What has been announced at Microsoft Inspire?

Microsoft announced a list of new Azure updates as many companies experience the benefits of the Hybrid Cloud.  

Azure Lighthouse  

One factor is Azure Lighthouse which is a single control pane that allows partners to view and manage Azure at scale for all customers and your company. Microsoft anticipates that Microsoft Lighthouse will result in greater visibility and additional security for customers with even more automation. This feature will work across all Azure services.  

There is also another new delegated resource concept inspired by Azure partners that incorporate infrastructure-as-code and automation into their managed services. This tool will allow their users to delegate important permissions to service providers including vital components like subscriptions, individual and group resources.  

As an MSP they can then provide remote access to accounts within the customer’s tenant allowing for custom constraints using the standard Azure role-based access control mechanism.  

Azure Migration Program  

In addition to the Microsoft Azure Lighthouse there will also be introduced an Azure Migration Program for customers which will offer a step-by-step guide for end-users to migrate existing apps to the cloud.  This will allow customers to speed up their migration to the cloud using specialised tools while addressing common issues. The program also includes offers to reduce migration costs such as the Azure Hybrid Benefit and free extended security updates for Windows Server and SQL Server 2008. This current program is available to all customers now.  

Microsoft also announced another new program titled Azure AI Accelerate which has been launched as of July 14th. This program is aimed at helping partners bring their AI solutions to market faster, highlighting Azure’s machine learning, AI apps and knowledge mining, all factors that will be huge areas contributing to business change in the coming years. Microsoft will be focusing on growing ecosystem and platform value while also creating sustainable AI business benefits for partners and customers.  

The Azure Kinect dev kit and PC peripheral with AI sensors for computer vision and speech models. This device will combine depth sensors and spatial microphone along with camera and orientation sensor into one device, this dev kit is only available in the US and China currently however we expect it to be available for UK companies soon.  

There will also be five new advanced specialisations added to Azure:  

• Windows Server and SQL Server Migration to Azure 
• Linux and Open Source Databases Migration to Azure  
• Data Warehouse Migration to Azure 
• Modernisation of Web Apps in Azure 
• Kubernetes on Azure 

You can follow all aspects of the Microsoft Inspire event and look out for further details.   

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