Introducing CloudEvents for event-driven development A recurring argument about cloud application development suggests that “it’s someone else’s computer.” While there’s a kernel of truth in there, especially if you’re only lifting and shifting code from an on-premises datacenter to an IaaS pubic cloud, it’s an aphorism that ignores the economic benefits that come from adopting […]

What you need to know about Azure Notebooks Modern business applications bring together many strands of development. You’re no doubt most familiar with n-tier applications, building on decades of programming skills and techniques, linking UI to code and to data. They’re familiar and easy to understand. But that all changes when you start to add […]

Microsoft in the enterprise: 7 predictions for 2018 Microsoft may be building a new campus in Redmond, but it’s also building a lot of software and a lot of tools—especially around its cloud and enterprise businesses. Windows will still dominate Microsoft’s balance sheet in 2018, but Azure and other cloud platforms will become increasingly important, […]

How to choose the right Azure cloud VMs Back when Microsoft first launched Azure’s virtual machines, there were only a handful of default server sizes you could use. The question you had to ask yourself then was a simple one: Is there a server that can support my workload? But now there’s an ever-growing list […]

Azure Databricks: Fast analytics in the cloud with Apache Spark We’re living in a world of big data. The current generation of line-of-business computer systems generate terabytes of data every year, tracking sales and production through CRM and ERP. It’s a flood of data that’s only going to get bigger as we add the sensors […]

Azure IoT Edge brings smarts to devices at the cloud’s edge It can be hard to pin down a definition of edge computing. Some companies look at it in terms of networks, others in terms of datacenters. For Microsoft, it’s a distributed cloud that encompasses every computer, no matter how small and how limited. Microsoft […]

What’s new in Azure Functions: durable states Microsoft has brought the notions of states to the formerly stateless Azure Functions, Microsoft’s serverless computing platform. The addition of states gives developers exciting new ways to take advantage of Azure Functions.   At first glance, Azure Functions is comparable to Amazon’s AWS Lambda. They both have similar […]

Get started with Microsoft’s Azure IoT DevKit A key use case for Azure is as a place for working with the internet of things. A selection of IoT-focused services handle working with streams of data from any number of devices, adding machine learning and stream analytics. Most of the features you’ll need come as part […]

Inside Microsoft’s quantum computing world Quantum computers are the future, says Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. And he has put Microsoft’s money where his mouth is, making quantum computing one of the three pillars of Microsoft’s strategy going forward. Along with AI and mixed/augmented reality, it’s an area where Nadella believes that Microsoft can make a […]

Making sense of Microsoft’s graph database strategy It’s taken some time, but Microsoft’s $26 billion purchase of LinkedIn is finally starting to show some interesting results, with LinkedIn data starting to show up in tools like Outlook. It’s the first sign of Microsoft using the social network’s relationship graph, the complex data set that was […]