Aidan Finn

In the Microsoft calendar, July marked the end of FY20 and the start of a whole new semester for Azure (and Windows) development.

June 2020 marks the end of Vibranium and the start of Manganese, the codenames for the ending and starting half-year semesters in the Azure development year.

As you might notice below, there were a lot of announcements in the world of Azure Infrastructure last month. That’s because Microsoft Build, the developer-focused conference, happened and it is one of the inflection points for new releases in the Azure calendar. Sure, Build is developer-focused, but in the modern world, developers and operators are…

At times like this, chatting about cool new features in Azure is a lot less important than what’s surrounding us all, and impacting some of us either directly or indirectly, now. But you know what? A distraction from the fear, worry, or self-imposed incarceration can be a good thing. So let’s crack on with it, and let’s talk about the cool new IaaS features that Azure launched during the last month.

I did think about calling this the typo edition – I just bought a Microsoft Sculpt ergonomic keyboard and it might be preventing physical strain but my mental state as a result of the change is a whole other matter.

Last month I kind of wrapped up 2019. But this month I want to look forward. While I would love to talk about things that I might or might know about, such a violation of my non-disclosure agreement would get me in trouble with Redmond. So instead, I want to talk about what I think we IT pros need to learn about in 2020 to stay relevant.

Microsoft Ignite 2019 has passed, and as one would expect, there were many Azure announcements. I’m not going to do my usual and list every announcement in this article – I would still be writing this article in 2020!

As we head towards Ignite, October had a bunch of Azure announcements but there will be even more next month.

We are now in the middle of the second Azure (and Windows) semester of 2019. Planning for the first semester of 2020 is underway. And now we are just over 1 month away from Ignite, the week that is usually an explosion of announcements for Microsoft’s enterprise products.

The half-year point has passed meaning that Azure (and Windows/Windows Server) are into a new planning & development cycle.