Microsoft’s message last year was pretty clear: we’re betting big that you’ll be using Azure as part of your environment and we’ve got a bunch of tools to make that happen. For someone who has cloudy aspirations this was incredibly exciting even though I was pretty sure that my main client , the Australian government, would likely abstain from using any of them for a long time. This year’s TechEd seemed like it was a little more subdued than last year (the lack of a bond style entrance with its accompanying Aston Martin was the first indicator of that) with the heavy focus on cloud remaining, albeit with a bent towards the mobile world.
Probably the biggest new feature to come to Azure is ExpressRoute, a service which allows you to connect directly to the Azure cloud without having to go over the Internet. For companies that have regulations around their data and the networks it can traverse this gives them the opportunity to use cloud services whilst still maintaining their obligations. For someone like me who primarily works with government this is a godsend and once the Azure instance comes online in Australia I’ll finally be able to sell it as a viable solution for many of their services. It will still take them some time to warm to the idea but with a heavy focus on finding savings, something Azure can definitely provide, I’m sure the adoption rate will be a lot faster than it has been with previous innovations of this nature.
The benefits of Azure Files on the other hand are less clear as whilst I can understand the marketing proposition it’s not that hard to set up a file server within Azure. This is made somewhat more pertinent by the fact that it uses SMB 2.1 rather than Server 2012’s SMB 3.0 so whilst you get some good features in the form of a REST API and all the backing behind Azure’s other forms of storage it lacks many of the new base capabilities that a traditional file server has. Still Microsoft isn’t one to develop a feature unless they know there’s a market for it, so I’d have to guess that this is a feature that many customers have been begging for.
In a similar vein the improvements to Microsoft’s BYOD offerings appear to be incremental more than anything with InTune receiving some updates and the introduction of Azure RemoteApps. Of the two Azure RemoteApps would be the most interesting as it allows you to deliver apps from the Azure cloud to your end points, wherever they may be. For large, disparate organisations this will be great as you can leverage Azure to deploy to any of your officers, negating the need for heavy infrastructure in order to provide a good user experience. There’s also the opportunity for Microsoft to offer pre-packaged applications (which they’re currently doing with Office 2013) although that’s somewhat at odds with their latest push for Office365.
Notably absent from any of the announcements was Windows 8.2 or Server 2012 R3, something which I think many of us had expected to hear rumblings about. There’s still the chance it will get announced at TechEd Australia this year especially considering the leaked builds that have been doing the rounds. If they don’t it’d be a slight departure from the tempo they set last year, something which I’m not entirely sure is a good or bad move from them.
Overall this feels like incremental improvements to Microsoft strategy they were championing last year more than revolutionary change. That’s not a bad thing really as the enterprise market is still catching up with Microsoft’s new found rapid pace and likely won’t be on par with them for a few years yet. Still it begs the question as to whether or not Microsoft is really committed to the rapid refresh program they kicked off not too long ago. TechEd Australia has played host to some big launches in the past so seeing Windows 8.2 for the first time there isn’t out of the question. As for us IT folk the message seems to remain the same: get on the cloud soon, and make sure it’s Azure.
