Cloud Platform roadmap

Administrative Units will enable large enterprises to sub-divide their directory and delegate administrative permissions across their complex organizations.

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Share resources with your partners with B2B collaboration.

B2B collaboration simplifies management and improves security of partner access to corporate resources including SaaS apps such as Office 365, Salesforce, Azure Services, and mobile, cloud and on-premises claims-aware applications.

B2B collaboration improves security, as partners manage their own accounts and enterprises can apply security policies to partner identities access. Azure Active Directory B2B collaboration is easy to configure with simplified signup for partners of all sizes even if they don’t have their own Azure AD via an email-verified process. It is also easy to maintain with no external directories or per partner federation configurations. Make your Azure Active Directory the center of your cross-organization collaboration.

With Azure Active Directory HR applications integration, customers that are using Workday as their HR application can now import user and group data from Workday Human Capital Management into Azure Active Directory and write it back to on-premises directories.

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Pass-through authentication provided by Azure Active Directory enables users to login to cloud resources by validating their password against their on-premises local Active Directory. This feature allows customers that cannot or don’t want to store passwords in the cloud to onboard Azure Active Directory and Office 365 without having to modify their corporate network infrastructure and install products such as ADFS or similar 3rd party federation solutions.

Pass-through authentication is available via Azure AD Connect as the 3rd option of authentication along with Password Sync and ADFS.

Additionally, with this new update, both “Pass-through authentication” and “Password Sync” authentication options will provide seamless single sign on to Azure AD connected applications from Windows devices, as ADFS was offering until now.

Azure RMS Document Tracking will allow users to track the usage of RMS protected files and documents. It includes features such as receiving email notifications when sharing documents, tracking forwarding of RMS protected documents, revoking access to shared documents in real time and reporting portals for users and IT.

As part of our ongoing commitment to quality and innovation, we are continuously previewing upcoming features with the Configuration Manager community before they are made generally available. These Technical Previews allow you to try new Configuration Manager features in your test environment and provide us with valuable feedback about your experience. To find out about the latest System Center Configuration Manager Technical Previews, please visit our product blog.

Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) in Windows Server vNext includes Just-In-Time administrator capability which supports adding a user to a time bound group. This will ensure users are granted administrative privileges only when needed.

Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) in Windows Server vNext includes new features that enable you to configure AD FS to authenticate users stored in Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) directories.

Remote Desktop Services in Windows Server vNext enables engineering and design applications with OpenGL / OpenCL support and simplifies single server deployments for education and retail scenarios by integrating Windows MultiPoint Server as a role.

Web Application Proxy in Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview will include support for publishing and pre-authenticating more applications. This support will include pre-authentication for rich client applications such as Exchange Active Sync, and publishing wildcard domains, allowing easier publishing of SharePoint applications.

Tranform complex data into actionable insights. Built on the proven analytics engine in Microsoft SQL Server 2016 Analysis Services, Azure Analysis Services delivers enterprise-grade BI semantic modeling capabilities with the scale, flexibility, and management benefits of the cloud. Plus, your team can use existing skills, tools, and data to get more from the investments you’ve already made.

With Azure Analysis Services you can:

• Model and shape virtually any data of any size
• Get started quickly without managing infrastructure
• Provide secured access, anytime, from virtually anywhere
• Visualize your data using your favorite data visualization tool
• Govern, deploy, test, and deliver your BI solution with confidence

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Azure Data Catalog is a fully managed service in Azure that enables self-service data source discovery. It is an enterprise-wide metadata repository in Azure that allow users to register, enrich, understand, discover, and consume data from any source, using any tool. The target audience can be summarized as any user who needs access to data in the enterprise.

Azure Data Lake Analytics is a new distributed analytics service built on Apache YARN that allows developers to be productive immediately on big data. Focus on your business logic, not on distributed infrastructure while the service dynamically scales to process data of any size. When the job completes, it winds down resources automatically, and you only pay for the processing power used. This makes it easy to get started quickly and be productive with the skills you already have. Along with the service, we are excited to introduce, U-SQL, a new big data language that seamlessly unifies the ease of use of SQL starting with the expressive power of C#.

Azure Data Lake Store, previously announced as Azure Data Lake, is available as public preview. The Data Lake Store provides a single repository where you can capture data of any size, type and speed simply without forcing changes to your application as the data scales. In the store, your data is accessible from any HDFS application and tool. This allows big data engines like Data Lake analytics and HDInsight, Hortonworks, Cloudera, MapR, and Revolution Analytics Enterprise to mine the stored data and allow new insights.

Full-text search capabilities in Azure SQL Database support richer search capabilities in new cloud applications. With this and other features such as the in-memory columnstore and parallel query, we continue to bring the benefits from the decades of innovation in query processing technologies on-premises to the cloud and make it even easier to migrate existing on-premises SQL Server applications to the cloud.

As an application grows in usage, it is common place to see more contention in database access. In-memory OLTP can mitigate the contention by moving some data into memory resident tables while keeping other data in traditional, disk-based table structures. Furthermore, the performance critical business logic can be migrated to natively-compiled stored procedures for high performance execution. The in-memory adviser makes it easier for customers to identify the appropriate objects in their workload to migrate to in-memory OLTP. Customers fully embracing this technology can see performance gains of several times. Azure SQL Database is the only fully managed PaaS database service with built-in high performance in-memory engine for both in-memory OLTP and Operational Analytics in the cloud.

Azure SQL Database threat detection provides a new layer of security, which detects suspicious database activities indicating potential security threats to the database. Threat detection enables customers to respond to suspicious events in the database, such as SQL Injections as they occur by providing alerts and allowing users to explore the suspicious events using Azure SQL Database Auditing which makes it simple to monitor and respond to potential security threats to the database.

Azure SQL Database has introduced new security features in preview including Row-level Security, Dynamic Data Masking and Transparent Data Encryption, which together can help customers further support organizational or industry compliance policies. Row-Level Security is a programmability security feature that can be implemented on databases to enable fine-grained access to rows of data in a table for greater control over which users can access which data. Dynamic Data Masking is a security service of Azure SQL Database that enables Azure administrators to restrict access to sensitive data on productive databases. Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) performs real-time encryption and decryption of your database, associated backups and transaction log files.

We are announcing the public preview of the exciting new Microsoft Power BI publish to web capability. Microsoft Power BI publish to web allows you to tell compelling stories with interactive data visualizations in minutes. You can easily embed interactive Power BI visualizations in your blog and websites or share the stunning visuals through your emails or social media communications. You can reach millions of users on any device, any place. You can edit, update, refresh or un-share visuals with ease. Real-life industry usage and reference examples, videos, demos, and supporting blogs and details are now publicly available at www.powerbi.com/publishtoweb.

R Server for Azure HDInsight is a 100% open source R implementation running the most comprehensive set of ML algorithms and statistical functions in the cloud that leverages Hadoop and Spark. By making it available as a workload running inside HDInsight, we remove obstacles for users to unlock the power of R by eliminating memory and processing constraints and extending analytics from the laptop to large multi-node Hadoop and Spark clusters. This enables the ability to train and run ML models on larger datasets than previously possible to make more accurate predictions that affect the business. It also reduces the time to move ideas into production by eliminating the time-consuming installation or set up and procurement cycles for new hardware.

The recent availability of massive G-Series virtual machines and ability to automate High Availability (HA), combined with public preview services like automated backup and patching, and recently available security features like Azure Key Vault make Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Services the ideal place to run your enterprise SQL Server workloads. New auto HA setup capabilities using the AlwaysOn Portal Template added for SQL Server in Azure Virtual Machines transforms a difficult task on-premises into a trivial one in Azure, which frees up your valuable time and resources to focus on other business priorities. Backups for data security are easier now as well with the ability to automate full SQL Server level backup from an Azure Virtual Machine to Azure Storage. SQL Server patches delivered through Windows Update also get better with new auto patching capability that allows to more granularly control the Windows Update Scheduler for predictable timing of updates

Azure HDInsight now includes specific tasks like doing Web Log Analytics on Azure Website in the query console. Today, all customers who deploy their websites and web apps using Azure Websites generate web logs that track all HTTP transactions and detailed error logging. These logs are stored in Azure Blobs as non-relational files that are semi-structured. Traditionally, semi-structured files are harder to analyze unless they are extracted and transformed into a relational table/database. While Hadoop was built for these specific use cases like the ability to analyze large volumes of non-relational files, it isn’t easy to learn and pick up. To address this, Azure HDInsight now includes a web log analytics task in its query console to guide customers through the process in a few easy steps.

.NET Core & ASP.NET RC2 and .NET Core SDK Preview 1. This release succeeds the ASP.NET 5 RC1 release and features a number of updates to enhance compatibility with other .NET frameworks and an improved runtime. A single .NET toolchain can now be used for both .NET Core Console applications and ASP.NET Core applications.

We recently announced the Azure Bot Service Preview, powered by the Microsoft Bot Framework, deployed and run on the Azure serverless cloud. Developers can build, connect, deploy, and manage intelligent bots that interact naturally wherever their users are talking – from text/sms to Skype, Slack, Facebook Messenger, Kik, Office 365 mail, and other popular services. You can run the services in a serverless environment on Azure so that the bots scale based on demand. You pay only for the resources you use.

Azure Service Bus is the core messaging platform that sits at the heart of many sophisticated Azure-based solutions today. It provides a robust and reliable standards-based information flow between clients, solution subsystems, datacenters and sites. Clients running on any platform can communicate with and through Service Bus using the standard protocols like AMQP 1.0 (ISO/IEC 19464), HTTPS/REST. Service Bus Messaging is used by many commercial solutions across a broad range of industries, including retail, aviation, automotive, traffic management, manufacturing, banking, insurance, and energy. Some of Microsoft’s most demanding services, like Office365, Dynamics CRM, and blockbuster games like Halo use Service Bus as a core messaging platform.

On April 29 2016, Microsoft announced the public preview of Microsoft Flow. Microsoft Flow is a software service for business users and specialists to work smarter by automating processes across applications and services that are used every day.

Microsoft Flow:

• Provides templates for easy automation of routine tasks
• Supports common, every-day scenarios like notifications, synchronization, approvals and data acquisition
• Supports conditional logic and can be triggered by actions in many connected services, including Microsoft PowerApps

While Microsoft Flow and Azure Logic Apps share common components, Microsoft Flow is targeted for a broad set of business users and available as a separate SaaS service, whereas Logic Apps is an Azure service available through the Azure Portal. It is targeted at IT Professionals or developers who need to tackle more complex integration problems.

Microsoft Flow is available as a standalone service, or as a component of Microsoft PowerApps.

• Visit the community pages for Microsoft Flow and PowerApps
• Learn more and begin using the service

Use the Microsoft Flow Mobile App to monitor your automated workflows built with the Microsoft Flow service. Whether you want a general overview or detailed information, it’s easy to diagnose issues, synchronize data, and more.

• Turn workflows on or off from wherever you are
• Get immediate notifications when workflows fail
• Review detailed run history reports
• View and filter runs by notification type

This easy-to-use app tracks and manages the automated workflows you create between your web services, files, and cloud-based data, making it easy to:

• Instantaneously respond to critical emails
• Notify the whole team whenever a work item is updated
• Capture, track, and follow up with new sales leads
• Supports conditional logic and can be triggered by actions in many connected services, including Microsoft PowerApps

Microsoft PowerApps is a business application solution that enables organizations to increase productivity with custom apps that are easily created, shared and managed.

Microsoft PowerApps changes the economics of building and delivering custom business apps by providing a secure, scalable and managed platform that remains fast and agile. This platform provides new capabilities to build and deploy the apps that would otherwise be too expensive or impractical to address with traditional tools.

PowerApps allows business customers to access the data sources they already have or create new data needed to power the app. It enables business experts and app creators to work together to build solutions. And it makes apps that can be distributed to users of web, mobile and tablet devices. The service also includes capabilities to automate workflow process across apps and services. PowerApps enables app creation through an intuitive, no-code interface, enabling non-developers to produce powerful apps.

• Learn more about PowerApps and the Microsoft Common Data Model
• Visit the community pages for PowerApps and Microsoft Flow
• Get started using PowerApps

Enable your organization to connect, collaborate, and learn with the power of video. Built for organizations of all sizes, Microsoft Stream makes it easy to securely upload, organize and share videos across your entire company. Start using in just a few minutes, and consolidate and organize all of your videos in one easily searchable destination—it’s hassle-free and always on. Increase collaboration and participation by letting anyone in the company upload and share videos. Industry-leading encryption provides peace of mind while customizable privacy settings let you let you limit access or share widely.

Multi-project debugging will be added to Visual Studio Tools for Docker, supporting single and multi-container scenarios. Publishing to App Service as a container, CI/CD to ACS will be added to provide end to end experiences for developers and ops looking to modernize their workflows with containers.

Windows Server Container debugging for .NET Framework apps will be available, enabling developers to containerize and debug their existing workloads. Install directly from Visual Studio 2017 RC installer. You can find them under .NET Core and Docker (Preview) workload.

We are also updating Visual Studio Code Tools for Docker.

Now available as a free preview, this integration of innovative Zend Z-Ray technology with Azure App Service helps offer excellent productivity and insight to both PHP developers and developers of PHP-based applications such as WordPress, Drupal, Magento, and Joomla. You can enable Z-Ray for App Service web apps in the Settings blade of the Azure portal.