One of the great things about working at Microsoft is getting a chance to attend Build 2018 over the next 3 days. Thanks to my team, Industry Experiences,
for the opportunity. I’m the new guy still learning about AI, Machine Learning, after all.

With all the announcements on the Azure blog today, there is little I will do a better job explaining that those technologists who created the products.

When Satya spoke at the keynote, he noted, “The world is becoming a computer.” He specifically showed the reason our team exists, the use of Azure in so many industry verticals. Health and life sciences, predictive manufacturing, precision architecture, retail, and more. Our enabling technology should allow these industries to grow easily and do so on Azure.

Satya noted that as computing spreads, Microsoft Azure will become the world’s computer. That’s an amazing vision.

Further he noted Microsoft’s commitment to several pillars.

1. Privacy, and an assertion privacy is a human right we have an obligation to enable it, protecting our customers.
2. Ethical Artificial Intelligence, along with a clear statement about Microsoft’s commitment to helping ensure we build ethical systems and know where that line is.

What’s Happening with Azure

Scott Guthrie gives a great recap of his very long time on stage during the keynotes.

There is an implementation of Azure called Azure Stack which can be installed in remote locations like oil rigs, ships, and even cars which offers the services of Azure in an installable format which can truly bridge the gap between on-premises and Azure. And here’s the kicker – Microsoft is open sourcing Azure Stack.

Later in the day, Chevron gave a good accounting of how they use Azure Stack.

Back to the interests of my team. There was a great focus in the keynote on the Internet of Things and even the use of HoloLens as a compliment to manufacturing systems. My teammate Ercenk specializes in this area and I am sure is pleased as he can be seeing some of those highlights like:

1. Enabling front line workers to see information about the items (like transmissions) as they are working – on them.
2. AI that can detect potential trouble spots in your building before a defect event occurs.

An IoT Focus

IoT is a huge focus. There are so many applications for IoT and more coming everyday as we combine their output to Machine Learning. From Microsoft:

• IoT Hub works seamlessly with Azure server-less functions (which you should know about)
• IoT Hub knows how to talk to many MANY existing IoT devices and can really accelerate development of IoT solutions

Storing and Structuring Data

This isn’t about the myriad of databases you can use on Azure, it’s about things like:

1. Scalability to petabytes of data
2. Lightning fast datacenter synchronization with global distribution of data in milliseconds
3. A much-improved Cosmos DB with additional scaling capabilities with multi-master replication. The speed of data synchronization is only limited by the wire between datacenters. With the native multi-master model, developers can perform trillions of writes or reads in real time.

Conclusion

What can I say? It’s a rather wandering recap to say the least, but so many thigs in the keynote!

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