Tuesday

• Brian Benz announced the update to the Azure Toolkit for Eclipse which now allows you to deploy Java applications directly to Azure App Service Web Apps
• We announced that HockeyApp is now available for purchase through Visual Studio Marketplace
• We announced that Azure SQL Database Index Advisor has reached General Availability
• We announced that Azure SQL Database Query Performance reached General Availability
• We announced that Azure SQL Database Query Store has reached General Availability
• We announced that Azure Active Directory Identity Protection is in public preview
• We announced Azure Data Factory data movement in Australia regions

Wednesday

• Thomas Dohmke announced that mobile app customers will be using HockeyApp instead of Application Insights
• We announced that Azure App Service now support V2 Virtual Networks which are backed by Azure Resource Manager
• We announced that you can use Git to manage your API Management service instances

Thursday

• Tom Shinder announced that Microsoft has published 2016 Attestation of Compliance

Friday

• We announced a code-free copy wizard for Azure Data Factory

From Community

• Provisioning a Cloudera Hadoop cluster on Azure from Anagha Khanolkar
• Azure AD Connect manual sync cycle with powershell, Start-ADSyncSyncCycle from kloud blog

Customer Stories

• WLS Lighting Systems (Discrete Manufacturing from the USA) designed the system to facilitate high-scale, IoT deployment on Microsoft  Azure.
• Bunn-O-Matic Corporation (Discrete Manufacturing from the USA) moved their services to Microsoft Azure.
• Kanoo Travel (Travel from Bahrain) turned to Azure to run its Krystal Point-Of-Sale platform in the cloud.
• Newmarket (Hospitality Solutions from the USA) decided to host its APIs in the cloud on Microsoft Azure and to manage them with Azure API Management.
• Barry University (Education from the USA) deployed the IAM Cloud Platform, powered by Microsoft Azure.

Events

• Multiple dates and places – Microsoft Cloud Roadshow
• March 30th – BUILD 2016
• April 16th – Global Azure Bootcamp
• September 26 – Microsoft Ignite 2016

Wednesday

• Sharath Suryanarayan announced the general availability of the StorSimple Virtual Array for Enterprise Agreement customers of Microsoft Azure
• Liam Cavanagh announced a new lower-cost tier for Azure Search - Basic which is currently in preview
• Alex Simons announced that Azure AD Identity protection is in public preview

Thursday

• We announced that Azure DNS is now supported in the Azure Portal

From Community

• Background business – Azure Worker role Vs Web Job from kloud
• Cloud Cushioning using Azure Queues from kloud
• Making the Right Identity Choices for Azure AD and Office 365 from Gartner Blog Network
• Provisioning Always Encrypted in SQL Databases with Azure Key Vault, using SSMS 2016 from Thuru's blog

Customer Stories

• Vittoria Assicurazioni (Insurance from Italy) adopted Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Office 365 as part of its cloud-based solution.
• United Nations Development Programme (Nonprofit from Nepal) revolutionizes the entire global response to disasters using Microsoft products, including Azure.
• Sustainalytics (Investment Reasearch from Romania) adopted a broad range of Microsoft Azure services for processing and integrating a large volume of structured and unstructured, high and low-velocity data as part of its research activity.
• Alma TV (Media from Kazakhstan) has choosen Microsoft Azure SQL Database to provide data warehousing services for information received.

Events

• Multiple dates and places – Microsoft Cloud Roadshow
• March 9th – AzureDay Poland
• March 30th – BUILD 2016
• April 16th – Global Azure Bootcamp
• September 26 – Microsoft Ignite 2016

Monday

• We announced a preview of temporal tables in Azure SQL Database which allows you to track the full history of changes.

Wednesday

• We announced that Azure Automation will retire from the classic portal in early March 2016
• Jeff Hollan announced an improved designer, managed APIs connections and native webhook support for Azure Logic Apps
• James Osborne announced the Visual Studio Connected Service for Azure IoT Hub extension for Visual Studio
• Andrew Hoh announced filtering in document explorer and executing stored procedures from the Azure Portal for DocumentDB

Thursday

• Sarah Fender announced many new thigs in Azure Security Center which includes: new integrated partners, advanced threat detection capabilities, centralized security management
• Mike Gresley announced the availability of PowerShell scripts which help you create release annotations in Application Insights
• Thomas Shinder announced an update to the Microsoft Cloud Red Team White Paper

From Community

• Using Azure Container Service (ACS) on Azure from Simplifying Azure
• Retrieving Resource Metrics via the Azure Insights API from Cloud Solution Architect
• Azure Automation Runbooks with Azure AD Service Principals and Custom RBAC Roles from kloud
• Azure Site Recovery for VMare - Current State from operationsmanagementsuite.org
• My Early Experience With Azure Backup Server from Aidan Finn, IT Pro
• Retrieving Resource Metrics and Creating Alert Rules via Azure PowerShell from Cloud Solution Architect
• Add Azure ARM Virtual Machine to OMS With VM Extension Through Powershell from  operationsmanagementsuite.org

Customer Stories

• Ocean Informatics (Professional Services from Australia) has found that Azure offers flexibility, especially for training, Disaster Recovery, and testing environment.
• TeamViewer (Professional Services from Germany) has chosen Microsoft Azure as standard cloud platform throughout the company.
• Saab (Discrete Manufacturing from Sweden) turns to Azure to ensure rapid deployment of its SAFE security platform to protect customer data.
• GE Healthcare (Health from the United Kingdom) has decided to deploy multiple applications on Microsoft Azure.
• Otsuka Corporation (IT Services from Japan)  has incorporated licensing for Azure, and Azure customers can take advantage of pay-as-you-go billing.
• Khara (Anime Production Studio from Japan) has solved their website infrastructure concerns with Microsoft Azure.
• Wijkracht (Health from Netherlands) has chosen Azure Active Directory to connect better with the community.
• Codit (Professional Services from Belgium) stores about 100 gigabytes of data in Azure.

Events

• Multiple dates and places – Microsoft Cloud Roadshow
• Multiple dates and places – Microsoft Azure Tour 
• March 9th – AzureDay Poland
• March 30th – BUILD 2016
• April 16th – Global Azure Bootcamp
• September 26 – Microsoft Ignite 2016

Tuesday

• Mike Gresley announced that the Annotations detail blade is available in Application Insights which help you get more info when correlating releases to your telemetry
• Tom Shinder announced that the Azure Disk Encryption White Paper has been updated to version 1.2.1

Wednesday

• Corey Sanders more open options in Microsoft Azure which include:
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux images available in the Azure Marketplace
  • Public preview of Azure Container Service
  • ... and more
• We announced that Azure Hybrid Use Benefit reached general availability which means that Windows Server users who have Software Assurance can run Windows VMs in Azure at a lower price
• We announced that the SQL Server Stretch Database functionality is in public preview
• We announced App Service SSL connection price changes which most notably include free Server Name Indication (SNI) SSL connections for Basic, Standard and Premium tiers
• We announced that the Swagger install package for Azure Mobile .NET Server is available on NuGet

Thursday

• Pallavi Joshi announced that Azure Backup in now Available in Azure China
• Ninar Nuemah has announced multiple updates to the SQL Server AlwaysOn Cluster Template which include internal listeners and optimized performance
• Alex Simons announced that Azure AD Connect 1.1 has reached General Availability with faster sync times, automatic updates and more

Friday

•  We announced a public preview of HDInsight Tools for IntelliJ which will be very interesting for HDInsight Spark developers

From Community

• Updating the Azure VM Encryption Certs from Cloud Solution Architect
• Microsoft Azure App Service: new course from CloudAcademy
• Azure Container Service, Powerd by the DCOS from Mesosphere
• Azure Virtual Networks with ARM and PowerShell from Cloud Solution Architect
• Using Active Directory Security Groups to Grant Permissions to Azure Resources from Kloud
• Azure Opens Up With Expanded Linux Support from EnterpriseTech
• Microsoft Azure Automation: Concepts and Practical Usage — New course from CloudAcademy
• Monitoring and Alerting in Azure from Cloud Solution Architect
• Using the Azure Resource Manager REST API from Cloud Solution Architect

Customer Stories

• 311 Solutions (Professional Services from Egypt) switched from Amazon Web Services (AWS) to Microsoft Azure.
• Mitsubishi UFJ Securities International plc , part of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (Financial Group from the United Kingdom) has moved their HPC calculations to the Azure cloud.
• FCamara (E-commerce from Brazil) has chosen the Microsoft Azure cloud because it supports all the open source.
• Otsuka Corporation (System Integration Business from Japan) has chosen the Microsoft Products and Services Agreement to complement the company’s previous licensing programs.
• Absolut (Leading brand of Premium vodka from Sweden) has decided to use Azure, because it allows us to use servers around the world to deploy a site into a specific country or region.
• Carnegie Mellon University (Education from the USA) has implemented the PI System from Microsoft Global ISV partner OSIsoft based on Power BI for Office 365 and the Azure platform.

Events

• Multiple dates and places – Microsoft Cloud Roadshow
• Multiple dates and places – Microsoft Azure Tour 
• March 9th – AzureDay Poland
• March 30th – BUILD 2016
• April 16th – Global Azure Bootcamp
• September 26 – Microsoft Ignite 2016

Monday

• We announced a bunch of improvements to Azure SQL Data Warehouse which include loading, monitoring, and stability
• We announced and early preview of Azure PaaS services and DevOps tools for Azure Stack
• Clinton Ho announced that the Data Management Gateway received an auto-update capability

Tuesday

• Eugene Shvets announced a public preview of Azure Search indexer for Azure Blob Storage which lets you extract textual content and blob metadata from various document types like PDFs, Office documents and many others
• Pradnya Khadapkar announced that Azure Premium storage is available in more regions: East Asia, Australia Southwest and South Central US

Wednesday

• We announced that the .NET SDK for Azure Search has reached General Availability with the package version 1.1
• Adarsh Solanki announced a price reduction for Azure Media Indexer

Thursday

• Anurag Gupta announced the new Log Analytics (OMS) resource for you Azure VMs which helps you analyze your VM logs no matter if you're running a Windows or a Linux VM

Friday

• We announced the availability of a SQL Server Express image in the Azure Gallery
• Gaurav Malhorta announced the public release of new Azure Data Factory Monitoring and Management App which improves efficiency and has a very intuitive experience
• We announced that the Lucene query syntax reached general availability with the 2015-02-28 version on the Azure Search REST API
• We announced new POP locations for the CDN service which are in India and South America
• We announced CDN Azure Resource Management support and new experiences in the Azure Portal

From Community

• Simultaneously Start|Stop all Azure Resource Manager Virtual Machines in a Resource Group from kloud
• Create Keys for an Application to Manage Azure from rgardler
• Oracle RAC on Azure from Pythina
• Understand Azure Event Hubs from BizTalk360 Blog
• DevOps Basics: Deploying Azure Resource Manager Templates with Visual Studio Team Services from CANITPRO

Customer Stories

• Organisation der Arbeitswelt Gesundheit und Soziales Aargau (Education from Switzerland) reduces IT costs nearly 53 percent

Events

• Multiple dates and places – Microsoft Cloud Roadshow
• Multiple dates and places – Microsoft Azure Tour 
• March 9th – AzureDay Poland
• March 30th – BUILD 2016
• April 16th – Global Azure Bootcamp
• September 26 – Microsoft Ignite 2016

Monday

• We announced that the module gallery for Azure Automation is available and it helps you in importing modules from the PowerShell Gallery without leaving the Automation account
• Mingfei Yan announced that the Google Widevine license is generally available with Azure Media Service
• Joe Levy announced that PowerShell V5 is now supported in Azure Automation which gives you a lot of additional features like PowerShell classes, performance improvements and many more
• Giridhar Mosay announced that Azure Backup is now available in Azure Government which helps you and simplifies backup creation and management for IaaS VMs

Tuesday

• We announced that Azure automation has released updated versions of many Azure ARM modules
• We announced that Logic Apps now natively support triggering via WebHooks
• Manling Zhang announced that the Load feature is now available for Azure CDN which allows you to pre-cache files across al CDN POPs

Wednesday

• We announced that Azure IoT Hub has reached general availability which means you can you it in production environments with full support
• We announced that Azure Premium Storage has reached general availability in additional regions: Australia Southeast and East Asia
• We announced that Azure HDInsight can now be used on Dv2-Series  instances which is the recommended way while D-Series instances are still available

Thursday

• We announced that the Azure SQL Database Query Performance Insight has reached general availability and it's a tool which helps you understand the impact of your query workload on database resource consumption
• We announced that the Node.js SDK for Azure Mobile Apps 2.0.0 has reached general availability
• We announced that our PHP versions:  5.4.45, 5.5.31, 5.6.17 where patched due to a security vulnerability in OpenSSL

From Community

• Network multicast support on Azure from Pythina
• Microsoft Azure Stack is the New Hybrid Cloud from kloud
• Azure in CSP from Aidan Finn, IT Pro
• Azure Automation And SQL DB from Brent's Notepad
• Deploy a website to Azure using GitHub from Dave Voyles
• Connecting Application Insights to Slack from Peter Örneholm

Customer Stories

• MSCOM (Professional Services from the USA) has connected their advertising data to their web data in Azure Data Lake
• Arca Continental (Retail and Consumer Goods from Mexico) uses Azure ML to generate answers for each individual area and get combined answers for the entire company

Events

• Multiple dates and places – Microsoft Cloud Roadshow
• Multiple dates and places – Microsoft Azure Tour 
• February 10th – Microsoft Azure User Group Poland – 4th Warsaw meeting
• February 10th - First after-work meeting for @AZUGFR in Paris
• March 9th – AzureDay Poland
• March 30th – BUILD 2016
• April 16th – Global Azure Bootcamp
• September 26 - Microsoft Ignite 2016

Monday

• We announced the Azure Search .NET SDK version 1.0.1-preview which helps you in working with your Azure Search from your .NET code

Tuesday

• Mike Neil has announced the first Technical Preview of Microsoft Azure Stack which allows you to have a subset of Azure features on-premises and they are fully in-line with what is available in the public Microsoft Azure datacenters
• Adrian Hall shared some information on updates for the Node.js SDK for Azure App Service Mobile apps which include yeoman generator, offline development and many more
• Fabio Cavalcante announced the Azure Mobile Apps File Management SDK which helps you in working with files in you backend and client

Wednesday

• Amit Rajput has announced the availability of the Azure Media Player version 1.6.1 which includes many bug fixes and improvements and what's most important - it's 33% smaller in size which will give your Azure Media Services users even better experience
• Mike Gresley has announced the availability of Release Annotations in Application Insights which help you correlate your deployments with many metrics on the Application Insights blade for your application

Thursday

• Marley Gray has shared another update for the Blockchain as a Service which includes new partners and Dev/Test Lab integration

Friday

• We announced Log analytics for Azure Load Balancer which gives you different types of logs to manage and troubleshoot your Azure Load Balancer
• We announced that the Azure Site Recovery service is now Available for Azure Government

From Community

• Azure Stack Preview Is Public from AIDAN FINN, IT PRO
• What Courier Can You Use For Azure Drive Import? from AIDAN FINN, IT PRO
• Deploy a WordPress Azure Web App with an Alternative MySQL Database from Cloud Solution Architect
• SQL On The Edge #7 – Azure Data Factory from Pythian
• Azure Data Lake Analytics and big data: an introduction from Cloud Academy

Customer Stories

• Canadian International AutoShow (Event from Canada) has generated 500,000 unique hits to the event’s website using IdeaNotion’s IdeaCloud, based on Microsoft Azure
• COVVE Visual Networks Limited (Professional Services from Cyprus) has leveraged both the BizSpark Plus support Microsoft provides and the power of Azure and OSS
• ModusLink (Logistics from the USA) will replace its MFA solution with Microsoft Azure Active Directory Premium for its user identity and access management capabilities
• Beeline (Telecommunications from Russia) has transferred its innovative entertainment service Music Beeline to Microsoft Azure
• Tangerine (Banking from Canada)  has implemented Azure HDInsight and hopes to experiment with Microsoft Azure Machine Learning to gain valuable insights into customer behavior
• KredoBank (Banking from Ukraine) decided to program, which involved revamping its business processes and moving to the cloud
• FantasyData (Sports Data from the USA) created a developer portal and APIs based on Microsoft Azure API Management
• Pact's (Manufacturer from Australia) IT leaders are now evaluating the migration of its primary SAP production environment—the only remaining SAP system on-premises—to Azure

Events

• Multiple dates and places – Microsoft Cloud Roadshow
• Multiple dates and places – Microsoft Azure Tour 
• February 10th - Microsoft Azure User Group Poland - 4th Warsaw meeting
• March 9th - AzureDay Poland
• March 30th – BUILD 2016
• April 16th – Global Azure Bootcamp

Tuesday

• Adrian Hall announced the availability Beta Apache Cordova plugin for Azure App Service Mobile Apps which gives you API access to data, push registration and authentication for you mobile backend - no matter if it's written in .NET or Node.js
• Berni Torres Garayar announced the availability of Azure Search Traffic Analytics which helps you discover how your search service is being used and gain insights into users and their behaviors
• Beckylin Orooji announced that Application Insights will automatically tell you about performance of your AJAX calls
• Microsoft Philanthropies announced that it will donate $1 billion in cloud computer resources to serve the public good

Wednesday

• Anton Fritz shared some information about a new feature in Application Insights - Proactive Detection which automatically (though machine learning) detect abnormal patterns in Application Insights telemetry and notify you about them
• Janusz Lembicz shared information on how to use custom analyzers in Azure Search which can help you to take full control of how your documents are broken into searchable terms

Thursday

• Brady Gaster announced the 2.8.2 .NET SDK for Azure which has some user experience improvements, under the hood improvements which make all of this just work better and improvements in exporting Azure Resource Manager templates
• Mingfei Yan announced update to the "classic" portal which improves encoding speed, format support and stability and some name changes of Encoding Reserved Units to reduce the confusion customers had

Friday

• We announced public preview for Automation Graphical Authoring SDK which helps custom applications to create runbook files and consume runbook files
• We announced public preview for Azure App Service cloning now available between regions. App cloning is currently only supported for premium tier app service plans
• We announced updates to Azure support portal (Node.JS parser, AutoHeal UX for Execution Delay settings and Crash diagnostics)
• We presented a new way to deploy VSTS in the Azure portal
• We announced New T-SQL programmability features in Azure SQL Database. New programmability features that are implemented in SQL Server 2016 are also available in Azure SQL Database
• We announced MPI and offline node support in Azure Batch

From Community

• Adventures in High Speed Networking on Azure from Age Of Ascent blog
• Python app on Azure Web Apps frequently restarts from Linux on Azure blog
• Microsoft Azure Concepts – Availability Sets from VMFocus blog

Customer Stories

• ZingHR (HR Management from Indie) implemented their software based on Azure for Kotak Mahindra Bank
• tritrue (Retail and Consumer Goods from Japan) laverages Azure's open source support for overseas expansion process
• SoloInsight (Discrete Manufacturing from the USA) moves their IoT platform to the next level
• Wijkracht (Social Services from Netherlands) did not want to create an IT department or have on-premises IT equipment

Events

• Multiple dates and places – Microsoft Cloud Roadshow
• Multiple dates and places - Microsoft Azure Tour 
• March 30 – BUILD 2016
• April 16th – Global Azure Bootcamp

Quote of the week

1995: Every object in your home has a clock & it is blinking 12:00 2025: Every object in your home has a IP address & the password is Admin

— mcc (@mcclure111) January 17, 2016

Platform updates

Monday

• Azure Mobile Engagement has partnered with VMob to give you even more possibilities in retail engagement
• Abhishek A. Hemrajani has announced General Availability of Azure Site Recovery enhanced VMware to Azure functionality that help you protect, replicate your VMware VMs and physical servers to Azure
• Azure DevTest Lab team has announced January updates that include new capabilities for artifacts, ARM template support and a possibility to create more powerful VMs using Azure DevTest Lab
• Pavithra Thiruvengadam announced that the Azure Operational Insights now supports Azure RemoteApp (ARA) which can help monitor you ARA VMs

Wednesday

• Classic Network Security Groups (NSG) can now be managed in the Azure Portal
• Daria Grigoriu has announced the General Availability of Zend Z-Ray on Azure App Service which is an excellent solution for gaining insights into your PHP app
• The Azure Search Team announced that the Lucene query syntax is fully supported in Azure Search

Thursday

• Nicole Herskowitz has announced a price reduction for Dv2 Virtual Machines which will take effect in early February
• Perry Skountrianos announced that Shared Access Signature (SAS) had been added for Azure Storage Tables and Queues
• Joe Levy announced the release of Azure Automation PowerShell ISE add-on that allows you to interact with Azure Automation right from within your favorite tool
• Cristy Gonzalez shared information about new features of Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer
• Azure Desired State Configuration has reached General Availability
• Azure Premium Storage is Generally Available in the South Central US region
• Azure RemoteApp team announced two new Azure RemoteApp Premium plans and a special price reduction for people who have existing RDS CALs with Software Assurance or EMS licenses
• SQL Database Index Advisor has reached General Availability
• Microsoft Operations Management Suite alert notification and remediation moved into public preview
• Azure Role-Based Access Control with custom roles has reached General Availability
• A self-service subscription transfer has been made globally available so you can transfer your subscription to a different account
• New ways for purchasing Azure Multi-Factor Authentication have been announced

Friday

• Kim Spilker announced a free ebook about Enterprise Cloud Strategy

From Community

• How Linux VMs are consuming entropy provided by Hyper-V in Azure? from Linux on Azure blog
• Easy Debugging of PowerShell DSC for Azure Virtual Machines from cloud blog
• An Azure Disk Encryption forum has been launched on MSDN
• Create a Docker Swarm cluster using Azure Container Service from Julien Corioland
• How to Migrate from On-Premises to Azure SQL Database from Pythian blog
• Azure Storage Options and Costs from A to Z from Cloudyn Blog

Customer Stories

• Towers Watson (Professional Services from the USA) shared their experience of running 100,000 cores in Azure
• Gibsons (Process Mfg ＆ Resources Retail and Consumer Goods from Canada) will eliminate its seven data centers
• E-Create (Education from Brazil) found Microsoft Azure is an ideal open source platform for e-learning projects
• NAV Canada (Civil Air Navigation Services Provider from Canada) relies on Azure to help keep an eye on every flight
• Al-Tijari Financial Brokerage (Banking ＆ Capital Markets from Kuwait) made the transition to Azure Backup
• iQ Payments (Logistics from Finland) deploys advanced cloud-based PayiQ mobile ticketing and payment solution for City of Turku
• The Dow Chemical Company (Process Mfg ＆ Resources from the USA) moved several datacenter workloads to Microsoft Azure
• Jawabkoms (Professional Services from the USA) made their website one of the top 100 most visited websites in the Arab world
• HAKOM (Government from Croatia) implemented a tariff estimation application on Azure
• HCL (Enterpriese from India) nearly doubles annual workplace cloud services revenue
• Impendle Municipality (Health from South Africa) implemented an Azure Site Recovery solution
• COVVE Visual Networks (Professional Services from Cyprus) created Cypriot software using Microsoft cloud and Open Source synergy

Events

• Multiple dates and places - Microsoft Cloud Roadshow
• March 30 - BUILD 2016
• April 16th - Global Azure Bootcamp

Platform updates

Monday

• Sunitha Muthukrishna posted information about a new Azure Resource Manager template which spins up a WordPress site on Azure App Service and it is backed by a MySQL cluster running on Virtual Machines
• Steve Danielson announced new policies for API Management: advanced caching and throttling
• Marley Gray shared some information about Azure Blockchain as a Service updates including new demos and new partners signing up

Tuesday

• Brad Anderson posted an overview video of Enterprise Mobility Suite

Thursday

• Michael Curd announced the availability of Azure Storage Data Movement Library 0.2.0

Friday

• The Azure Automation Team has published four new graphical runbooks and two PowerShell runbooks to the Automation gallery.
• Azure Search has added a Search Explorer to the Azure Portal, which now let's query your search index and receive results within the Azure Portal.
• The Data Lake tools for Visual Studio have been updated with: U-SQL local run enhancements, error message screen update, expand * columns

From Community

• How to call the Azure Resource Manager REST API from C# from MSFT Stack blog
• Azure Resource Manager REST calls from Python from MSFT Stack blog
• Design an online forum on Azure Document DB from Thuru's Blog
• Farewell 'Switch-AzureMode' & how to fix your scripts from Elton Stoneman's blog

Customer Stories

• Nissan selected Microsoft Azure for their Nissan Telematics System

Events

• January 13 - Microsoft Azure User Group Poland - Warsaw - 3rd meeting: Facebook, Meetup
• March 30 - BUILD 2016