Microsoft Build 2019 Announcements And Sessions On Demand

Missed the Microsoft Build 2019 because you were unable to get away from the office to attend? You will be glad to know that Microsoft has published all the sessions and are available online at no charge.

Being a developer focused conference most of the announcements were geared towards developers. You can see a complete list of searchable announcements here. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/?updatetype=microsoft-build&Page=1

What’s Infrastructure as Code?

I’m more of an infrastructure guy. Some of the more interesting announcements to me were the following.

Azure VMware Solutions is now generally available

If I was heavily invested in VMware and was looking to expand into Azure, the availability of Azure VMware Solutions would certainly open up some interesting possibilities. It looks like if I use a bare-metal instance or dedicated instance, I can basically have an ESX host running in Azure. This makes sense for those planning a hybrid-cloud deployment and want to easily move workloads back and forth between on-prem and Azure. Leave me a comment to tell me why this excites you.

Azure Quickstart Center enables new customers to build cloud projects with confidence

I haven’t looked into this yet. However, this looks VERY interesting to me if it is what I think it is. As cloud adoption continues to grow so does the required skill set of the IT professional. A wise IT professional will want to become comfortable with Infrastructure as Code (IaC). Just two years ago, this skill set was non-existent. Larger IT consultants or cloud providers may have little or no experience as well. Over the past year I have seen this skill set become more common with the customers I work with. This is often the preferred deployment method. At the same time, IaS technology has also matured.

I predict that if you don’t already manage your cloud deployment with IaC, you will be in the near future. I’m hopeful that this new offering from Microsoft could be a great intro to those IT professionals looking to gain some IaC experience and knowledge. I’ll post a follow-up article after I have had a look at it.