TL;DR

Ignite 2022 Book of News

Ignite is upon us again, and with it there are a bunch of exciting services and features to feast on! As I am predominantly an Azure infrastructure guy, I have focused on those advances, but there are loads of new stuff in several categories:

• Azure
• AI
• Business Applications
• Industry Cloud
• Microsoft 365
• Power Platform
• Security
• Windows
• and more

Every time Ignite comes around myself, and many others, are keen to get our hands on the Ignite Book of News. It contains so much information, and is always able to surprise me in different ways. This time my biggest surprise was the investment Microsoft is doing in Azure DevOps going forward. I was under the impression that AzDO would slowly but surely lag behind GitHub, and then features would be consolidated into the latter. Seems like this might be farther off than I first predicted, and have been predicting for the last year or so.

These are the Azure Infra and DevOps headers:

Azure Infrastructure

• Azure Automanage now available for Azure Arc-enabled servers and Azure virtual machines
• New Virtual Machine Scale Set and Spot Virtual Machines capabilities
• Azure Premium SSD and Azure Elastic SAN updates
• ​​​​​​​New Azure Monitor capabilities and features
• Nutanix Cloud Clusters now generally available on Azure
• New features in Azure Networking
• New Windows Server benefits and features
• Azure savings plan for compute offers a new price offering

Developer Tools & DevOps

• Azure Kubernetes Fleet Manager simplifies cluster management and organization
• Independent software vendors can now create one-click Kubernetes apps
• New Azure Monitor features for app modernization and innovation
• Microsoft Dev Box now in preview
• Azure Deployment Environments now in preview
• GitHub Advanced Security for Azure DevOps in preview
• Latest version of Visual Studio 2022 now generally available
• Microsoft and Postman partner on Azure API Management
• Azure Communication Services launching call automation
• Service Bus explorer capabilities now generally available
• Azure App Service updates
• Azure Managed Confidential Consortium Framework now in preview
• Microsoft creating program to connect job seekers with employment opportunities

These are the Azure DevOps news that particularly piqued my interest:

GitHub Advanced Security for Azure DevOps

This enables new security features in Azure DevOps, facilitating the implementation of DevSecOps methodology. We have had this in GitHub for a while, and I have seen it as an argument for GitHub over AzDO. When it is now soon to be available in AzDO also, this kind of makes me think I should divide my time between the two more evenly. Seems like AzDO will be around for a while longer than I first anticipated.

Defender for DevOps

This feature enables you to connect your CI/CD with Defender for Cloud to get a more comprehensive image of your cloud security posture, including pipelines. This consolidates information about your pipelines into Defender for Cloud, giving you a more complete overview of your Cloud Security Posture.

Azure DevOps Roadmap updates

After you have browsed through the book of news, I would take a look at the updated Azure DevOps roadmap. It contains more news than announced, and paints a picture of AzDO being a contender for your DevOps projects a while longer.

Some other news worth noting

Low-cost IP Protection option for Azure DDoS Protection enables you to protect individual IP addresses at a much lower cost than with the Standard DDoS protection for virtual networks. This will surely motivate use of DDoS protection for more customers than previously will have done so.

New, Cloud-like capabilities available for Azure Arc-enabled SQL Server gives new possibilities for on-premises MSSQL servers or those that are hosted in other clouds.

New deployment options for Azure Kubernetes Service enabled by Azure Arc provide consistent experiences for customers across on-premises, one or more clouds and the edge. More info here.

Save on Defender for Endpoint licenses Microsoft is announcing a limited-time sale of 50% off Defender for Endpoint Plan 1 and Plan 2 licenses, to motivate migration to MDE at a quicker pace. You can save a few bucks here if planning a migration soon.

Microsoft Intune is the new name for the expanding family of endpoint management products. We have a rename of the endpoint management suite again. It is now reverted back to Intune.

In summary

There is just so much that I have not been able to process everything yet. You can read all about the announcements in the Ignite 2022 Book of News.