when supporting IL5 workloads on Azure Government, that isolation requirements can be met in different ways. The isolation guidelines for IL5 workloads documentation page addresses configurations and settings for the isolation required to support IL5 data.

Ensuring compliance requirements are met, audited, and enforced

In addition to rapidly releasing services for the full spectrum of government data, we’re continuing to develop programs to help customers ensure security and compliance requirements are met, audited, and enforced. We recently launched Azure Blueprints, which integrates with Azure Policy to help teams manage and enforce governance for specific compliance outcomes.

Azure Blueprints is a free service that helps customers deploy and update cloud environments in a repeatable manner using composable artifacts such as policies, deployment templates, and role-based access controls. This service is built to help customers set up governed Azure environments and can scale to support production implementations for large-scale migrations. Look for new blueprint services for Azure Government supporting FedRAMP and DoD SRG coming soon.

Helping mission customers unlock the opportunities ahead

With the initial availability of two new Azure Government Secret regions, now in private preview and pending accreditation, the expansion of DoD IL5 coverage to all Azure Government regions, and the extended Azure Blueprints program, we’re continuing our investments in innovation, security, and compliance to help customers across the full spectrum of government.

Microsoft enables the digital transformation of government by offering effective, modern, enterprise-class cloud capabilities. We are dedicated to helping our government customers accomplish critical missions with innovative and trusted cloud, productivity, and mobility solutions. We support nearly 10 million US government cloud professionals across more than 7,000 government agencies and remain committed to delivering the highest level of security and compliance necessary to meet their unique needs. 
Quelle: Azure