Busy Pre-Build week for Microsoft and Azure!

Revolutionize Your Business With Generative AI

From product design and software development to virtual agents, content creation, and reporting, GenAI is transforming business. Our AI experts help you unlock GenAI’s full potential and drive growth.

Let’s Get Started

The Microsoft Build Conference is set to kick off next week but the company got off to an early start this week with several different announcements.
Windows Azure now generally available in China
This may not sound like a huge accomplishment worthy of being called out individually but a little known fact is that Windows Azure is the first major public cloud service that China has made available.  This opens Azure up to an enormous user base that cloud competitors Google and Amazon don’t yet have access to.
Windows Azure will soon be re-branded Microsoft Azure
In an effort to strengthen the Azure brand, Microsoft is removing “Windows” from the name.  This is the help emphasize that the Azure platform is completely open and a variety of technologies can utilize it, not just Microsoft and Windows based technology.  The name “Windows Azure” has been a source of confusion since its introduction.  People who are new to cloud computing often did not know if only technologies supported by Windows were designed to work on the Azure platform.  This name change should clear up any lingering confusion.
Office for iPad debuts along with Enterprise Mobility Suite 
On Thursday Microsoft announced a fully functional, touch friendly edition of their Office suite tailored for iPads.  This has been a long time coming as millions of iPad users have had to find other methods of editing documents on their tablets.  The entire Office suite is free to download and use to view documents and presentations.  In order to edit documents an Office 365 subscription is needed, priced at $99 a year.  This subscription also provides you with desktop versions of Office 2013 as well as an Exchange Online account.
The Enterprise Mobile Suite is aimed to bring Single Sign On to all users for a variety of devices across services.  This would allow an Android tablet, iPad or Windows 8 machine using Azure Active Directory to authenticate against Office 365, Dynamics CRM and Windows Intune  as well as a variety of already available third party products.  This allows Microsoft technologies to be at the very core of the Enterprise Cloud while allowing users to “Bring Your Own Device”.
Microsoft is sure to provide more insight into this strategy next week at the Build Conference, in addition to their future road map for Windows!