Kategorie: Microsoft Azure

Wipro and Microsoft partner on services and accelerators for the new Microsoft Energy Data Services

This blog post was co-authored by Paul Dejager, OSDU Practice Lead, Wipro.

Since its first customer-ready release, the OSDU™ Data Platform has been tested and piloted within the energy industry with great success. However, customers have been awaiting an enterprise-ready version of the OSDU Data Platform that is secure, resilient, and backed up by SLAs. The platform needs to provide connectivity with the legacy and cloud applications and be extensible and customizable for customer-specific scenarios. Partners like Wipro blend domain experience with the OSDU Data Platform to help accelerate the operationalization of Microsoft Energy Data Services.

Microsoft Energy Data Services is a fully managed, enterprise-grade data platform that enables efficient data management, standardization, liberation, and consumption in energy exploration. The solution is a hyperscale data ecosystem that leverages the capabilities of the OSDU Data Platform, and Microsoft's secure and trustworthy cloud services with our partners’ extensive domain expertise.

A significant constraint with today’s industry business platforms is the strong bias of first principles analysis with a domain value chain that strongly preconditions the way that data is used and when. Data is siloed within the stages of the value chain and locked up by the applications supporting the workflows in these stages. The growing need and demand for data-driven analysis to complement first principles analysis, and for business workflows to also leverage advanced analytics and machine learning (AI/ML) applications are largely unsatisfied.

The OSDU Forum is an open source consortium of energy operators, which has set out to design and develop a cloud-native data platform. Wipro is a key contributor and helps address the data issue by providing self-service consumption of analytics-ready data. This is a critical objective of Wipro’s participation in the OSDU Forum.

Current data management technologies creates substantial lock-in and require significant amounts of effort to run and maintain cost-effective infrastructure. A move to the cloud potentially reduces lockin and running costs and paves the way towards "pay-for-use" rather than "pay-to-own." The existing data foundation platforms are complex, dominated by service and technology providers, and do not readily maximize the benefit of emerging technologies, such as data interoperability and analytics, due to significant legacy content. Furthermore, to date within E&P there has only been limited acceptance of technologies arising from other industries, including the adoption of cloud and Open Source.

Wipro and Microsoft partner to provide new technologies to enterprise-level organizations

With Microsoft Energy Data Services, Wipro is offering to adopt an open architecture that provides accelerated access to new technologies through an open, modular cloud agnostic design. Based primarily on existing generic IT components, the solution provides a data foundation that decouples applications from their data source and further reduces operating costs through the adoption of a cloud hosting environment. Moving to a cloud-based data foundation provides considerable benefits to an enterprise including:

A centralized data landscape containing fewer database instances designed to meet the anticipated increase in storage capacity occasioned by the acquisition of real-time data and the introduction of fiber optics for drilling, downhole sensors, and the internet of things (IoT).
Higher consistency of data, simplified workflows, reduced complexity, and an analytical user interface result in increased automation that facilitates a switch to self-service operation.
Real-time data acquisition to cloud and centralized delivery to cloud for other sources of data (vendor, partner, release, and more).
Deliverable as a service (SaaS and PaaS), thereby significantly reducing support training costs and overall cost of ownership (TCO).
Reduced tie-in to products from traditional service contractors.
Provision of a long-term, low-cost digital archive for all drilling and well-logging data and analyses.

The benefits of the OSDU data as a service model

The OSDU Data Platform enabled and supported by Microsoft Energy Data Services provides many solutions to business challenges, including:

Faster deployment with automated service offerings
Easier deployment of OSDU Data Platform functionality
New insights with domain workflows and application integration with any data source
Data-driven decisions, performance improvement, and data ready to leverage HPC and AI/ML scenarios
Reduced cycle time, enabling developers to quickly develop and integrate new applications and scenarios
Legacy decommissioning
Open source
Scalable due to cloud
TCO reduction
Analytics, automation across datasets, and the entire value chain
Reduced vendor lock-in

Wipro and the OSDU Data Platform

Understanding the E&P domain and full comprehension of the various data types and data formats forms a key component of Wipro’s offering. Specifically, Wipro’s domain expertise is a clear differentiator that has been successfully leveraged in similar engagements for other operators. This domain knowledge in every part of the upstream value chain has been brought together in Wipro’s dedicated global OSDU Data Platform practice. When this E&P expertise is coupled with Wipro’s big data service capabilities, the combination of these two perspectives provides a truly 360-degree domain-driven service.

Wipro has been designated the Azure Cloud Service Provider (CSP)-preferred global OSDU systems integrator, and Wipro thus has a strategic partnership for OSDU activities that ensures Wipro and Azure CSP work together where it partners as a "one badge" team on all Microsoft Energy Data Services deployments. This optimizes the cooperation and coordination between cloud provider and systems integrator, which will be a significant benefit to clients aiming to implement the OSDU Data Platform as their standard system of record. This assured level of collaboration, together with the experience of both parties, ensures that Wipro is well positioned to quickly jump-start any OSDU Data Platform journey to liberate and integrate subsurface data.

Wipro is a member of, and a major contributor to, the OSDU Forum. Wipro has authored developing standards as put forward by the OSDU Forum, and its prominent participation in the OSDU activities enables it to assure seamless integration between data platform onboarding and data loading, and legacy data and application platforms. Wipro fully understands the strategic importance and value of data, and the OSDU Data Platform will be distinguished by its ability to provide a digital data portal. Wipro is, and has, made significant investments in people, solutions, and capabilities to build a dedicated OSDU Data Platform practice to provide a high level of service. Further, Wipro has invested in a sustainable staffing model going forward by leveraging its global footprint and strategic partnerships. Wipro regularly works remotely on OSDU Data Platform deployments and therefore does not foresee any impediment to working in a worldwide implementation environment.

Wipro has a templated deployment approach and can bring its own tools and utilities to enhance, where appropriate, the standard OSDU data platform. This enables Wipro to securely deploy and configure functional, information security–compliant Microsoft Energy Data Services in an Azure subscription.

Wipro’s standard deployment comprises three workstreams, as follows:

Deploy the OSDU Data Platform with Microsoft Energy Data Services in the client’s own or hosted Azure subscription so it can be securely operated.
Ingest existing client subsurface data that is aligned with the OSDU Technical Standard, provide knowledge transfer to business stakeholders, and provide insight on how to leverage the OSDU data platform to increase business value.
Develop a Microsoft Energy Data Services roadmap and evaluate operating model alternatives for optimal business value, and promote understanding of tools and workflows that promote integration and adoption of the OSDU Data Platform.

Wipro services and accelerators

Wipro has invested significantly in helping companies on their OSDU Data Platform adoption journey and as such has developed services that provide open source functionality over and above the standard OSDU Data Platform offering.

Platform onboarding
Dataset and user onboarding
Data migration
Data ingestion
WINS framework
External data access and publish scenarios
Application integration
Data discovery

The following screenshots provide an example of a Power BI business intelligence dashboard containing data sourced from an OSDU Data Platform using the native Power BI application connector.

Customized search and display functionality can be achieved via Bing search service APIs and/or OSDU-compliant third-party software vendors.

Wipro’s OSDU Data Platform practice uses the combined knowledge, skills, and operational delivery capabilities from the combination of Wipro’s domain and consulting, engineering, and cloud platform verticals to provide an innovative horizontal solution offering.

This enables our clients to:

Accelerate their end game to digital transformation.
Make their organizations data-centric via the OSDU data platform.
Enable the refactoring, integration, and deployment of workflow interoperability.
Prioritize their data and prepare for OSDU migration at scale.
Define and achieve inter-organizational collaboration and operational support model requirements.

How to work with Wipro Services and Accelerator on Microsoft Energy Data Services

Microsoft Energy Data Services is an enterprise-grade, fully managed, OSDU Data Platform for the energy industry that is efficient, standardized, easy to deploy, and scalable for data management—for ingesting, aggregating, storing, searching, and retrieving data. The platform can provide the scale, security, privacy, and compliance expected by enterprise customers. Wipro offers services and accelerators utilizing the WINS framework which accelerates time-to-market and the ability to run domain workflows with ease, with data contained in Microsoft Energy Data Services, and with minimal effort.

Learn More

Read additional information on Wipro OSDU services and accelerators for Oil and Gas Data Management.
For further information on how Wipro can assist your organization, please contact: Paul Dejager paul.dejager@wipro.com, Graham Cain graham.cain@wipro.com, and Kamal Jansen kamal.jansen@wipro.com.

Get started with Microsoft Energy Data Services today.
Quelle: Azure

New Azure Space products enable digital resiliency and empower the industry

Since the launch of Azure Space two years ago, we’ve announced partnerships, products, and tools that have focused on how we can bring together the power of the cloud with the possibilities of space.

Today, we are introducing the next wave of product advancements for this mission and announcing specific ways in which we are democratizing space and empowering our partners.

Announcing the Azure Orbital Cloud Access Preview

A brand-new service that brings the power of the Microsoft Cloud to wherever you need it most.

Announcing the General Availability of Azure Orbital Ground Station

Since the launch of Azure Space in October 2020, we have talked about Azure Orbital Ground Station. Today, alongside our partner network, including KSAT, we are making this service available to all satellite operators, such as Pixxel, Muon Space, and Loft Orbital.

Advancing the digital transformation of satellite communication networks

The first demonstration of a fully virtualized iDirect modem.
Together with SES we are announcing a new joint satellite communications virtualization program.

The collective impact of these announcements points towards two key outcomes. First, we are dedicated to democratizing the possibilities of space by unlocking connectivity and data with the Microsoft Cloud. Second, we can also help support the digital transformation for our customers and partners in the space industry by using the flexible, scalable compute power in Azure.

Announcing Azure Orbital Cloud Access Preview

Azure Orbital Cloud Access brings connectivity from the cloud wherever businesses and public sector organizations need it the most. Across the space ecosystem, we are seeing a proliferation of low-latency satellite communication networks. This massive new expansion of connectivity across fiber, cellular, and satellite networks demands a new approach to connectivity, one which intelligently prioritizes traffic across these options, and bridges resilient connectivity into a seamless cloud experience.

Today, we are announcing the preview of Azure Orbital Cloud Access. Serving as a step toward the future of integrated 5G and satellite communications, Azure Orbital Cloud Access is a new service that enables low-latency (1-hop) access to the cloud—from anywhere on the planet—making it easier to bring satellite-based communications into your enterprise cloud operation.

Specifically, the preview for Azure Government customers unlocks new scenarios and opportunities in areas with low or no connectivity, or where a failover connectivity option is needed. Azure Orbital Cloud Access delivers prioritized network traffic through SpaceX’s Starlink connectivity and Azure edge devices, providing customers with access to Microsoft cloud services anywhere Starlink operates.

"Starlink’s high-speed, low-latency global connectivity in conjunction with Azure infrastructure will enable users to access fiber-like cloud computing access anywhere, anytime. We’re excited to offer this solution to both the public and the private sector."—Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX President and Chief Operating Officer

Additionally, Azure Orbital Cloud Access manages the entire solution for customers, charging on a simple monthly subscription basis and a pay-as-you-go satellite communications consumption model.

The product also natively integrates with SD-WAN technology from Juniper Networks, which enables customers to prioritize connectivity between fiber, cellular, and satellite communications networks.

The Azure Orbital Cloud Access Preview is currently available for Azure Government customers. To sign up, please contact your Microsoft account team.

Connecting First Responders and the National Interagency Fire Center with Azure Orbital Cloud Access

Azure Orbital Cloud Access enables new scenarios for diverse types of customers and situations. For example, we recently worked with the Wildland Fire Information Technology (WFIT) group at the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) in Boise, Idaho. This work consisted of conducting a research test to address the challenge of bringing connectivity to wildland firefighters and incident management personnel, who often work in rural locations.

Tens of thousands of wildland fires occur throughout the United States each year. In many cases, these wildfires occur in remote locations with low or no connectivity, making it extremely difficult for firefighters and fire managers to communicate. Connectivity enables personnel to share information and helps ensure a coordinated response to these fires.

In collaboration with Microsoft, the National Interagency Fire Center conducted a test of Azure Orbital Cloud Access capabilities integrated with SpaceX’s Starlink LEO satellite constellation. The goal of this test was to enable wildland firefighters' connectivity to Microsoft Azure services in remote locations to provide uninterrupted support for firefighting operations and coordination.

This demonstration enabled access to FireNet (a cloud-based application for collaboration and management of wildfires using Microsoft Teams and Sharepoint) and remote access to wildfire data to share key insights to decision-makers in a secure and rapid manner. Through Azure Orbital Cloud Access, we achieved resilient communications and failover capabilities with intelligent prioritized traffic through cellular, fiber, or satellite.

Enabling digital resiliency through 5G and space with Pegatron and the Taiwan Hsinchu Fire Department

Digital resiliency is a key area of focus for Azure Space, and a critical use case for connectivity. As we look ahead at the future of possibilities for combining different pathways for connectivity, we partnered with Pegatron and SES to explore a scenario for natural disasters that brings together the power of 5G and space for the Hsinchu Fire Department.

Using space technology, mobile infrastructure, and Azure’s global footprint, we determined that we could offer alternative pathways for connectivity that exist outside of the reliance on local infrastructure—which is at risk of being damaged in a natural disaster.

"Communications on the front line are critical during natural disasters, but infrastructure is often destroyed, and connections are disrupted. This space-enabled 5G network would give us a much-needed tool allowing our first responders to effectively and efficiently focus on our fight to save lives and property."—Director General Shi-Kung Lee, Hsinchu City Fire Department, Taiwan

In partnership with Pegatron, an emergency response vehicle was built that could be rapidly deployed to disaster zones. Microsoft’s 5G core, Microsoft Teams, Pegatron’s 5G O-RAN base station, and SES’s MEO satellite communication constellation were integrated to create high-bandwidth, low-latency communication for first responders across command sites using Azure, strengthening the Hsinchu Fire Department’s response.

Announcing the General Availability of Azure Orbital Ground Station

Today, we are announcing the general availability of Azure Orbital Ground Station—our fully managed ground station as a service offering which is now available to all customers. Get started today.

The mission of Azure Orbital Ground Station is to work together with our partner ecosystem to enable satellite operators to focus on their satellites and operate from the cloud more reliably at lower cost and latency, allowing operators to get to market faster and achieve a higher level of security with the power of Azure. Through Microsoft’s unique partner-focused approach, we are bringing together a deep integration of ground station partner networks to enable our customers’ data delivery to an Azure region of choice at zero cost, thus reducing their total operational costs and ensuring data is available in the customer’s Azure tenant for further processing.

Pixxel

Pixxel is a space data company focused on building a constellation of hyperspectral earth imaging satellites and the analytical tools to mine insights from that data in the cloud. With the partnership of KSAT and Microsoft, Pixxel can minimize its time to market, access world-leading ground coverage, and lower its operating costs.

Microsoft’s integration with KSAT’s extensive network around the world enables Pixxel to stream their data directly to the Azure Cloud with zero data backhaul costs, and then further process it using Azure's AI/ML services to generate customer business insights.

Loft Orbital

Loft Orbital is a space infrastructure company offering rapid, reliable, and simplified access to space as a service. We previously announced a strategic partnership with Loft Orbital for on-orbit compute to enable a new way to develop, test, and validate software applications for space systems in Microsoft Azure, and then deploy them to satellites in orbit using Loft's space infrastructure tools and platforms. The first Azure-enabled Loft satellite will be launching next year and will be available for governments and companies to seamlessly deploy their software applications onto space hardware within the Azure environment.

Today marks the next step of our partnership. Alongside the launch of Azure Orbital Ground Station, Loft Orbital and Microsoft will support end-to-end customer missions as a service. Working with Microsoft, KSAT demonstrated how an existing customer, Loft Orbital, can test and onboard to Azure Orbital Ground Station and benefit from Microsoft and KSAT ground stations to support their specific mission needs.

Muon Space

Muon Space is developing a world-class satellite remote sensing platform to power data-driven decisions about the climate. Muon provides organizations with a turnkey solution to collecting datasets needed to achieve their environmental goals.

Many of these use cases are unlocked by global coverage and rapid cadence of observations. Azure Orbital Ground Station will support Muon’s coverage needs and operation by increasing the number of ground locations to ensure multiple contact opportunities on every orbit.

In addition to our ground stations, Muon Space is partnering with Microsoft’s sustainability product team to develop products targeting enterprise Environment Social Governance (ESG) analytics derived from their Earth Systems data.

Accelerating the pace of digital transformation for satellite network operators

Digital transformation is central to the DNA of how Microsoft operates. We believe in the power of the Azure cloud to transform industries—from healthcare, to retail, and even space. Satellite network operators and the communication they provide are unique in their digital transformation and transition to cloud technologies.

The future of the space industry depends on a way to realize the flexibility and scale that virtualization provides, transitioning away from capital-intensive hardware procurement cycles, while continuing to support existing non-virtualized networks. Azure Space is building a platform to enable the industry to make this transition seamlessly.

ST Engineering iDirect

Last year, we announced our partnership with ST Engineering iDirect, one of the industry’s largest ground segment providers. And today, we are showing progress on that partnership by announcing the first demonstration of an iDirect high data-rate modem running fully virtualized as a piece of software on Azure. This innovation is an example of Azure Space approach to digital transformation for space: bringing what was custom hardware into software that runs on standardized cloud computers—enabling flexibility, elasticity, and cost reduction for satellite operators.

SES

Two years ago, we announced our partnership with SES to bring cloud innovation to the Space industry and to ensure that our customers will have access to Azure services regardless of where they are.

This expanded into our selection of SES as the Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) network partner for Microsoft Azure orbital and co-locating ground stations of O3b mPOWER, SES’s second-generation MEO constellation, with Azure Cloud regions which will ensure customers one-hop and direct cloud access for secure and reliable delivery of Azure services and applications.

Today we're announcing an expansion of that partnership through a new joint Satellite Communications Virtualization Program.  Through this program, Microsoft and SES will create the world’s first fully virtualized satellite communications ground network by focusing on software-defined hubs, customer edge terminals, new virtual network functions, edge cloud applications, and more. This virtualization will align cloud and satellite network architectures and enable 5G technology to be used in commercial satellite networks—bridging the gap between terrestrial and non-terrestrial connectivity networks. A virtualized architecture also allows for quicker standardization of system interfaces, which promotes more automation, API-based control, and cross-industry interoperability.

In the near term, this program will define and implement the pre-production architecture for a fully virtual SES ground station, which ultimately will serve as the blueprint for future fully virtualized ground station sites that bring the power of Azure to the Space ecosystem. For instance, a virtualized ground network will create a new paradigm where modem and antenna partners focus on developing software-defined networking technologies as opposed to hardware-centric offerings. This improves the velocity of ground system deployment and reconfiguration to match customer service needs. 

"To truly cloud-enable space networks, satellite ground networks need to be open and programmable. This is especially critical since the customer edge for satellite networks is often in remote locations or in industries such as aviation and government with stringent security and certification requirements so upgrading disparate, proprietary equipment is costly and slows the delivery of new value-added services. Together with Microsoft, we will virtualize all aspects of satellite ground networks with standard, open hardware, software-defined radios, virtualized network functions, and edge cloud applications that can be dynamically programmed to create a virtual ground network."—John-Paul Hemingway, Chief Strategy and Product Officer of SES

Microsoft and SES will release a request for proposal (RFP) in the fourth quarter of this calendar year for the first cohort of program participants to seed this new, all-virtual ecosystem.

Conclusion

Azure Space democratizes access to and the power and capabilities of satellites to empower every organization on the planet to achieve more. These announcements are focused on what Azure and Microsoft do best—function as a platform for our customers and partners to unlock new business opportunities, empower our customers to digitally transform, and work closely with industry leaders to innovate. They forge what we aspire to enable—a future for the cloud where our customers combine the power of Azure with the possibilities of space.
Quelle: Azure

Microsoft shares what's next in machine learning at NVIDIA GTC

Finding scalable solutions for today’s global challenges requires forward-thinking, transformative tools. As environmental, economic, and public health concerns mount, Microsoft Azure is addressing these challenges head on with high-performance computing (HPC), AI, and machine learning. The behind-the-scenes power for everything from MRI scans to energy management and financial services, these technologies are equipping customers and developers with innovative solutions that break through the boundaries of what’s possible in data and compute, paving the way for growth opportunities that span industries and applications around the world.

Microsoft Azure is committed to unlocking these new opportunities for our customers, providing the broadest range of NVIDIA GPUs at the edge, on-premises, in the cloud, and for hybrid environments.

At NVIDIA GTC we will demonstrate this commitment by showing how Azure’s advanced HPC capabilities, and AI/machine learning in the cloud are driving transformation and making an impact together with NVIDIA’s latest technology.

Microsoft Azure’s collaboration with NVIDIA was developed with our customers in mind and focused on opening new doors to innovation with graphics processing unit (GPU) acceleration in the cloud.

Learn more by registering today for NVIDIA GTC, a free, online event running September 19 to 22, 2022.

Get a chance to win an NVIDIA Jetson Nano or swag box

In both of our sessions you have a chance to win a SWAG box complete with a HPC t-shirt and mug or a Jetson Nano. Attend these sessions and don’t forget to look for the special link to enter!

Microsoft Sessions at NVIDIA GTC

The new SDK and CLI in Azure Machine Learning.
Bala Venkataraman, Principal Program Manager, Microsoft.

Video on demand

Azure Machine Learning is committed to simplifying the adoption of its platform for training and production. In 2022, we announced the general availability of Azure Machine Learning CLI v2 and the preview of Azure Machine Learning Python SDK v2. Both launches demonstrate our continued focus on making workflows easier and managing their entire lifecycle starting from training single jobs to pipelines and model deployments. In this session, learn about the key improvements in usability and productivity, and the new features that come with the command-line interpreter (CLI) and software development kit (SDK) v2 of Azure Machine Learning.

Register for this session now.

Operationalize large model training on Azure Machine Learning using multi-node NVIDIA A100 GPUs.
Sharmeelee Bijlani, Program Manager Azure Machine Learning, Microsoft; Razvan Tanase, Principal Engineering Manager Azure Machine Learning, Microsoft.

Wednesday, September 21, 10:00 to 10:50 AM PDT (1:00 to 1:50 PM EDT, 7:00 to 7:50 AM CEST)

In recent years, deep learning models have grown exponentially in size, demonstrating an acute need for customers to train and fine-tune them using large-scale data infrastructure, advanced GPUs, and an immense amount of memory. Fortunately, developers can now use simple training pipelines on Azure Machine Learning to train large models running on the latest multi-node NVIDIA GPUs. This session will describe these software innovations to customers through Azure Machine Learning (including a fully optimized PyTorch environment) that offers great performance and an easy-to-use interface for large-scale training. We’ll also highlight the power of Azure Machine Learning through experiments using 1,024 A100 Tensor Core GPUs to scale the training of a two-trillion parameter model with a streamlined user experience at 1,000 plus GPU scale.

Register for this session now.

Watch Party #1: Operationalize large-model training on Azure Machine Learning using multi-node NVIDIA A100 GPUs.
Mary Howell, NVIDIA.

Wednesday, Sep 21st, 3:00 – 3:30 PM PDT
In this GTC Watch Party, we will be replaying our Operationalize Large-Model Training on Azure Machine Learning using Multi-Node NVIDIA A100 GPUs session. Participants will be joined by experts from across Microsoft and NVIDIA who bring fresh insights and experiences to the table, taking the session to a whole new level of understanding. Interaction is core to our GTC Watch Parties, and we encourage you to join the discussion with any comments or questions. 

Register for this session.

Watch Party #2: Operationalize large-model training on Azure Machine Learning using multi-node NVIDIA A100 GPUs.
Gabrielle Davelaar, AI Technical Specialist, Microsoft; Maxim Salnikov, Senior Azure GTM Manager, Microsoft; Henk Boelman, Senior Cloud Advocate–AI and Machine Learning, Microsoft; Alexander Young, Technical Marketing Engineer, NVIDIA; Ulrich Knechtel, Microsoft Partner Manager (EMEA), NVIDIA.

Thursday, September 22, 2:00 to 3:30 PM CEST (5:00 to 6:30 AM PDT, 8:00 to 9:30 AM EDT)

In this GTC Watch Party, we will be replaying our Operationalize Large-Model Training on Azure Machine Learning using Multi-Node NVIDIA A100 GPUs session. Participants will be joined by experts from across Microsoft and NVIDIA who bring fresh insights and experiences to the table, taking the session to a whole new level of understanding. Interaction is core to our GTC Watch Parties, and we encourage you to join the discussion with any comments or questions.

Register for this session now.

Microsoft is helping customers across industries step up, transforming AI and machine learning at the Edge

Nuance’s Dragon Ambient eXperience helps doctors document care faster with AI on Azure

Nuance developed an AI-based clinical solution that automatically turns doctor-patient conversations into accurate medical notes. Built with Azure and PyTorch, this solution saves doctors transcription time, reducing administrative burdens and helping them conduct more focused, higher-quality interactions with their patients.

Energy utility Elva builds a highly secure DevOps platform with Azure infrastructure and network security services

Elva looked to build a secure, cloud-first DevOps platform that could meet Norway’s data residency and compliance requirements, delivering automated services that would help develop network grid technology. Using Azure DDoS Protection, Azure Web Application Firewall, and Azure Kubernetes Service, Elva realized its goal, enhancing its in-house development and data integration capabilities. 

The Royal Bank of Canada creates personalized offers while protecting data privacy with Azure confidential computing

The Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) partnered with Microsoft to create a privacy-preserving multi-party data sharing platform built on Azure confidential computing. Called VCR, this solution enables RBC to personalize offerings and protect privacy at the same time, creating exceptional digital experiences that clients can trust.  

Recapping 2022 moments with Azure and NVIDIA technologies

Azure NC A100 v4-series

At Microsoft, our NC series virtual machines allow customers access to almost limitless AI hardware infrastructure so they can be productive quickly. Last summer, we leveled up, announcing the general availability of Azure NC A100 v4 series virtual machines. Powered by NVIDIA A100 80GB PCle Tensor Core GPUs and 3rd Gen AMD EPYC™ processors, these virtual machines help our customers gain insights faster, innovate with speed, do more with less, and are the most performant and cost-competitive NC series offering for a diverse set of workloads.

DeepSpeed on Azure

Azure Machine Learning uses large fleets of the latest NVIDIA GPUs powered by NVIDIA Quantum InfiniBand interconnects to tackle large-scale AI training and tuning. Last July, we announced a breakthrough in our software stack, using DeepSpeed and 1,024 NVIDIA A100 GPUs to scale the training of a two trillion parameter model with a streamlined user experience at 1,000 plus GPU scale. We are bringing these software innovations to you through Azure Machine Learning (including a fully optimized PyTorch environment) that offers great performance and an easy-to-use interface for large-scale training.

NVads A10 v5 virtual machines

Traditionally, graphics-heavy visualization workloads that run in the cloud require virtual machines with full GPUs that are both costly and inflexible. To combat this, we introduced the first GPU-partitioned (GPU-P) virtual machine offering in the cloud, and just last July, we announced the general availability of NVads A10 v5 GPU accelerated virtual machines. Azure is the first public cloud to offer GPU partitioning on NVIDIA GPUs, and our new NVads A10 v5 virtual machines are designed to offer the right choice for any workload and provide optimum configurations for both single-user and multi-session environments. Dig into our latest virtual machine innovation.

NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin-powered edge AI devices now available

Microsoft is pleased to announce that the NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin SoM is now powering Azure Certified edge devices from industry-leading device builders including AAEON, Advantech, and AVerMedia, along with the NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin developer kit.

Developers and solution builders can now leverage powerful NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin devkits and production modules with Microsoft Azure to create, deploy, and operate powerful AI solutions at the edge, accelerating product development and deployment at scale. The NVIDIA Orin Nano modules have set a new baseline for entry-level edge AI and robotics, building on the momentum behind the Jetson Orin platform worldwide. Stay tuned for new Jetson Orin NX and Orin Nano partner products launching to meet customer needs in AI solution development.

NVIDIA DLI training powered by Azure

We’re proud to host NVIDIA deep learning institute (DLI) training at NVIDIA GTC again this year, with instructor-led workshops around accelerated computing, accelerated data science, and deep learning. Hosted on Microsoft Azure, these sessions enable and empower you to leverage NVIDIA GPUs on the Microsoft Azure platform to solve the world’s most interesting and relevant problems. Register for a DLI workshop today.

Join us at NVIDIA GTC

In collaboration with NVIDIA, Microsoft delivers purpose-built AI, machine learning, and HPC solutions in the cloud to meet even the most demanding real-world applications at scale. Join us at NVIDIA GTC September 19 to 22, to see how every enterprise can leverage the power of GPUs at the edge, on-premises, in the cloud, and for hybrid solutions.

Learn more

Register for NVIDIA GTC DLI workshops and training sponsored by Microsoft Azure.
Learn more about our edge to cloud story with NVIDIA.
Read how Microsoft and NVIDIA are accelerating AI and HPC in the cloud.
See the quick start guide to benchmarking AI models in Azure: MLPerf Inference v2.1.
Learn more about Azure’s and NVIDIA’s roles in accelerating AI research and development for Meta.
Read NVIDIA’s step-by-step tutorial for boosting AI inference performance on Azure Machine Learning.
See this recap of Microsoft sessions at last year’s NVIDIA GTC.

Quelle: Azure

Azure API for FHIR and Microsoft’s Power Platform help universities tackle COVID-19

When summer 2021 ended, many organizations faced the formidable challenge of how to return to their places of work and school safely. Tuskegee University (Tuskegee) was one of them—not only was the safe return of students and faculty to school a priority but since Tuskegee is in a community with no hospital, controlling exposure was essential.

At the time, Tuskegee encountered many challenges, including but not limited to a statewide shortage of testing kits, inability to handle the broadscale logistics of testing, contact tracing, and figuring out a simplified way to report on status and schedule tests.

With the help of industry partners like Microsoft and Enabling Technologies, Tuskegee was able to build and execute a successful strategy to allow students to return to school safely amidst COVID-19.

Public health specialist, Crystal James stepped up to address the challenge that Tuskegee faced. "We realized that to get back to face to face, we needed to have a strategy to protect the learning environment," she recalled. She expanded her responsibilities as Department Chair in the College of Veterinary Medicine to include a new position: the Special Assistant to the President for COVID-19 Response.

Lack of testing kits

The first hurdle faced was the lack of test kits. According to Crystal, the COVID-19 Recovery Management Center (CRMC) studied the test kits and decided to make their own kits. The Tuskegee CRMC is composed of laboratory scientists, policy specialists, nurses, and public health professionals. They made test kits for the faculty, staff, students, and the surrounding Black Belt Counties who lacked access to tests.

Handling the logistics of testing

With their campus laboratories ready to make the kits, the industry came to Tuskegee’s aid. Thermo Fisher Scientific generously offered the instrumentation for Tuskegee to do PCR testing on campus. In February 2021, Tuskegee University opened its own Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) certified reference laboratory and began PCR testing for COVID-19. They tied their testing systems to Thermo Fisher’s for processing.

An easy-to-use app

With test kits and the ability to provide results on campus, Tuskegee University Health Disparities Diagnostic Center addressed the next step—developing a mechanism to deliver the test results back to individuals promptly and contact tracing on campus.

Tuskegee found Microsoft’s offerings and solutions to be the right fit—using Microsoft Power Platform, Dataverse & Azure API for FHIR, the institution had tools to schedule tests, send test results back, and attest to health status while on campus.

Building an app that was simple to use was paramount. The features in the app that was built using Microsoft’s Power Platform allowed students and faculty to:

Report and screen for symptoms—keeping track of symptoms and questionnaire responses by completing daily self-attestations from a smartphone or desktop.
Create daily passes—after completing the daily self-attestation, the application generates a unique daily QR code. That barcode is scanned to gain access to campus facilities.
Manage testing—designated personnel can manage student appointments, questionnaire responses, and test result notifications.

You can find the information about the implementation at Golden Tiger Health Check | Tuskegee University.

Integration assistance from Enabling Technologies

Microsoft Gold Partner, Enabling Technologies (Enabling), led the coordinated development efforts on behalf of Tuskegee. Enabling also rolled out the Return to School app at Lake Washington School District, Kent School District, and Howard University.

"Enabling Technologies provided the technical expertise to create a new system that would talk to the two existing systems," stated Crystal, "including CareEvolve and Thermo Fisher’s Platform for Science. Enabling helped with APIs, programming, and some other integration, which was helpful for non-IT people."

Microsoft technology provided a simple-to-use app and the integration protocols needed to handle the end-to-end testing and results.

Enabling architected the solution and used the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR®) protocol within Azure API for FHIR to safeguard Tuskegee data.  Azure API for FHIR was used to facilitate the movement of data between the application built on Power Platform and the testing lab software systems.

The rollout at Tuskegee and other Historically Black Colleges and Universities was aligned to Microsoft’s racial equity initiative. this solution was also deployed in support of  Microsoft's announcement to commit more than $110M to support nonprofits, workers, and schools in Washington state.

Soothing the concerns of the community

With COVID-19 swirling, Tuskegee’s students, faculty, and staff had enough on their minds. Learning to use a new app could not be yet another burden. Enabling’s Adoption and Organizational Change team, led by Gabrielle Manuel, stepped in. "It was important to provide students, faculty, and staff with appropriate support materials and advance messaging to prepare them to begin using the app," she said. "The custom messaging, user guides, and videos provided clear instructions and expectations."

Tuskegee’s James advised, "One of the biggest issues that isn’t as well highlighted about the pandemic is the anxiety created when you have to engage in public spaces during this pandemic. Having a tool like this assists us to bring that anxiety level down to a manageable level and bring our students and faculty back to an environment we can call as safe as possible."

The results

The implemented solution through Microsoft’s Power Platform improved the safety of Tuskegee's students, faculty, and staff. The Return to School solution helped decrease the time from exposure to a confirmed PCR lab result to five hours. It also helped Tuskegee to assure parents and students that there is a system to monitor trends every day since RTS also publishes results to their dashboard. Tuskegee published the number of cases on campus, the number of tests conducted, and the percentage of positive cases reducing the mental stress on potentially exposed individuals.

"Microsoft’s release was just in time," said Chris Stegh, CTO, Enabling Technologies. "The fact that the app could be activated in the existing Microsoft 365 tenant made the decision simple. Azure API for FHIR allowed the app to integrate with the university’s COVID-19 testing lab."

What’s next?

While Ms. James is optimistic, she’s also realistic. "While I know the rest of the world would like for us just call it over, that's not how pandemics work. We realize that COVID-19 will still be an issue that needs to be addressed on our campus. Because we are in an area that does not have a hospital and access to health care is very sparse, we want to continue to monitor the prevalence of COVID-19 on our campus. The app will help us pivot should another wave start around the country."

Learn more

Learn more about Tuskegee University.
Read our recent blog, "Microsoft launches Azure Health Data Services to unify health data and power AI in the cloud."
Learn more about Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare.

®FHIR is a registered trademark of Health Level Seven International, registered in the U.S. Trademark Office, and is used with their permission.
Quelle: Azure

Microsoft Cost Management updates – August 2022

Whether you're a new student, a thriving startup, or the largest enterprise, you have financial constraints, and you need to know what you're spending, where, and how to plan for the future. Nobody wants a surprise when it comes to the bill, and this is where Microsoft Cost Management comes in.

We're always looking for ways to learn more about your challenges and how Microsoft Cost Management can help you better understand where you're accruing costs in the cloud, identify and prevent bad spending patterns, and optimize costs to empower you to do more with less. Here are a few of the latest improvements and updates based on your feedback:

Manage your MCA billing account across multiple tenants
What’s new in Cost Management
What is desktop as a service (DaaS) and how can it help your organization?
Migrate and modernize with Azure to power innovation across the entire digital estate
5 steps to prepare developers for cloud modernization
What's new in Cost Management Labs
New ways to save money with Microsoft Cloud
Documentation updates
Join the Microsoft Cost Management team

Let's dig into the details.

Manage your MCA billing account across multiple tenants

Many organizations have multiple Azure Active Directory tenants. They may have originated from mergers and acquisitions or were set up to separate environments for resources and applications. Regardless of the reason, you can now consolidate and manage all your Azure Active Directory tenants from a single Microsoft Customer Agreement (MCA) billing account.

To get started, configure associated tenants for your billing account from the Azure portal by navigating to Cost Management + Billing, then selecting Access control (IAM) in the menu, and selecting the Associated billing tenants command at the top of the screen.

Once the global admin for the tenant accepts the invitation, subscriptions can be moved to the billing account and you can provide users from that tenant access to your billing account, allowing them to perform activities like viewing and downloading invoices, monitoring cost, or creating subscriptions without having to switch tenants in the Azure portal, which has been common feedback we’ve heard about managing MCA billing accounts.

To learn more, see Manage billing across multiple tenants using associated billing tenants.

What's new in Cost Management

The cloud runs at break-neck speed and staying informed can be tough. That’s the primary reason we keep delivering these monthly updates to make it a little easier for you to see what’s new in Microsoft Cost Management. For those who aren’t regularly checking the blog, you can now see some of the latest Cost Management updates directly in the portal on the Cost Management overview.

Just a small thing to help you keep up to date on the latest developments. Let us know what you’d like to see next.

What is desktop as a service (DaaS) and how can it help your organization?

Today’s workers want the freedom to respond to email and collaborate with colleagues from anywhere, on any device—whether they’re working at their kitchen table, at the airport waiting for their flight to board, or in the carpool line waiting for their kids to get out of school. The pandemic proved that remote teams could succeed, no matter where they worked and how far-flung they were.

Even so, many companies are still scrambling to accommodate the technological needs of their hybrid and remote workers. Desktop as a service, sometimes known by the acronym DaaS, can help.

Read the full article to learn about desktop as a service and how it can help you reduce costs.

Migrate and modernize with Azure to power innovation across the entire digital estate

Cloud adoption increased significantly during COVID-19 and continues for many companies. However, an enormous migration and modernization opportunity remains as organizations continue their digital transformation. In fact, 72 percent of organizations reported their industry’s pace of digital transformation accelerated because of COVID-19, according to a survey sponsored by Microsoft in The Economist.

And we don’t expect that to slow down anytime soon.

Read the full article to learn more about the key themes we’re seeing and new programs, capabilities, and opportunities to help along the way.

5 steps to prepare developers for cloud modernization

If you’re thinking about what it takes to modernize your applications, you’re not alone. Companies everywhere now understand that migrating applications to the cloud and shifting to a cloud-first approach is critical to business competitiveness. The purpose of modernizing applications is to better align them to current and future business needs. By deploying enterprise applications to the cloud, you gain greater ability to innovate, improve security, scale to meet demand, manage costs, and deliver rich and consistent customer experiences anywhere in the world more quickly.

Read the full article on the Azure blog.

What's new in Cost Management Labs

With Cost Management Labs, you get a sneak peek at what's coming in Microsoft Cost Management and can engage directly with us to share feedback and help us better understand how you use the service, so we can deliver more tuned and optimized experiences. Here are a few features you can see in Cost Management Labs:

Updated: What’s new in Cost Management – Now available in the public portal.
Learn about new announcements from the Cost Management overview. You can opt-in using Try Preview.
Updated: Cost savings insights in the cost analysis preview – Now enabled by default in Labs.
Identify potential savings available from Azure Advisor cost recommendations for your Azure subscription. You can opt-in using Try preview.
Forecast in the cost analysis preview.
Show your forecast cost for the period at the top of the cost analysis preview. You can opt-in using Try preview.
Product column experiment in the cost analysis preview.
We’re testing new columns in the Resources and Services views in the cost analysis preview for Microsoft Customer Agreement. You may see a single Product column instead of the Service, Tier, and Meter columns. Please leave feedback to let us know which you prefer.
Group related resources in the cost analysis preview.
Group related resources, like disks under virtual machines or web apps under App Service plans, by adding a “cm-resource-parent” tag to the child resources with a value of the parent resource ID.
Charts in the cost analysis preview.
View your daily or monthly cost over time in the cost analysis preview. You can opt-in using Try Preview.
View cost for your resources.
The cost for your resources is one click away from the resource overview in the preview portal. Just click View cost to quickly jump to the cost of that resource.
Change scope from the menu.
Change scope from the menu for quicker navigation. You can opt-in using Try Preview.

Of course, that's not all. Every change in Microsoft Cost Management is available in Cost Management Labs a week before it's in the full Azure portal or Microsoft 365 admin center. We're eager to hear your thoughts and understand what you'd like to see next. What are you waiting for? Try Cost Management Labs today.

New ways to save money in the Microsoft Cloud

Lots of cost optimization improvements over the last month! Here are some of the generally available offers you might be interested in:

US West 3 price reduction.
Azure Public IPv6 offerings are free as of July 31, 2022.
AKS node pool user start/stop feature.
Reserved instance pricing for Azure Cache for Redis Enterprise.
NVads A10 v5 virtual machines.
Gateway Load Balancer.
Microsoft Azure available from new cloud region in Qatar.
Azure Log Analytics in China North 3 and China East 3.
Application Insights in China North 3 and China East 3.
Azure Stream Analytics in China East 3, China North 3, US DoD East, and US DoD Texas.
Azure Databricks in West US 3.

And here are a couple new previews:

AMD-based confidential VMs for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).
Azure Premium SSD v2 Disk Storage.
Serverless SQL for Azure Databricks.
App Configuration geo replication support.

Documentation updates

Lots of updates based on your feedback with a few new docs you might be interested in:

New: Calculate EA reservations cost savings.
New: Manage billing across multiple tenants.
New: Find tenant ID and primary domain.
Plus 14 updates based on your feedback.

Want to keep an eye on all documentation updates? Check out the Cost Management and Billing documentation change history in the azure-docs repository on GitHub. If you see something missing, select Edit at the top of the document and submit a quick pull request. You can also submit a GitHub issue. We welcome and appreciate all contributions!

Join the Microsoft Cost Management team

Are you excited about helping customers and partners better manage and optimize costs? We're looking for passionate, dedicated, and exceptional people to help build best-in-class cloud platforms and experiences to enable exactly that. If you have experience with big data infrastructure, reliable and scalable APIs, or rich and engaging user experiences, you'll find no better challenge than serving every Microsoft customer and partner in one of the most critical areas for driving cloud success.

Watch the video below to learn more about the Microsoft Cost Management team:

Join our team.

What's next?

These are just a few of the big updates from last month. Don't forget to check out the previous Microsoft Cost Management updates. We're always listening and making constant improvements based on your feedback, so please keep the feedback coming.

Follow @MSCostMgmt on Twitter and subscribe to the YouTube channel for updates, tips, and tricks. You can also share ideas and vote up others in the Cost Management feedback forum.

We know these are trying times for everyone. Best wishes from the Microsoft Cost Management team. Stay safe and stay healthy.
Quelle: Azure

Elevate your visualizations with Azure Managed Grafana—now generally available

As part of our continued commitment to open source solutions, we are announcing the general availability of Azure Managed Grafana, a managed service that enables you to run Grafana natively within the Azure cloud platform. With Azure Managed Grafana, you can seamlessly and securely connect with and scale to businesses’ existing Azure services, enhancing observability and cloud management.

In addition to the features announced during preview, with general availability, we’re introducing new capabilities that include the latest Grafana v9.0 features with its improved alerting experience as well as zone redundancy (in preview) and API key support.

New connections and integrations with Azure services

With general availability, we are adding new integrations with Azure services, allowing you to realize the benefits of Grafana as efficiently and effectively as possible.

We have introduced several new out-of-the-box dashboards for Azure Monitor. For example, with Availability Tests Geo Map dashboard for Azure Monitor application insights, you can view the results and responsiveness of your application availability tests based on geographic location. Additionally, with the new out-of-the-box Load Balancing dashboard for Azure Monitor network insights, you can monitor key performance metrics for all your Azure load balancing resources, including Load Balancers, Application Gateway, Front Door, and Traffic Manager.

The new “pin to Grafana” feature for Azure Monitor Logs allows you to seamlessly add charts and queries from Azure Monitor Logs to Grafana dashboards with just one click. In the illustration below, you can see how the Azure Monitor Logs query on the left is replicated in the Grafana interface on the right.

Similarly, we have introduced new out-of-the-box dashboards for Azure Container Apps as well. The new Aggregate View dashboard for Azure Container Apps depicts a geographic map of your container apps filtered by resource group, environment, and region with drill-down links to a detailed dashboard for each app. The new App View dashboard for Azure Container Apps monitors the performance of Azure Container Apps by viewing the key metrics of CPU, memory, restarts, and network traffic or by revision, replica, and status code.

Read the Azure Managed Grafana technical community blog to learn more about the latest enhancements.

Get started with Azure Managed Grafana

Try it free for the first 30 days from the Azure portal today.

Go to the Azure Managed Grafana product page.

Read the technical documentation.

Share feedback on Microsoft Q&A.
Quelle: Azure

Announcing new enhancements for Azure VMware Solution

I’m thrilled to be writing to you today from VMware Explore in San Francisco, where my team and I will be presenting and meeting with customers and partners in person! When we launched Azure VMware Solution two years ago amid a pandemic, IT agility became a top priority as organizations scrambled to enable remote work and ensure business resilience via cloud solutions. Fast forward to today, and most organizations recognize that by running workloads in the cloud, they can respond more rapidly, no matter what the challenge or opportunity.

“It’s much easier for us to take on smaller acquisitions and bring them onboard … by using Azure VMware Solution, we’re always ready and able to add a node and start folding in the new acquisition’s applications and data with the extra capacity.”—Dean Hughes, Infrastructure Manager, Carpetright

“Ordering and installing on-premises networking hosts can take six months. But using Azure VMware Solution, it’s a simple process to run up new hosts that we can have working in a few days.”—Harry Sturgess, Manager of Technology and Operations, Metro South Health

Because every customer starts their cloud journey at a different place, we help enable customers to migrate to the cloud on their terms and maintain support for the business platforms and investments they have today. Azure VMware Solution is an easy way to extend and migrate existing VMware Private Clouds to run them natively on Azure. Azure VMware Solution offers symmetry with on-premises environments, which helps to accelerate datacenter migrations, so customers recognize the benefits of the cloud sooner. This symmetry also allows IT teams to leverage the same VMware skills, processes, and investments from their on-premises VMware environments.

“What a game-changer for us. As a VMware house, we saw how easy it would be to move applications from VMware to Azure VMware Solution because it’s bolted onto the back of Azure.”—Rob Wilde, Platforms Manager, Nottinghamshire County Council

Thanks to Microsoft’s unique Azure Hybrid Benefit and Extended Security Updates for Windows Server and SQL Server, Azure VMware Solution is one of the fastest and most cost-effective ways to seamlessly migrate and run VMware in the cloud.

Option coming for VMware Cloud Universal Program

Today we extended our partnership with VMware to add support for the VMware Cloud Universal program. This will allow customers to purchase Azure VMware Solution as part of VMware Cloud Universal program, a flexible purchasing and consumption program for executing hybrid and multi-cloud strategies. With VMware Cloud Universal, customers may purchase credits for VMware’s multi-cloud infrastructure and management and apply these credits to deployments of Azure VMware Solution. Learn more.

Check out what’s new in Azure VMware Solution

Today I am excited to share some of the recent updates we’ve made to Azure VMware Solution.

Global expansion to 24 regions: Since the launch of Azure VMware Solution two years ago, we’ve been working to support customers globally with geographic expansion to 24 Azure regions, more than any other cloud provider. Check out the Azure products by region web page to find a region near you.

Azure NetApp Files datastores for Azure VMware Solution is now in public preview. For your storage-intensive workloads running on Azure VMware Solution, the integration with Azure NetApp Files helps to easily scale storage capacity beyond the limits of the local instance storage provided by vSAN and lower your overall total cost of ownership for storage-intensive workloads. Learn more.
Public IP to NSX Edge capability for Azure VMware Solution is now generally available in 17 Azure regions. Most customer applications running on Azure VMware Solution require internet access requiring both outbound and inbound internet connectivity. With this new capability, there are now three primary patterns for creating inbound and outbound internet access to resources on your Azure VMware Solution private cloud. Learn more.
Enterprise VMware Cloud Director Services for Azure VMware Solution is now in Public Preview. Customers who have Azure VMware Solution deployed under their Microsoft Enterprise agreement can purchase the VMware Cloud Director Service from VMware and connect their Azure VMware Solution private cloud to create and manage private virtual datacenters and leverage vCloud availability for migrating on-premises VMware workloads to Azure VMware Solution private clouds. Learn more.
Jetstream DR for Azure VMware Solution is now generally available, providing customers with disaster recovery protection needed for business and mission-critical applications while leveraging cost-effective cloud storage such as Azure Blob Storage. JetStream DR can also replicate and automate recovery to Azure NetApp Files datastores. Learn more.
VMware vRealize Log Insight Cloud for Azure VMware Solution is now generally available. This service provides centralized log management, deep operational visibility, intelligent analytics, and improved troubleshooting and security. This boosts IT organizations’ operational efficiency, mitigates costs arising from unplanned downtime, and reduces organizational risk by providing visibility into security-related events. Learn more.
VMware vSphere 7.0 is now available globally for all cloud deployments in Azure VMware Solution.

If you would like to stay up to date with the latest releases from Azure VMware Solution, please follow Azure updates.

Learn more

This week we are offering a special opportunity to take the Azure VMware Solution Cloud Skills Challenge. Compete in this free, self-paced, Microsoft learning path and advance your technical skills at the same time! Register for the Challenge.

As always, you can visit the Azure VMware Solution website or documentation for more information.

And if you are here at VMware Explore, stop by the Microsoft booth and say hello. We are excited to see you in person! Booth #1101.

VMware vCloud, vRealize, and vSphere are registered trademarks of VMware, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and other jurisdictions.
Quelle: Azure

Enhance Azure Firewall policy management with Tufin SecureTrack integration

Organizations today are faced with growing network challenges with hundreds of network assets deployed in hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Daily tasks such as enabling access or troubleshooting network connectivity issues have become increasingly more complex and spread across different teams within the organization. In addition, organizations are asked to do more while keeping costs under control. Gaining full and clear visibility and control is needed for Network Security and Cloud Security teams to manage their fragmented networks, enforce security policies, work more efficiently, and reduce their attack surface caused by misconfigurations.

To help organizations address these challenges and achieve agility and security, Tufin announced integration with Azure Firewall to provide holistic security policy management within your Azure and hybrid environments.

Simplified and automated Azure Firewall policy management with Tufin SecureTrack

Tufin SecureTrack delivers real-time visibility and policy-driven, unified security across your hybrid and cloud environments. Azure Firewall integration with Tufin SecureTrack enhances your visibility and security while managing Azure Firewall policies. Key features to simplify and automate network security management across on-premises and cloud include policy automated audit trail and network topology visualization.

Automated audit trail

Keeping track of changes in the Firewall Policy is essential for various use cases—it allows you to reduce the attack surface by gaining visibility into misconfigurations and risky changes. In addition, you can easily identify each change and its deployment time and leverage this information to deploy a new Azure Firewall policy version when needed.

With Tufin SecureTrack, you can leverage automated audit trail to changes made to your Azure Firewall policy. In addition, you can compare different policy versions in an intuitive, side-by-side user interface, to quickly pin each exact change.

Network topology visualization

Having a clear picture of your network topology is required in modern and fast-changing networks to control potential risks and troubleshoot misconfigurations. Maintaining such network mapping manually is a time-consuming task that involves various teams. Even with such a map in hand, it is still difficult to tell if a specific network connection is allowed and in which path.

With Tufin SecureTrack, you can leverage live and automated network topology maps, generated by the configuration of your Azure Firewall and other network assets. This map allows you to simulate a path analysis of a specific network connection, based on your network topology and applied policy rules, for both East and West and North and South traffic. Tufin visualizes how the traffic flows based on the routing and networking configuration, and whether the access is allowed or blocked based on the security configuration.

Learn more

Join the upcoming free webinar on Wednesday, September 14, 2022, from 8:00AM–9:00AM Pacific Time, to learn more about Tufin’s Azure Firewall integration and get your questions answered from Tufin and Microsoft product experts. If you are not able to attend, please register so that you can watch the webinar on-demand anytime.

You can also sign-up for a live demo to see the solution in action.

Resources

Tufin SecureTrack webpage.
Tufin SecureTrack user guide.
Azure Firewall webpage.
Azure Firewall documentation.
Azure network security webpage.

Quelle: Azure