Azure Friday: The year in retrospect
Published Nov 29 2021 10:27 AM 9,726 Views
Microsoft

Hi everyone, I think one thing we can all agree on is that 2021 has been a wild and wonderful ride for anyone keeping up with innovations in Azure Services. We’ve seen advancements across the platform all the way from making Quantum computing more accessible, to the rise of GitHub in workflows, to updates in everything from Cosmos DB to Blobs. 

As we are wrapping up the year, I’d like to share some reflections on Azure Friday with a few episodes that may be especially interesting and widely useful to developers. If you missed any of these, you might want to catch up on watching them now.  
 

We have data science that proves you are more likely to be successful in Azure if you get started with the Azure Quickstart Center.  In Better Azure content, programs & services through applied data science Lisa Cohen explained how Microsoft uses data science to help Azure customers. Learn about content, programs, and services to guide you on your cloud journey, and how we use your feedback to drive improvements in Azure. 

 

Just because something is running in a container, that does not automatically mean that you have security baked in. Azure Container Instances (ACI) allow for a quick, simple, and cost-effective way to run serverless containers in production. Jessica Deen explains ways to be intentional about how you design containers and build with security in mind in Best practices for Azure Container Instances (ACI) with GitHub Actions. 

 

 

One of the most fun episodes for me this year was definitely geeking out in Retro Game Translation with Azure Cognitive Services and IoT Edge with Paul DeCarlo, as he demonstrated how he uses IoT Edge with Cognitive Services Containers to enhance and localize favorite retro videogames. We shared a few treasured items from our respective retro gaming collections in this one, too.

 

 

Did you know that you can use optimization algorithms inspired by decades of quantum physics research to help solve optimization problems? In Quantum-inspired algorithms and the Azure Quantum optimization service Delbert Murphy joined Scott to show how Quantum-Inspired optimization (QIO) takes state-of-the-art algorithmic techniques from quantum physics, and makes these capabilities available in Azure on conventional hardware, and callable from a Python client.  

 

 

Something that blew my mind when I learned it this year was that Azure offers satellite ground station as a service. How cool is that? Scott spoke with rocket scientist Hrishi Shelar and learned about Azure Orbitala fully managed cloud-based ground station as a service that enables you to communicate with your spacecraft or satellite constellations, downlink and uplink data, process your data in the cloud, and chain services with Azure services. It’s pretty amazing! Watch How to use Azure Orbital to communicate with your satellites. 

 

 

Did a specific episode of Azure Friday stand out to you as memorable this year? I’d love to hear about it in the comments. 

 

Keep watching Azure Friday episodes on Azure Friday | Microsoft Docs

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