Transform the datacenter with Azure
Deliver a resilient, elastic infrastructure in your datacenter, in the cloud, or across both.
Datacenter without boundaries
- Make the most of existing resources while opening the door to the possibilities of the cloud.
- Consistent enterprise-class virtualization platform across clouds
- High throughput connections between Azure datacenters and existing customer infrastructure (on-premises or co-locations)
- Low cost disaster recovery solutions to your own secondary site or to Microsoft Azure
Cloud innovation everywhere
- Reduce complexity and cost by bringing the cloud to the datacenter.
- Software-defined storage solution that can out-perform SAN infrastructure, with cloud-integrated storage options
- Software-defined networking, including physical/ virtual bridging and hybrid extensions
- Comprehensive set of business continuity capabilities including cloud-enabled backup and recovery options
Dynamic application delivery
- Speed delivery of services to the business
- Azure-consistent tenant experience and services across hybrid environments
- Cloud-integrated monitoring and application insight
- Faster app dev lifecycle, increased productivity with test and dev labs in Microsoft Azure
Additional areas of focus
Compute
- Server upgrades with no application/workload downtime,
- including mixed version cluster compatibility
- Enhancements to Shared VHDX guest clustering, including host-level
- backup and Hyper-V Replica support
- Continued enhancements of Linux on Hyper-V for better performance
- New host and guest security features and troubleshooting tools
Storage
- Synchronous and asynchronous storage replication,
- independent of underlying storage technology
- Policy-based QoS for predictable storage-cluster performance in multitenant environments
- Virtual storage pooling across servers, leveraging direct-attached storage
- Provide consistent low latency and high IO throughput storage solutions suitable for demanding IO-intensive workloads
Business continuity
- VM replication and failover orchestration services with Microsoft Azure as the secondary site
- Analysis and intelligence tools to evaluate datacenter health, manage capacity, identify threats, discover potential breaches, and assess impact
Networking
- ExpressRoute expansion into additional markets
- Extensible network controller to manage physical and virtual networks
- Rich virtual networking edge, incl. software load balancer
- Enhancements to Hyper-V Network Virtualization to improve performance, availability, and diagnostics
Service delivery and application management
Further delivery of Microsoft Azure consistent services, artifacts and tenant experiences including tenant portal, application resource definitions and storage provisioning.
Enable consumerization of IT without compromising compliance
Deliver people access to the applications, data, and resources they need on devices they love:
- Consistent Company Portal experiences across Windows, Windows Phone, iOS and Android
- Microsoft Remote Desktop apps for Windows, Windows Phone, iOS, Mac OS X, and Android
- Single-sign-on (SSO) to 1750+ popular SaaS applications
Protect company information by applying policy to application and data access, and selectively wiping devices:
- Selective wipe of corporate apps and data to protect sensitive information with Intune
- Increased user access security with multi-factor authentication (MFA)
- Support for Samsung Knox Standard
- Cloud-based Rights Management with support for bring-your-own-key (BYOK)
Extend your existing on-premises investments in System Center and Active Directory to the cloud with integrated IT Pro experiences:
- Market-leading, familiar PC management tools extended with cloud-based device management (MDM)
- Common identity across on-premises and cloud
- Self-service capabilities, with sync back to on-premises directory
Additional areas of focus
Mobile device and app management:
- Managed mobile productivity for office mobile apps for iOS and Android
- Policy management of existing LOB iOS and Android app (“app wrappers”)
- Bulk enrollment for task-worker devices with support for Apple device enrollment program and configurator
Hybrid identity:
- Cloud application discovery to identify employee SaaS usage
- Enterprise grade sync services adds support for multi-forest, password writeback, and group updates
- Enhanced group management with support for workflows and attestation
- Role based access control (RBAC) for Azure portal and user application access
- Cloud-based application proxy for access control to on-premises web apps
Access and information protection:
- Conditional access to corporate resources (Exchange, OneDrive for Business) with Intune
- Multi-factor authentication for users accessing corporate information, with IP whitelisting and phone number privacy
- Cloud-based encryption with azure rights management, protects data at rest and in transit, with support for outlook and Adobe reader
Desktop virtualization:
- Microsoft remote desktop app for Windows phone, with support for Azure RemoteApp
- Publish custom LOB app collections to Azure RemoteApp Preview
Unlock data insights with Azure
Gain business insights from any data through familiar tools and a complete data platform.
Businesses need easy access to data, big and small, to drive the best decisions:
- Connect to data inside and outside the organization with Power Query in Excel
- Quick setup and simplified big data management with Hadoop through Azure HDInsight
- Realize up to 100x performance gains over legacy data warehouses using Analytics Platform System
People should have access to powerful, familiar tools to make BI more engaging and fun:
- Rich visualizations with Power Map and interactive dashboards with Power View – all in Excel and in-memory
- Ask questions and get answers in the form of interactive charts and graphs with QA
- Mobile access to workbooks hosted on Power BI for Office 365 from any Windows device
IT should have a complete data platform that connects data across cloud and devices:
- Comprehensive in-memory technologies – faster transactions, faster queries and faster analytics with SQL Server 2014
- Higher availability and disaster recovery through cloud integration
- Choose your environment: on-premises, hybrid, or in the cloud
Unlock insights on any data
Business intelligence
- Power BI support for Reporting Services reports and Analysis Services tabular models as well as additional feature enhancement
- New data visualizations and forecasting capabilities
- Mobile support for iOS devices and richer HTML5 rendering
Advanced analytics
- Build and operationalize predictive models in the cloud
- Support for numerous languages R and Python
- Enable hybrid scenarios with Azure and O365 integration through Analytics Platform System
- Perform distributed analytics with Data Lake Analytics, Data Lake Tools and the Data Lake Store
- Simplifying Hadoop and continuing to make it enterprise ready and broadly accessible
- Greater scale, more predictable performance and increased business continuity for SQL database-as-a-service
- Develop mobile and web-scale applications with a managed NoSQL document database-as-a-service
- Integrate search-as-a-service into applications and websites
- Continued innovation for SQL Server on-premises and in Azure Virtual Machines
The internet of your things
Deliver a resilient, elastic infrastructure in your datacenter, in the cloud, or across both.
The Internet of Things isn’t new to Microsoft, we have a proven track record of helping customers realize the benefits of IoT for more than 15 years.
End-to-end portfolio of devices, services, and cloud offerings customers need to take advantage of the Internet of Things.
Capture your machine generated data through the Microsoft Azure Intelligent Systems Service and gain operational Intelligence.
Easily integrate with the broader MSFT portfolio of assets. Powerful, familiar BI tools with rich visualization in Excel.
Partners with the solutions and expertise to accelerate deployment, deliver better results, and reduce customer risk.
Microsoft’s new Intelligent Systems competency ensures partners maintain the highest level of skills and capabilities to deliver the internet of your things.
Microsoft works with leading device manufacturers, independent software vendors and systems integrators to deliver compelling solutions to help you drive innovation and realize business opportunities.
Enable modern business applications with Azure
Rapid development - Deliver innovation at the pace your business expects and the quality it needs:
- Team agility with DevOps on-premises or in the cloud with Visual Studio Online
- Unsurpassed individual developer productivity with Visual Studio
- Instant provisioning of development resources in the cloud with Microsoft Azure
Flexible platform - Connect what you have today with where you need to go in the future:
- A mobile backend that spans all major mobile platforms, including Windows, Android, and iOS
- Coherent experiences for on-premises and in the cloud
- Open platform enabling you to connect to existing Microsoft and non-Microsoft assets
Enterprise proven - Capabilities you expect and a track record of delivering enterprise value:
- Security, reliability, availability and performance you expect for enterprise solutions
- Global presence and support
- Global partner ecosystem
Future Investment Areas
Dev and test and devops:
- Application lifecycle management in the cloud with Visual Studio Online with an improved customer portal to seamlessly integrate dev and ops capabilities, and deliver differentiated applications more quickly
- Visibility into the use of IT resources to provision and de-provision resources on-demand through both self-service and automated provisioning/de-provisioning as part of an orchestrated release
- Insight into the health, availability and success of on-premises and cloud applications from the device to services with the Operations Management Suite (OMS) and Visual Studio Application Insights
- Integrate 3rd party tools into Visual Studio Online with simple and standards-based API interfaces through a central ALM hub to enable complete visibility and collaboration
Mobile:
- Visual Studio tooling for iOS, Android and Windows hybrid apps
- Offline support for Xamarin apps and mobile services accelerators Publish APIs in a secure and scalable manner
Tooling and development frameworks:
- Visual Studio tools to support a new unified application model across Windows Phone, Windows and Xbox
- Next generation of Visual Studio tools and the .NET framework to support optimized, cloud-first applications
Scalability and performance:
- Broader Microsoft Azure datacenter footprint
- Distributed in-memory managed cache based on popular redis cache
Media:
- Deliver live events to audiences of all sizes with support for mobile devices and more
- Protect and securely deliver valuable video content using Advanced Encryption Standard or PlayReady encryption
Challenges and opportunities facing IT
Financial
Erroneous operation of applications and other software may occur, linked to defects, that can no longer be corrected, thus leading to extended or permanent loss of those application functions.
Security
IT Operations teams will find that systems including business-crucial applications could be compromised, enabling data theft and unauthorized transactions as well as hosting attacks against other systems.
Compliance
Continuing to employ legacy and out-of-support software and systems may cause some organizations to not be able to meet regulatory and compliance requirements.
IT Operations
Business leaders may not be aware of the risks they will face if legacy systems are not migrated, leaving IT leaders at fault if problems later arise.
Organizations continue to be faced with the challenges of valuable, albeit aging, application portfolios, a difficult economy, and budget pressures, thus requiring them to make and execute modernization decisions for legacy applications and legacy computing platforms.