This week’s Putting the Human Into Technology – Microsoft Build edition, we don’t have a special guest. So instead, mark and I discuss some of the announcements that came out at the Microsoft Build conference a couple of weeks back. 

There was no real “blow you away” announcements – like any news on SQL Server vNext. I can only assume the pandemic has slowed the development team up a little, and we’ll be looking at 2022 before we get to see what vNext will look like. Wait and see though I may be surprised yet.

There were many enhancements and improvements announced, and there was a whole range of news, On Azure, For Developers, Identity & Cloud Security, Microsoft 365, Power Platform and Windows. Some not yet available but coming soon!

You can listen to the podcast here

You can watch the YouTube version of it here

Several announcements drew our attention:

No Code Development

Lots of capabilities to enable faster and easier development. For example, Natural Language in Power FX (the so-called no-code development). Power Platform integration with Microsoft 365. More capability to develop and deploy apps in Teams. We already use this for our SQL Server managed service offering.

Third-Party Integration

Third-Party Integration, Jira connectors, which will please someone we know, is improving. It’s nice to know that whilst Microsoft is developing their solutions like Azure Dev Ops; they recognise that third party solutions are welcome and have a place.

Security

Security, in particular Azure Confidential Ledger (ACL), a new managed Azure service, a tamper-proof register for storing sensitive data for recordkeeping and auditing. ACL will be beneficial applications for Security, particularly when thinking about the news re Bose recently.

Search – Microsoft Search Federation to create a unified search experience across Microsoft Azure and Dynamics 365. eDiscovery tools in Microsoft 365 to search for content in third-party systems, surfacing results from third-party tools like Salesforce directly in Windows – great applications from everything from faster Subject Access Response in GDPR to data quality and a single source of the truth.

Data

There were some exciting features and enhancements in the data space too. For example, the following are now in public preview:

• Azure Synapse Link for Dataverse 
• Azure Synapse support for Spark 3.0.1 
• Synapse Apache Spark Hardware Acceleration

The data governance service, Purview now supports the Azure Database MySQL and PostgreSQL offerings.

So all in all, some useful features and enhancements announced that would undoubtedly interest some of our customers. You can read more at the Microsoft Build Book of News.

You can view the previous episodes of our Putting the Human Back into Technology podcast here:

• Episode 1 – Special Guest Mark Williams
• Episode 2 – Special Guest Simon Jones
• Episode 3 – Special Guest David Rawle
• Episode 4 – Special Guest Ben Kite