Microsoft announces a number of additions to the Azure cloud platform at AzureCon, with solutions spanning the Internet of Things (IoT), containers, security and infrastructure.
The IoT portion of the Azure cloud is the Azure IoT suite-- a collection of tunes allowing users to build cloud-based services making use of data generated by the IoT. In addition the company also announces the Azure Certified for IoT program, an ecosystem of Microsoft-tested and certified partner solutions.
The program already has a number of partners, including BeagleBone, Freescale Intel Corporation, Raspberry Pi, Resin.io, Seeed Technology and Texas Instruments.
Another announcement involves the Azure Container Service-- a cobination of Apache Mesos and Docker with Azure for container orchestration and management. It is open source-based and will support Window Server containers in the future.
As for security the platform gets Azure Security Centre, a means to address security concerns when using cloud services. It integrates with Cisco and Trend Micro security offerings to monitor security and policy management across Azure infrastructure, and provides security recommendations based on analysis of Azure customer deployments and data from Microsoft work on global threat intelligence.
The Azure cloud also gets more compute capacity with the N-series-- a family of Azure Virtual Machines (VMs) running on Nvidia GPUs and Grid 2.0 technology for professional graphics applications, deep learning and high-performance computing.
“We live in a connected world, and the intelligent cloud is powering it all,” the company says. “As data and devices continue to proliferate, there is vast opportunity for businesses to tap into their data to make their applications more intelligent. Through our offerings across applications, data and IoT, and cloud infrastructure, we are enabling companies to innovate more easily and rapidly, using the tools and platforms they know and love.”
