Kategorie: Microsoft Azure

Announcing user delegation SAS tokens preview for Azure Storage Blobs

Cloud storage often serves as a content source for browser and mobile applications. This is typically achieved using application-issued, pre-authorized URLs which provide time-limited access directly to specific content without requiring a service to proxy this access.

Azure Storage supports this pattern through the use of shared access signature tokens (SAS tokens). These tokens grant specific, time-limited access to storage objects by signing an authorization statement using the storage account access key, which is controlled by account administrators. While this approach provides the required limited access to clients, it sometimes represents an over-provisioning of access to these token-issuing services since this provides full control over the entire account where they may only require read access to specific content.

Today we are launching a preview for a new kind of SAS token, user delegation SAS tokens. By extending the recent release of Azure AD and Azure role-based access control (RBAC) for Azure Storage, lower-privileged users and services can now delegate subsets of their access to clients, using this new type of pre-authorized URL. Clients retrieve a user delegation key tied to their Azure Active Directory (AD) account, and then use it to create SAS tokens granting a subset of their own access rights.

This means, for example, that an application component with only read access to end-user content could be configured to issue short lived read-only URLs to clients without the risks involved with storing and using the powerful account access key. Azure Storage access logs will also reflect client use of these SAS tokens as associated with the Azure AD principal of this application component.

During this preview, you can generate user delegation SAS tokens with your own code or use Azure PowerShell or Azure CLI. Remember, you will first need to grant RBAC permissions to access data to the user account that will generate the SAS token. Learn more about granting RBAC access to your blob data in our documentation here.

How to create a user delegation SAS token

The preview capability is available now for everyone, for non-production use. No registration is required.

For developers, here is an example using .NET code to generate a user-delegation SAS token. It also shows our new .NET client libraries for Storage and integrated Azure.Identity libraries.

client = new BlobServiceClient(accountUri, new DefaultAzureCredential());

//define permission set to read blob, valid from low for a specified number of minutes
BlobSasBuilder builder = new BlobSasBuilder()
{
ContainerName = containerName,
BlobName = blobName,
Permissions = "r",
Resource = "b",
StartTime = DateTimeOffset.UtcNow,
ExpiryTime = DateTimeOffset.UtcNow.AddMinutes(tokenLifetime)
};

//refresh user-delegation key as necessary, valid for up to a maximum of 7 days
if (currentUdk == null || currentUdk.SignedExpiry <= builder.ExpiryTime)
{
currentUdk = client.GetUserDelegationKey(DateTimeOffset.UtcNow, DateTimeOffset.UtcNow.AddDays(7)).Value;
}

//generate a signed SAS token using the user-delegation key
string sasToken = builder.ToSasQueryParameters(currentUdk, accountName).ToString();

You can find a complete working example in the Azure Storage documentation.

Users can also use our command line tool previews to generate user-delegation SAS tokens. Here is an example using Azure CLI to generate a read-only SAS based on the user’s credentials:

$ az login
$ az storage blob generate-sas
> –account-name myaccount
> –container-name container
> –name file.txt
> –permissions r
> –expiry 2019-08-30
> –auth-mode login
> –as-user
> –full-uri
Argument '–as-user' is in preview. It may be changed/removed in a future release.

https://myaccount.blob.core.windows.net/container/file.txt?se=2019-08-30&sp=r&sv=2018-11-09&sr=b&skoid=8c93ed4c-3e11-43f4-9307-3664c9c16554&sktid=9341f370-b982-47de-b7c1-8dbe61328559&skt=2019-08-28T22%3A57%3A38Z&ske=2019-08-30T00%3A00%3A00Z&sks=b&skv=2018-11-09&sig=7trGEakY86Uj5rXsH2ApiyCZfxFgNnh6NFy4wcnmfmQ%3D

Check out our documentation for more detailed examples in Azure PowerShell and Azure CLI.

User delegation SAS tokens for Azure Blobs allow for issuing pre-authorized URLs from lower privileged identities, and are available in preview in all Azure clouds and locations. Please read more about them in our documentation, and give them a try. We would love to hear your feedback at AzureStorageFeedback@microsoft.com.
Quelle: Azure

Azure Media Services' new AI-powered innovation

Animated character recognition, multilingual speech transcription and more now available

At Microsoft, our mission is to empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more. The media industry exemplifies this mission. We live in an age where more content is being created and consumed in more ways and on more devices than ever. At IBC 2019, we’re delighted to share the latest innovations we’ve been working on and how they can help transform your media workflows. Read on to learn more, or join our product teams and partners at Hall 1 Booth C27 at the RAI in Amsterdam from September 13th to 17th.

Video Indexer adds support for animation and multilingual content

We made our award winning Azure Media Services Video Indexer generally available at IBC last year, and this year it’s getting even better. Video Indexer automatically extracts insights and metadata such as spoken words, faces, emotions, topics and brands from media files, without you needing to be a machine learning expert. Our latest announcements include previews for two highly requested and differentiated capabilities for animated character recognition and multilingual speech transcription, as well as several additions to existing models available today in Video Indexer.

Animated character recognition

Animated content or cartoons are one of the most popular content types, but standard AI vision models built for human faces do not work well with them, especially if the content has characters without human features. In this new preview solution, Video Indexer joins forces with Microsoft’s Azure Custom Vision service to provide a new set of models that automatically detect and group animated characters and allow customers to then tag and recognize them easily via integrated custom vision models. These models are integrated into a single pipeline, which allows anyone to use the service without any previous machine learning skills. The results are available through the no-code Video Indexer portal or the REST API for easy integration into your own applications.

We built these animated character models in collaboration with select customers who contributed real animated content for training and testing. The value of the new functionality is well articulated by Andy Gutteridge, Senior Director, Studio & Post-Production Technology at Viacom International Media Networks, which was one of the data contributors: “The addition of reliable AI-based animated detection will enable us to discover and catalogue character metadata from our content library quickly and efficiently. Most importantly, it will give our creative teams the power to find the content they want instantly, minimize time spent on media management and allow them to focus on the creative.”

To get started with animated character recognition, please visit our documentation page.

Multilingual identification and transcription

Some media assets like news, current affairs, and interviews contain audio with speakers using different languages. Most existing speech-to-text capabilities require the audio recognition language to be specified in advance, which is an obstacle to transcribing multilingual videos. Our new automatic spoken language identification for multiple content feature leverages machine learning technology to identify the different languages used in a media asset. Once detected, each language segment undergoes an automatic transcription process in the language identified, and all segments are integrated back together into one transcription file consisting of multiple languages.

The resulting transcription is available both as part of Video Indexer JSON output and as closed-caption files. The output transcript is also integrated with Azure Search, allowing you to immediately search across videos for the different language segments. Furthermore, the multi-language transcription is available as part of the Video Indexer portal experience so you can view the transcript and identified language by time, or jump to the specific places in the video for each language and see the multi-language transcription as captions as a video is played. You can also translate the output back-and-forth into 54 different languages via the portal and API.

Read more about the new multilingual option and how to use it in Video Indexer in our documentation.

Additional updated and improved models

We are also adding new and improving existing models within Video Indexer, including:

Extraction of people and locations entities

We’ve extended our current brand detection capabilities to also incorporate well-known names and locations, such as the Eiffel Tower in Paris or Big Ben in London. When these appear in the generated transcript or on-screen via optical character recognition (OCR), a specific insight is created. With this new capability, you can review and search by all people, locations and brands that appeared in the video, along with their timeframes, description, and a link to our Bing search engine for more information.

 

Editorial shot detection model

This new feature adds a set of “tags” in the metadata attached to an individual shot in the insights JSON to represent its editorial type (such as wide shot, medium shot, close up, extreme close up, two shot, multiple people, outdoor and indoor, etc.). These shot-type characteristics come in handy when editing videos into clips and trailers as well as when searching for a specific style of shots for artistic purposes.

Explore and read more about editorial shot type detection in Video Indexer.

Expanded granularity of IPTC mapping

Our topic inferencing model determines the topic of videos based on transcription, optical character recognition (OCR), and detected celebrities even if the topic is not explicitly stated. We map these inferred topics to four different taxonomies: Wikipedia, Bing, IPTC, and IAB. With this enhancement, we now include level-2 IPTC taxonomy.

Tanking advantage of these enhancements is as easy as re-indexing your current Video Indexer library.

New live streaming functionality

We are also introducing two new live-streaming capabilities in preview to Azure Media Services.

Live transcription supercharges your live events with AI

Using Azure Media Services to stream a live event, you can now get an output stream that includes an automatically generated text track in addition to the video and audio content. This text track is created using AI-based live transcription of the audio of the contribution feed. Custom methods are applied before and after speech-to-text conversion in order to improve the end-user experience. The text track is packaged into IMSC1, TTML, or WebVTT, depending on whether you are delivering in DASH, HLS CMAF, or HLS TS.

Live linear encoding for 24/7 over-the-top (OTT) channels

Using our v3 APIs, you can create, manage, and stream live channels for OTT services and take advantage of all the other features of Azure Media Services like live to video on demand (VOD), packaging, and digital rights management (DRM).

To try these preview features, please visit the Azure Media Services Community page.

New packaging features

Support for audio description tracks

Broadcast content frequently has an audio track that contains verbal explanations of on-screen action in addition to the normal program audio. This makes programming more accessible for vision-impaired viewers, especially if the content is highly visual. The new audio description feature enables a customer to annotate one of the audio tracks to be the audio description (AD) track, which in turn can be used by players to make the AD track discoverable by viewers.

ID3 metadata insertion

In order to signal the insertion of advertisements or custom metadata events on a client player, broadcasters often make use of timed metadata embedded within the video. In addition to SCTE-35 signaling modes, we now also support ID3v2 or other custom schemas defined by an application developer for use by the client application.

Microsoft Azure partners demonstrate end-to-end solutions

Bitmovin is debuting its Bitmovin Video Encoding and Bitmovin Video Player on Microsoft Azure. Customers can now use these encoding and player solutions on Azure and leverage advanced functionality such as 3-pass encoding, AV1/VVC codec support, multi-language closed captions, and pre-integrated video analytics for QoS, ad, and video tracking.

Evergent is showing its User Lifecycle Management Platform on Azure. As a leading provider of revenue and customer lifecycle management solutions, Evergent leverages Azure AI to enable premium entertainment service providers to improve customer acquisition and retention by generating targeted packages and offers at critical points in the customer lifecycle.

Haivision will showcase its intelligent media routing cloud service, SRT Hub, that helps customers transform end-to-end workflows starting with ingest using Azure Data Box Edge and media workflow transformation using Hublets from Avid, Telestream, Wowza and Cinegy, and Make.tv.

SES has developed a suite of broadcast-grade media services on Azure for its satellite connectivity and managed media services customers. SES will show solutions for fully managed playout services, including master playout, localized playout and ad detection and replacement, and 24×7 high-quality multichannel live encoding on Azure.

SyncWords is making its caption automation technology and user-friendly cloud-based tools available on Azure. These offerings will make it easier for media organizations to add automated closed captioning and foreign language subtitling capabilities to their real-time and offline video processing workflows on Azure.
 
Global design and technology services company Tata Elxsi has integrated TEPlay, its OTT platform SaaS, with Azure Media Services to deliver OTT content from the cloud. Tata Elxsi has also brought FalconEye, its quality of experience (QoE) monitoring solution that focuses on actionable metrics and analytics, to Microsoft Azure.

Verizon Media is making its streaming platform available in beta on Azure. Verizon Media Platform is an enterprise-grade managed OTT solution including DRM, ad insertion, one-to-one personalized sessions, dynamic content replacement, and video delivery. The integration brings simplified workflows, global support and scale, and access to a range of unique capabilities available on Azure.

Many of our partners will also be presenting in the theater at our booth, so make sure you stop by to catch them!

Short distance, big impact

We are proud to support the 4K 4Charity Fun Run as a gold sponsor. This is a running and walking event held at various media industry events since 2014, and it raises awareness and financial support for non-profits focused on increased diversity and inclusion. Register and come join us on Saturday, September 14th, at 7:30am at the Amstelpark in Amsterdam.

Don’t miss out

There’s a lot more going on at the Microsoft booth this IBC. To learn more, read about how the community of our customers and partners are innovating on Azure in media and entertainment, or better yet come and join us in Hall 1 Booth C27. If you won’t be there, we’re sorry we’ll miss you, but you can try Video Indexer and Azure Media Services for yourself by following the links.
Quelle: Azure

Expanded Azure Maps coverage, preview of Azure Maps feedback site, and more

This blog post was co-authored by Ricky Brundritt, Principal Technical Program Manager, Azure Maps.

Azure Maps services continue to expand our support for Microsoft enterprise customers’ needs in Azure. And, we’ve been busy expanding our capabilities. Today we’re announcing Azure Maps is now available in Argentina, India, Morocco, and Pakistan. We have also launched a new Azure Maps data feedback site that is now in preview. In addition, we’re also introducing several enhancements that are available via our Representational state transfer (REST) services and Azure Maps web and Android SDKs.

Here is a run-down of the new features:

Azure Maps is available in new countries and regions

Azure Maps is now available in Argentina, India, Morocco, and Pakistan and these regions require specific consideration for using maps. Azure Maps will now empower our customers to use the appropriate map views in these regions. To learn more about how to request data via our REST services and SDKs for the new regions and countries listed above, please see our Azure Maps localization page.

Introducing preview of Azure Maps data feedback site

To serve the freshest map data as possible to our customers and as an easy way to provide map data feedback, we’re introducing the Azure Maps data feedback site. The new site empowers our customers to provide direct data feedback, especially on business points of interest and residential addresses. The feedback goes directly to our data providers and their map editors who can quickly evaluate and incorporate feedback into our mapping products. To learn how to provide different types of feedback using the Azure Maps feedback site, please see our How-to guide.

 

REST service enhancements

Point of interest data updates

When requesting point of interest data, you might want to restrict the results to specific brands. For example, your scenario is to only show gas stations under a specific brand to your end users. To support this, we’ve added the capability to include one or multiple brands in your request to limit the search results. To learn more, please see our How-to Guide article where we share useful tips to call data via Azure Maps search services.

In addition, Azure Maps now returns hours of operation for points of interest like business listings. We return the opening hours for the next week, starting with the current day in the local time of the point of interest. This information can be used to better optimize your planned routes, and for example, show end users store locations that are open during a specific timeframe.

Sunset and sunrise times

According to a recent report from the Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction, buildings construction and operations account for 36 percent of global final energy use and nearly 40 percent of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions when upstream power generation is considered. To create impact with IoT and help to combat climate changes and optimize buildings for energy efficiency, Get Timezone by Coordinates API now returns sunset and sunrise times for a given coordinate location. Developers can automate device messages in their IoT solutions, for example, by building rules to schedule heating and cooling by using sunrise and sunset times combined with telemetry messages from a variety of devices and sensors. 

Cartography and styling updates

Point of interest data rendering

To provide richer and more informative map data content, we’ve pushed up certain point of interest data so that certain categories appear at higher levels. As a result, airport icons are rendered at zoom levels 10 to 22.

Point of interest icons for important tourist attractions like museums, and railway and metro stations are displayed on zoom levels 12 to 22. In addition, universities, colleges, and schools are shown on zoom levels 13 to 22.

 

State boundaries and abbreviated state names

To improve usability and give more detailed views, state boundaries are pushed up in the data so that they appear already at zoom level 3. Abbreviated state names are also now shown in zoom level.

Blank map styles in web SDK

Often it is useful to be able to visualize data on top of a blank canvas or to replace the base maps with custom tile layers. With this in the mind the Azure Maps web SDK now supports two new map styles; blank and blank_accessible. The blank map style will not render any base map data, nor will it update the screen reader on where the map is centered over. The blank_ accessible style will continue to provide screen reader updates with location details of where the map is located, even though the base map is not displayed. Please note, you can change the background color of web SDK by using the CSS background-color style of the map DIV element.

Web SDK enhancements

The Azure Maps team has made many additions and improvements to the web SDK. Below is a closer look at some of the key improvements.

Cluster aggregates

Clustering of point data based on zoom level can be done to reduce the visual clutter on the map and make it easier to make sense of the data. Often clusters are represented using a symbol with the number of points that are within the cluster, however sometimes you may want to further customize the style of clusters based on a metric like the total revenue of all points within a cluster. With cluster aggregates, custom properties can be created and populated using an aggregate expression. To learn more please see our Azure Maps documentation.

Aggregating data in clusters

Image templates

The Azure Maps web SDK uses WebGL for rendering most data on the map. Symbol layers can be used to render points on the map with an image, line layers can have images rendered along it, and polygon layers can be rendered with a fill pattern image. In order to ensure good performance, these images need to be loaded into the map image sprite resource before rendering. The web SDK already provides a couple of images of markers in a handful of colors, however, there is an infinite number of color combinations that developers may want to use. With this in mind we have ported the SVG template functionality for HTML markers over to the image sprite and have added 42 image templates, 27 symbol icons, and 15 polygon fill patterns. You can easily define a primary and secondary color as well as a scale for each template when loading it into the map image sprite. These templates can also be used with HTML markers as well. Check out our documentation and see our Try it now tool to learn more.

Images can be used HTML markers and various layers within the Azure Maps Web SDK

Additional notable improvements to the web SDK:

Accessibility improvements – The team has spent a lot of time improving accessibility in the web SDK and ensuring that every user is able to use the map. A major part of this consisted of leveraging the vector tiles of the base map so that we can provide highly accurate descriptions of what the map is rendering.
Limit spinning of the globe – By default the map mimics a globe by allowing the user to infinitely scroll the map west or east. When the user is zoomed out, sometimes the map will render additional copies of the globe to fill in the blank space. This is great for most scenarios, but some developers prefer having a single copy of the globe that doesn’t scroll infinitely. Now this can be configured using the new renderWorldCopies map option.
Easily show all map styles in style picker – Up until now, if you wanted to show all map styles in the style picker control you had to list them all in an array in the mapStyles option. Now you simply set this option to "all.”
Image overlay georeferencing tools – When georeferencing an image to overlay on the map, sometimes all you have is some reference points (i.e. pixels to positions) which might not be the corners of the image. We added some functions which can be used to correctly georeference the image. We also added tools for reprojecting between pixels and positions relative to the image. For example, if you have an image of a floor plan displayed on the map, you can take any map position and determine its pixel coordinate on the original image and vice versa.
New spatial math functions – Several new spatial math functions have been added. One of the new spatial math functions we added will calculate the closest point to a location that falls on the edge of another geometry object. This has a lot of use cases, such as basic snapping of points to lines or simply knowing how far off the path something is.
Pitch touch support – You can now pitch the map using touch, with two-finger drag up/down.
Popup customizations – Up until now you could only have a popup with a white background and pointer arrow. Now you can set the color of the popup and optionally hide the pointer arrow. Popups can also be made draggable now too!
Shape and Data source events – New events for tracking changes to shapes and data sources.

Tile layers in the Android SDK

The Azure Maps team released an Android SDK into preview earlier this year. It is able to render point, line, and polygon data. The team has now added support for rendering tile layers. Tile layers are a great way to visualize large data sets on the map. Not only can a tile layer be generated from an image, but vector data can also be rendered as a tile layer too. By rendering vector data as a tile layer, the map control only needs to load the tiles which can be much smaller in file size than the vector data they represent. This technique is used by many who need to render millions of rows of data on the map.

Rendering tile layers within the Azure Maps Android SDK

We want to hear from you!

We are always working to grow and improve the Azure Maps platform and want to hear from you. We’re here to help and want to make sure you get the most out of the Azure Maps platform.

Have a feature request? Add it or vote up the request on our feedback site.
Having an issue getting your code to work? Have a topic you would like us to cover on the Azure blog? Ask us on the Azure Maps forums.
Looking for code samples or wrote a great one you want to share? Join us on GitHub.
To learn more, read the Azure Maps documentation.

Quelle: Azure

Five best practices for unlocking IoT value

Accenture and Avanade won the 2019 Microsoft Internet of Things Partner of the Year award this past spring. At the Microsoft Inspire partner conference in July, Brendan Mislin, Managing Director, Industry X.0 IoT Lead at Accenture, shared some insights and best practices that have helped this award-winning partner unlock the value of Azure IoT for our mutual customers.

Figure 1 Petrofac, a leading oilfield services company, leverages Accenture’s Connected Construction solution

Five of the best practices Mislin shared are below. For the complete discussion, view the interview.

1.    Expect IoT opportunities in all industry segments

Partners should expect to use IoT technology in every industry from retail and manufacturing to energy and health. “Accenture doesn’t have a typical IoT project,” Brendan stated. “In the last 12 months, we’ve seen IoT technology used in many of the 40 industries in which we deliver business transformation solutions.”

Connected operations is the highest growth IoT segment for Accenture. “If I had to identify where IoT is really crossing the chasm and where Accenture has seen the most growth of its IoT implementations, it’s in connected operations,” Mislin shared.  Accenture defines connected operations as connecting equipment within a factory or other industrial environment to the Cloud – or connecting multiple factories within the same company to the Cloud and then providing dashboards & advanced analytics that bring to life specific insights for various roles within each factory.

2.    Market and sell business transformation—not IoT

Many IoT customers get stuck at the proof of concept stage. Observing this pattern resulted in Accenture shifting its approach. 
“A few years ago, we made the conscious decision to stop selling IoT,” Mislin explained. “To move our clients forward, we realized we needed to help customers transform their businesses.” As Accenture delivered business transformation solutions, they implemented the best technology from IoT to artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, cybersecurity, or augmented reality (AR/XR).

Real-life example: Accenture enabled PT SERA, an auto rental and leasing provider in Indonesia, to transform their rental services and be positioned as a digital visionary and leader in mobility through Accenture’s Connected Fleet solution. While the solution is IoT-based, Accenture leveraged technologies like AI and machine learning (ML) to maximize business value from the platform. “We’re using advanced analytics to build in native use cases like driver scoring (safety and eco index), driver fuel optimization, route optimization, vehicle predictive maintenance, geofencing and route violation, and more,” stated Mislin.

3.    Understand and articulate project value

“In the early days of IoT, customers focused on running proofs of concept to test out IoT technology.  In the early days of IoT, we thought it was great to get data in real-time from a factory and see it on our phones,” noted Mislin.  “However, these projects seldom progressed to production.”

In today’s market, Accenture starts by articulating business value. Accenture first determines what insights can make positive changes to the way a client operates. For example, there might be several pieces of information that factory operators could leverage to increase the number of widgets produced on each shift.

Then Accenture looks at a client’s business to make sure the IoT improvements translate to increased revenue or profit. Just because the client can now produce more widgets, does not mean the client will automatically make more money.  As more widgets are produced, for example, Accenture may work with a client to revamp its supply chain.

4.    Leverage the Microsoft Azure IoT partner ecosystem

When it comes to IoT projects, one partner cannot do it alone. This is where a vibrant partner ecosystem is key.  Mislin used the example of Accenture’s Connected Construction work at Petrofac, a leading oilfield services company, to illustrate the importance of a partner ecosystem.

“On the Petrofac Connected Construction project, Accenture worked with a wide variety of partners,” shared Mislin. “We had multiple hardware partners for tracking people and equipment indoors, outdoors, on sunny days, on cloudy days, near big steel objects, and out in the open desert. We had a partner providing the LoRa base stations, a partner for fiber optic cable transformations, and more.”

5.    Microsoft drives partner success

“The pace of innovation from Microsoft has enabled us to deliver solutions that would have been previously unthinkable,” offered Mislin. In the Petrofac project, for example, Microsoft’s advances in Azure IoT Edge and Azure Stream Analytics gave Accenture the technology needed to build out a Connected Construction solution that would have been impossible last year.

Summary

These are five of the best practices shared by Brendan Mislin, Managing Director, Industry X.0 IoT Lead at Accenture, during the recent Inspire partner conference. For more, view the complete interview.
Quelle: Azure

Azure HPC Cache: Reducing latency between Azure and on-premises storage

Today we’re previewing the Azure HPC Cache service, a new Azure offering that empowers organizations to more easily run large, complex high-performance computing (HPC) workloads in Azure. Azure HPC Cache reduces latency for applications where data may be tethered to existing data center infrastructure because of dataset sizes and operational scale.

Scale your HPC pipeline using data stored on-premises or in Azure. Azure HPC Cache delivers the performant data access you need to be able to run your most demanding, file-based HPC workloads in Azure, without moving petabytes of data, writing new code, or modifying existing applications.

For users familiar with the Avere vFXT for Azure application available through the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, Azure HPC Cache offers similar functionality in a more seamless experience—meaning even easier data access and simpler management via the Azure Portal and API tools. The service can be driven with Azure APIs and is proactively monitored on the back end by the Azure HPC Cache support team and maintained by Azure service engineers. What is the net benefit? The Azure HPC Cache service delivers all the performance benefits of the Avere vFXT caching technology at an even lower total cost of ownership.

Azure HPC Cache works by automatically caching active data in Azure that is located both on-premises and in Azure, effectively hiding latency to on-premises network-attached storage (NAS), Azure-based NAS environments using Azure NetApp Files or Azure Blob Storage. The cache delivers high-performance seamless network file system (NFSv3) access to files in the Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) compliant directory structures. The cache can also aggregate multiple data sources into an aggregated name space to present a single directory structure to clients. Azure compute clients can then access data as though it all originated on a single NAS filer.

Ideal for cloud-bursting applications or hybrid NAS environments, Azure HPC Cache lets you keep your data on existing datacenter-resident Azure NetApp or Dell EMC Isilon arrays. Whether you need to store data on premises while you develop your cloud strategy for security and compliance reasons, or because you simply have so much data on-premises that you don’t want to move it, you can still take full advantage of Azure compute services and do it sooner, rather than later. Once you are ready or able to shift data to Azure Storage resources, you can still run file-based workloads with ease. Azure HPC Cache provides the performance you need to lift and shift your pipeline.

 

To the cloud in days, not months

Combined with other Azure services such as the Azure HB- and HC-series virtual machines (VMs) for HPC and the Azure CycleCloud HPC workload manager, Azure HPC Cache lets you quickly reproduce your on-premise environment in the cloud and access on-premise data without committing to a large-scale migration. You can also expect to run your HPC workloads in Azure at performance levels similar to your on-premises infrastructure.

Azure HPC Cache service is easy to initiate and manage from the Azure Portal. Once your network has been set up and your on-premises environment has IP connectivity to Azure, you can typically turn on Azure HPC Cache service in about ten minutes. Imagine being able to do HPC jobs in days rather than waiting for months while your IT team fine-tunes data migration strategies and completes all required data moves and synchronization processes.

From burst to all-in: Your choice, your pace

The high-performance Azure HPC Cache delivers the scale-out file access required by HPC applications across an array of industries, from finance to government, life sciences, manufacturing, media, and oil and gas. The service is ideally suited for read-heavy workloads running on 1,000 to 50,000 compute cores. Because Azure HPC Cache is a metered service with usage charges included on your Azure bill, you can turn it off—and stop the meter—when you’re done.

Azure HPC Cache helps HPC users access Azure resources more simply and economically. You can deliver exactly the performance needed for computationally intensive workloads, in time to meet demand. Start by using Azure capacity for short-term demand, and enabling a hybrid NAS environment, or go all-cloud and make Azure your permanent IT infrastructure. Azure HPC Cache provides the seamless data access you need to leverage cloud resources in a manner and at a pace that suits your unique business needs and use cases.

Proven technology maintained by Azure experts

Azure HPC Cache service is the latest innovation in a continuum of high-performance caching solutions built on Avere Systems FXT Edge Filer foundational technology. Who uses this technology? A diverse, global community that includes post-production studio artists in the UK, weather researchers in Poland, animators in Toronto, investment bankers in New York City, bioinformaticists in Cambridge and Switzerland, and many, many more of the world’s most demanding HPC users. Azure HPC Cache combines this most sought-after technology with the technical expertise and deep-bench support of the Microsoft Azure team.

Can’t wait to try it?

Ready to get off the sidelines and start running your HPC workloads in Azure? We have a few opportunities for customers to preview Azure HPC Cache. Just complete a short survey, and we’ll review your submission for suitability.

The Azure HPC Cache team is committed to helping deliver on Microsoft’s “Cloud for all” mission and will work with you to design a cloud that you can use to quickly turn your ideas into solutions. Have questions? Email them to AzureHPCCache@microsoft.com.
Quelle: Azure

Microsoft Azure available from new cloud regions in Germany

Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Telekom, SAP, and others trust Microsoft for their digital transformations

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

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

Trusted Microsoft cloud services

Microsoft cloud services delivered from a given geography, such as our new regions in Germany, offer scalable, highly available, and resilient cloud services while helping enterprises and organizations meet their data residency, security, and compliance needs. We have deep expertise protecting data and empowering customers around the globe to meet extensive security and privacy requirements by offering the broadest set of compliance certifications and attestations in the industry. We also have a history of collaborating with customers to navigate evolving business needs, including delivering innovative strategies to help customers accelerate their European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance.

Addressing the evolving needs of German customers

In Germany, companies across industries are adopting cloud technology amidst a changing regulatory framework that includes GDPR and a need for in-country data residency. Cloud services are becoming a key driver of product development, business model creation, and international stage competition. Responding to these changes, we’ve evolved our cloud strategy to better enable the digital transformation of our German customers.

Azure is now available from our new cloud datacenter regions in Germany to provide customers and partners with greater flexibility, the latest intelligent cloud services, full connectivity to our global cloud network, and data residency within Germany. The new regions with German-specific compliance, including Cloud Computing Compliance Controls Catalogue (C5) attestation, and will remove barriers so in-country companies can benefit from the latest solutions such as containers, IoT, and AI. These customers include:

Deutsche Bank, Germany’s leading bank, is leveraging our cloud services to accelerate the innovation of financial products and services while maintaining high-quality service and data security. With our collaboration, Deutsche Bank has developed a data platform that meets both international and local regulatory requirements while offering customers secure and cost-efficient services.
Deutsche Telekom, one of the world's leading integrated telecommunications companies, will play an integral role in onboarding customers to our new cloud regions in Germany.
SAP, the market leader in enterprise application software, will combine Microsoft Azure and SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud to provide solutions directly from Germany—for the "Intelligent Enterprise in the Intelligent Cloud."
Arvato Systems, a global IT specialist and multi-cloud service provider, is now able to offer their customers fully integrated Azure services with data retention in Germany, empowering the digital transformation of German medium-sized companies.

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

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

Satellite connectivity expands reach of Azure ExpressRoute across the globe

Staying connected to access and ingest data in today's highly distributed application environments is paramount for any enterprise. Many businesses need to operate in and across highly unpredictable and challenging conditions. For example, energy, farming, mining, and shipping often need to operate in remote, rural, or other isolated locations with poor network connectivity.

With the cloud now the de facto and primary target for the bulk of application and infrastructure migrations, access from remote and rural locations becomes even more important. The path to realizing the value of the cloud starts with a hybrid environment access resources with dedicated and private connectivity.

Network performance for these hybrid scenarios from rural and remote sites becomes increasingly critical. With globally connected organizations, the explosive number of connected devices and data in the Cloud, as well as emerging areas such as autonomous driving and traditional remote locations such as cruise ships are directly affected by connectivity performance.  Other examples requiring highly available, fast, and predictable network service include managing supply chain systems from remote farms or transferring data to optimize equipment maintenance in aerospace.

Today, I want to share the progress we have made to help customers address and solve these issues. Satellite connectivity addresses challenges of operating in remote locations.

Microsoft cloud services can be accessed with Azure ExpressRoute using satellite connectivity. With commercial satellite constellations becoming widely available, new solutions architectures offer improved and affordable performance to access Microsoft.

Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute, with one of the largest networking ecosystems in the public Cloud now includes satellite connectivity partners bringing new options and coverage.

 SES will provide dedicated, private network connectivity from any vessel, airplane, enterprise, energy or government site in the world to the Microsoft Azure cloud platform via its unique multi-orbit satellite systems. As an ExpressRoute partner, SES will provide global reach and fibre-like high-performance to Azure customers via its complete portfolio of Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) satellites, Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) O3b constellation, global gateway network, and core terrestrial network infrastructure around the world.

 Intelsat’s customers are the global telecommunications service providers and multinational enterprises that rely on our services to power businesses and communities wherever their needs take them. Now they have a powerful new tool in their solutions toolkit. With the ability to rapidly expand the reach of cloud-based enterprises, accelerate customer adoption of cloud services, and deliver additional resiliency to existing cloud-connected networks, the benefits of cloud services are no longer limited to only a subset of users and geographies. Intelsat is excited to bring our global reach and reliability to this partnership with Microsoft, providing the connectivity that is essential to delivering on the expectations and promises of the cloud.

Viasat, a provider of high-speed, high-quality satellite broadband solutions to businesses and commercial entities around the world, is introducing Direct Cloud Connect service to give customers expanded options for accessing enterprise-grade cloud services. Azure ExpressRoute will be the first cloud service offered to enable customers to optimize their network infrastructure and cloud investments through a secure, dedicated network connection to Azure’s intelligent cloud services.

Microsoft wants to help accelerate scenarios by optimizing the connectivity through Microsoft’s global network, one of the largest and most innovative in the world.

ExpressRoute for satellites directly connects our partners’ ground stations to our global network using a dedicated private link. But what does it more specifically mean to our customers?

Using satellite connectivity with ExpressRoute provides dedicated and highly available, private access directly to Azure and Azure Government clouds.
ExpressRoute provides predictable latency through well-connected ground stations, and, as always, maintains all traffic privately on our network – no traversing of the Internet.
Customers and partners can harness Microsoft’s global network to rapidly deliver data to where it’s needed or augment routing to best optimize for their specific need.
Satellite and a wide selection of service providers will enable rich solution portfolios for cloud and hybrid networking solutions centered around Azure networking services.
With some of the world’s leading broadband satellite providers as partners, customers can select the best solution based on their needs. Each of the partners brings different strengths, for example, choices between Geostationary (GEO), Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) and in the future Low Earth Orbit(LEO) satellites, geographical presence, pricing, technology differentiation, bandwidth, and others.
ExpressRoute over satellite creates new channels and reach for satellite broadband providers, through a growing base of enterprises, organizations and public sector customers.

With this addition to the ExpressRoute partner ecosystem, Azure customers in industries like aviation, oil and gas, government, peacekeeping, and remote manufacturing can deploy new use cases and projects that increase the value of their cloud investments and strategy.

As always, we are very interested in your feedback and suggestions as we continue to enhance our networking services, so I encourage you to share your experiences and suggestions with us.

You can follow these links to learn more about our partners Intelsat, SES, and Viasat, and learn more about Azure ExpressRoute from our website and our detailed documentation.
Quelle: Azure

Microsoft’s connected vehicle platform presence at IAA, the Frankfurt Auto Show

This post was co-authored by the extended Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform (MCVP) team. 

A connected vehicle solution must enable a fleet of potentially millions of vehicles, distributed around the world, to deliver intuitive experiences including infotainment, entertainment, productivity, driver safety, driver assistance. In addition to these services in the vehicle, a connected vehicle solution is critical for fleet solutions like ride and car sharing as well as phone apps that incorporate the context of the user and the journey.

Imagine you are driving to your vacation destination and you start your conference call from home while you are packing. When you transition to the shared vehicle, the route planning takes into account the best route for connectivity and easy driving and adjusts the microphone sensitivity during the call in the back seat. These experiences today are constrained to either the center-stack screen, known as the in-vehicle infotainment device (IVI), or other specific hardware and software that is determined when the car is being built. Instead, these experiences should evolve over the lifetime of ridership. The opportunity is for new, modern experiences in vehicles that span the entire interior and systems of a vehicle, plus experiences outside the vehicle, to create deeper and longer-lasting relationships between car makers and their customers throughout the transportation journey.

To realize this opportunity, car manufacturers and mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) providers need a connected vehicle platform to complete the digital feedback loop by incorporating the seamless deployment of new functionality that is composed from multiple independently updatable services that reflect new understanding, at scale, and with dependable and consistent management of data and these services from Azure to and from three different edges: the vehicle, the phone, and the many enterprise applications that support the journey.

The Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform (MCVP) is the digital chassis upon which automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) can deliver value-add services to their customers. These services areas include:

In-vehicle experiences
Autonomous driving
Advanced navigation
Customer engagement and insights
Telematics and prediction services
Connectivity and over the air updates (OTA)

MCVP is a platform composed from about 40 different Azure services and tailored for automotive scenarios. To ensure continuous over-the-air (OTA) updates of new functionality, MCVP also includes different Azure edge technologies such as Automotive IoT Edge that runs in the vehicle, and Azure Maps for intelligent location services.

With MCVP, and an ecosystem of partners across the industry, Microsoft offers a consistent platform across all digital services. This includes vehicle provisioning, two-way network connectivity, continuous over-the-air updates of containerized functionality, support for command-and-control, hot, warm, or cold path for telematics, and extension hooks for customer or third-party differentiation. Being built on Azure, MCVP includes the hyperscale, global availability, and regulatory compliance that comes as part of the Azure cloud. OEMs and fleet operators leverage MCVP as a way to “move up the stack” and focus on their customers rather than spend resources on non-differentiating infrastructure.

Automotive OEMs already taking advantage of MCVP, along with many of our ecosystem partners, including the Volkswagen Group, the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance, and Iconiq.

In this blog post, we are delighted to recap many of the MCVP ecosystem partners that accelerate our common customers’ ability to develop and deploy completed connected vehicle solutions.

Focus areas and supporting partnerships

Microsoft’s ecosystem of partners include independent software vendors (ISVs), automotive suppliers, and systems integrators (SIs) to complete the overall value proposition of MCVP. We have pursued partnerships in these areas:

In-vehicle experiences

Cheaply available screens, increasingly autonomous vehicles, the emergence of pervasive voice assistants, and users’ increased expectation of the connectedness of their things have all combined to create an opportunity for OEMs to differentiate through the digital experiences they offer to the occupants, both the driver and the passengers, of their vehicles.

LG Electronics’ webOS Autoplatform offers an in-vehicle, container-capable OS that brings the third party application ecosystem created for premium TVs to In-vehicle experiences. webOSAuto supports the container-based runtime environment of MCVP and can be an important part of modern experiences in the vehicle.

Faurecia leverages MCVP to create disruptive, connected, and personalized services inside the Cockpit of the Future to reinvent the on-board experience for all occupants.

Autonomous driving

The continuous development of autonomous driving systems requires input from both test fleets and production vehicles that are integrated by a common connected vehicle platform. This is because the underlying machine learning (ML) models that either drive the car or provide assistance to the driver will be updated over time as they are improved based on feedback across those fleets, and those updates will be deployed over the air in incremental rings of deployment by way of their connection to the cloud.

Teraki creates and deploys containerized functionality to vehicles to efficiently extract and manage selected sensor data such as telemetry, video, and 3D information. Teraki’s product continuously trains and updates the sensor data to extract relevant, condensed information that enables customers’ models to achieve highest accuracy rates, both in the vehicle (edge) as well in Azure (cloud.)

TomTom is integrating their navigation intelligence services such as HD Maps and Traffic as containerized services for use in MCVP so that other services in the vehicles, including autonomous driving, can take advantage of the additional location context.

Advanced navigation

TomTom’s navigation application has been integrated with the MCVP in-vehicle compute architecture to enable navigation usage and diagnostics data to be sent from vehicles to the Azure cloud where the data can be used by automakers to generate data-driven insights to deliver tailored services, and to make better informed design and engineering decisions. The benefit of this integration includes the immediate insights created from comparing the intended route with the actual route with road metadata. If you are attending IAA, be sure to check out the demo at the Microsoft booth.

Telenav is a leading provider of connected car and location-based services and is working with Microsoft to integrate its intelligent connected-car solution suite, including infotainment, in-car commerce, and navigation, with MCVP.

Customer engagement and insights

Otonomo securely ingests automotive data from OEMs, fleet operators, etc., then reshapes and enriches the data so application and service providers can use it to develop a host of new and innovative offerings that deliver value to drivers. The data services platform has built it privacy by design solutions for both person and aggregate use cases. Through the collaboration with Microsoft, car manufacturers adopting the Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform can easily plug their connected car data into Otonomo’s existing ecosystem to quickly roll out new connected car services to drivers.

Telematics and prediction services

DSA is a leading software and solutions provider for quality assurance, diagnostics, and maintenance of the entire vehicle electrics and electronics in the automotive industry. Together, DSA and Microsoft target to close the digital feedback loops between automotive production facilities and field cars by providing an advanced Vehicle Lifecycle Management, based on the Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform.

WirelessCar is a leading managed service provider within the connected vehicle eco-system and empowers car makers to provide mobility services with Microsoft Azure and the Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform that supports and accelerates their customers’ high market ambitions in a world of rapid changing business models.

Connectivity and OTA

Cubic Telecom is a leading connectivity management software provider to the automotive and IoT industries globally. They are one of the first partners to bring seamless connectivity as a core service offering to MCVP for a global market. The deep integration with MCVP allows for a single data lake and an integrated services monitoring path. In addition, Cubic Telecom provides connected car capabilities that let drivers use infotainment apps in real-time, connect their devices to the Wi-Fi hotspot, and top-up on data plans to access high-speed LTE connectivity, optionally on a separate APN.

Excelfore is an innovator in automotive over-the-air (OTA) updating and data aggregation technologies. They provide a full implementation of the eSync bi-directional data pipeline, which has been ported to the Microsoft Azure cloud platform and integrated as the first solution for MCVP OTA updating.

Tata Communications is a leading global digital infrastructure provider. We are working with them to help speed the development of new innovative connected car applications. By combining the IoT connectivity capabilities of Tata Communications MOVE™ with MCVP, the two companies will enable automotive manufacturers to offer consumers worldwide more seamless and secure driving experiences.

Microsoft is incredibly excited to be a part of the connected vehicle space. With the Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform, our ecosystem partners, and our partnerships with leading automotive players – both vehicle OEMs and automotive technology suppliers – we believe we have a uniquely capable offering enabling at global scale the next wave of innovation in the automotive industry as well as related verticals such as smart cities, smart infrastructure, insurance, transportation, and beyond.

Explore the Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform today and visit us at IAA.
Quelle: Azure