Microsoft Corp. said today at its Ignite 2020 virtual conference that it’s extending the hybrid cloud capabilities of its Azure cloud platform to make it easier for customers to run their applications and workloads in any environment, across on-premises data centers, multiple clouds and the network edge.

In addition, the company announced a new communications service built on top of Azure that makes it possible for developers to add video call, chat and SMS text capabilities to their applications.

Most of the updates announced today center on Azure Arc, which is a service that was launched in November that enables customers to extend the Azure cloud management plane to on-premises locations and other clouds.

“Azure Arc does two key things,” Microsoft Azure Corporate Vice President Julia White wrote in a blog post. “First, it brings Azure management capabilities to any infrastructure, and second, it enables Azure services to run anywhere.”

Building on those capabilities, Microsoft said Azure Arc enabled data services is now available in preview, making it possible to run the Azure SQL Managed Instance and Azure PostgreSQL Hyperscale database services across on-premises servers, multiclouds and at the edge.

“Customers can now take advantage of the latest Azure managed database innovation, such as staying always current with evergreen SQL, elastic scale, and a unified data management experience, regardless of whether it’s running in Azure, running in their datacenter, or running in a different public cloud. And, these data services work in both connected and disconnected modes,” White said.

Microsoft also announced general availability of Azure Arc-enabled servers, which enables companies to organize and govern both Linux and Windows servers, including physical and virtual machines, across multicloud and multi-edge environments from the Azure Portal.

Enabling more seamless communications

In addition to expanding Azure’s hybrid cloud capabilities, Microsoft is also trying to reinvent how companies communicate with a new service called Azure Communications Services that’s based on the same secure platform as its Microsoft Teams collaboration and messaging tool.

Azure Communications Services is a fully managed platform that’s designed to help companies build more secure and reliable services to connect to their customers with, Scott Van Vliet, vice president of Intelligent Communication at Microsoft, Van Vliet explained in a blog post.

“In this remote-first world, businesses are looking to quickly adapt to customers’ needs and connect with them through engaging communication experiences,” he said. “Building new communication solutions or integrating them into existing applications can be complex and time-consuming. Often requiring considerable investment and specialized expertise. That’s why we’re excited to announce, Azure Communications Services, the first fully managed communication platform offering from a major cloud provider.”

Azure Communication Services provides application programming interfaces that enable developers to add voice and video calling, chat and SMS capabilities to mobile and desktop apps and websites with just a few lines of code. The service also provides software development kits that make it possible to create more personalized and branded experiences, without doing any complex integrations.

Developers can tap into other Azure services too, including Azure Cognitive Services to perform translation, sentiment analysis and so on. The service also provides high-grade encryption that meets the strictest HIPAA and GDPR regulatory standards, Microsoft said.

“While some problems can be addressed remotely, troubleshooting over the phone can be a challenge,” Van Vliet said. “There aren’t many tools, that are easy to use and deploy, which connect a service rep and end user over video especially built right into a company’s app or home page. With Azure Communication Services, integrating voice and video calling into a multichannel communication experience is simple.”

Image: Microsoft