Microsoft Announces New Cloud Services 

Microsoft Corp. has announced new cloud services, mobility solutions, APIs, tools and an expanded ecosystem of partner solutions, all designed to help IT professionals and developers compete and thrive in today’s mobile-first, cloud-first world.

“Today’s enterprise is always on, and IT professionals and developers are under constant pressure to keep up with the demands of the business,” said Jason Zander, corporate vice president of Microsoft Azure, Microsoft. “We are using the power of our cloud platform — Azure, Office 365 and Microsoft Dynamics — to deliver technology solutions that empower IT professionals, developers and end users to do more.”

Microsoft announced several cloud services to help intelligently automate and streamline IT operations, including these:

• Azure Operational Insights brings together Azure, HDInsight and Microsoft System Center to gather and analyze machine data across cloud environments and turn it into actionable insights that inform business decisions. Available in preview in November 2014.
• Azure Batch allows customers to deploy massive scale-out jobs, with access to thousands of cores, to solve complex problems with just a few clicks and no infrastructure investment. Available in preview.
• Azure Automation automates time-consuming tasks across Azure and third-party environments, reducing the risk associated with repetitive manual processes. Generally available.

Microsoft also announced a number of security enhancements, generally available now, to Azure Virtual Machines and Cloud Services, including these:

• Support for multiple network interface cards (NICs) so customers can bring their own networking and security appliances such as load balancers and firewalls
• New Network Security Groups that enable customized security boundaries for network access and provide greater control over traffic flow
• Microsoft Anti-Malware for Virtual Machines and Cloud Services, a free service that provides real-time threat protection

Microsoft continued to deliver new partner-powered cloud solutions, including:

• An expanded Cloud OS Network, with partner support now available in over 100 countries, gives customers broad access to hybrid cloud solutions.
• A new Azure Certified for Application Services program, part of Azure Certified, which covers managed APIs and data services. Customers can now access over 50 solutions from more than 30 partners, through the Azure Marketplace, including New Relic, Cloudera, Hortonworks, CommVault, CoreOS, DataStax, NGINX and Veeam.