Azure – Page 5 – Sick Gaming

Posted on October 19, 2020 by — Leave a comment

Bentley Systems expands alliance with Microsoft to accelerate infrastructure digital twin innovations

Companies will deliver and scale advancements for urban planning and smart cities

REDMOND, Wash., and EXTON, Penn. — Oct. 19, 2020 — Bentley Systems (Nasdaq: BSY) and Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) on Monday announced an expansion of a strategic alliance focused on advancing infrastructure for smart city urban planning and smart construction. The alliance will combine Microsoft’s Azure IoT Digital Twins and Azure Maps with Bentley Systems’ iTwins platform, enabling engineers, architects, constructors and city planners to work within a comprehensive city-scale digital twin, empowering better decision-making, optimizing operational efficiency, reducing costs and improving collaboration.

Microsoft and Bentley Systems, a leader in engineering software for professionals to design, build, operate and maintain critical infrastructure such as road and rail networks, and public works and utilities, will collaborate to develop new smart city solutions. The companies will explore opportunities for digital twins in urban planning and citizen engagement for cities around the world. The collaboration will enable improved decision-making and increased productivity through Microsoft Teams for infrastructure engineers.

“At Bentley we believe that infrastructure digital twins can empower engineers, constructors and owner-operators to design, build and operate infrastructure assets that are more cost-effective, more resilient and more sustainable,” said Greg Bentley, CEO, Bentley Systems. “With Azure as the foundation of our cloud services, our offerings are more broadly scaled and differentiated by the further integrations of Microsoft technologies. We are excited to extend our partnership to bring new digital twin advances to infrastructure engineering organizations and their constituents.”

“With Azure IoT, Azure Digital Twins and Bentley’s iTwins platform, the world’s infrastructure — vital to our economies and environment — stands to gain so much by enabling people to create comprehensive digital models of an entire environment,” said Casey McGee, vice president, Global ISV Sales, Microsoft. “Our expanded strategic alliance with Bentley Systems opens up new opportunities for innovation and will accelerate the benefits of digital twins for infrastructure engineering organizations and, more broadly, society at large.”

City planning and managing professional football club complex projects

The capital city of Dublin, Ireland, with a population of more than 1.2 million, is working with Bentley Systems to develop a large-scale digital twin as part of the city’s planning efforts. “To overcome the challenges of getting public review and comment for new development projects in Dublin during the pandemic, we turned to Microsoft and Bentley to create an interactive virtual environment to ensure our citizens could provide their input from the safety of their homes and keep the development projects on track,” said Jamie Cudden, smart city program manager at Dublin City Council. “The impact of the pandemic has forced cities like Dublin to accelerate their digital transformation journeys. Working with Microsoft and Bentley we are reimagining how interactive virtual environments and digital twins can support citizens to engage from the safety of their own home on new development projects in their local communities. Working with these technology partners, we are building an adaptable and scalable solution based on Microsoft Teams and Bentley’s OpenCities Planner that will set the standard for the future of planning and public engagement in cities.”

In addition to sustaining infrastructure development in smart cities, project digital twins are facilitating industrial construction. Bentley Systems was recognized by Microsoft as the 2020 MSUS Partner Award winner for the Industry-Automotive category, in which an automotive factory uses the HoloLens 2 with Bentley’s SYNCHRO 4D construction-modeling software.

Similarly, FC Barcelona, one of the oldest football clubs in Europe, is partnering with Bentley as part of the club’s renovation of Barcelona’s Camp Nou stadium, the largest in Europe, currently under construction amid the pandemic. The project will upgrade streets in the neighborhood and increase capacity at the stadium to revitalize an aging stadium and for the club to compete with other top European cities.

“Bentley has been working with FC Barcelona on the Espai Barça Project for over three years, helping the architects, the construction team and the club complete an extraordinary challenge — delivering a major renovation of the stadium while it continues to host matches,” said William T. Mannarelli, director of Real Estate & Espai Barça. “With Bentley’s SYNCHRO 4D construction-modeling software running on the Azure cloud, we can apply cutting-edge techniques to manage the complex and precise scheduling required to keep the stadium open during construction.”

Bentley’s ProjectWise, in conjunction with Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Teams, has empowered Bentley’s users to work from home safely while collaborating virtually on projects anywhere in the world.

The companies will further combine Bentley’s infrastructure digital twins expertise with Microsoft’s cloud technologies for:

ProjectWise 365, an instant-on, 100% Azure cloud-based solution that increases the speed and quality of infrastructure design collaboration, which will be available through Microsoft’s commercial marketplace.
Bentley’s iTwins platform to leverage Microsoft’s Azure Digital Twins, Azure IoT Hub, Azure Time Series Insights and other Microsoft cloud services, for users to rapidly store and process operational data.

On Oct. 20, at Bentley’s Year in Infrastructure Conference, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella will join Greg Bentley for a discussion of the companies’ new infrastructure digital twin alliance priorities. Register at Year in Infrastructure 2020.

About Bentley Systems

Bentley Systems (Nasdaq: BSY) is the infrastructure engineering software company. We provide innovative software to advance the world’s infrastructure – sustaining both the global economy and environment. Our industry-leading software solutions are used by professionals, and organizations of every size, for the design, construction, and operations of roads and bridges, rail and transit, water and wastewater, public works and utilities, buildings and campuses, and industrial facilities. Our offerings include MicroStation-based applications for modeling and simulation, ProjectWise for project delivery, AssetWise for asset and network performance, and the iTwin platform for infrastructure digital twins. Bentley Systems employs more than 4,000 colleagues and generates annual revenues of more than $700 million, in 172 countries. www.bentley.com

About Microsoft

Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

For more information, press only:

Microsoft Media Relations, WE Communications for Microsoft, (425) 638-7777, rrt@we-worldwide.com

Christine Byrne, (203) 805-0432, Christine.Byrne@bentley.com

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://news.microsoft.com. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at https://news.microsoft.com/microsoft-public-relations-contacts.

Posted on October 15, 2020 by — Leave a comment

Azure and Intel commit to delivering next generation confidential computing

In Azure, your data is your data. Not only is it protected at rest and in transit, but Microsoft Azure extends that protection while in use with confidential computing.

Azure was the first major public cloud to deliver confidential computing which opened up new levels of privacy and innovation for our customers. Today customers in finance, government, healthcare, and telecom use Azure to detect fraud, improve communications privacy, secure blockchain, deliver multi-party machine learning, and enable secure key management.

Azure now has the broadest portfolio of confidential computing options including confidential virtual machines, confidential containers, confidential machine learning, confidential IoT edge devices, and soon confidential capabilities within Azure SQL.

Today, we are announcing that Azure will be an early adopter of the 3^rd generation Intel® Xeon® Platform, code named Ice Lake, which includes full memory encryption and accelerated cryptographic performance for confidential computing with Intel Software Guard Extensions (SGX). Available next year, this technology will unlock even more confidential computing scenarios for our customers.

Beyond the hardware security protections, Microsoft Azure Attestation (MAA) further improves security by enabling customers to remotely attest to the authenticity of the SGX enclave at the hardware level, ensures the latest security patches are installed, and the confirms the integrity of the code running within the enclave.

While the roadmap is exciting, many of our customers are gaining business value on the current generation of confidential computing. We encourage you to adopt confidential computing today, as solutions you build now will continue to work in Ice Lake, and even gain additional performance and features. Just a few customer examples include:

University of California San Francisco (UCSF) is building a healthcare platform.

“UCSF’s Center for Digital Health Innovation (CDHI) is pleased to be collaborating with Fortanix, Intel, and Microsoft Azure to establish a confidential computing platform with privacy preserving analytics to accelerate the development and validation of clinical algorithms. The platform will provide a “Zero Trust” environment to protect both the intellectual property of an algorithm and the privacy of healthcare data. Using Fortanix Enclave Manager for orchestration of Intel’s SGX secure enclaves on Azure confidential computing infrastructure with Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), and CDHI’s proprietary BeeKeeperAI data access, transformation, and orchestration workflows, the platform will reduce the time and cost of developing clinical algorithms.” —Michael Blum, Executive Director, UCSF

MobileCoin is building a fast and secure cryptocurrency.

“MobileCoin partners with Azure because Microsoft has decided to invest in trustworthy systems. Confidential computing rides the edge between what we can imagine and what we can protect. The praxis we’ve experienced with Azure allows us to commit to systems that are integral, high trust, and performant.” —Joshua Goldbard, CEO, MobileCoin

Magnit is building loyalty programs with multi-party data. Magnit is one of the largest retail chains in the world and is using confidential containers to pilot a multi-party confidential data analysis solution through Aggregion’s digital marketing platform. The solution focuses on creating insights captured and computed through secured confidential computing to protect customer and partner data within their loyalty program.

Fireblocks is building a digital asset platform for financial transactions.

“At Fireblocks, our mission is to secure blockchain-based assets and transactions for the financial industry. Once we realized the traditional tech stack was not suitable for this challenge, we turned to Azure confidential computing and Intel SGX to implement our patent-pending technology. Our customers trust Fireblocks to securely store and move their digital assets—over $6.5 billion of them each month—and Azure provides a backbone for us to deliver on that promise.” —Michael Shaulov, CEO and co-founder, Fireblocks

Learn more examples from our Microsoft Ignite customer panel.

Get started

Many customers start by deploying a DCsv2 virtual machine from the Azure Marketplace and creating or modifying existing applications using the Open Enclave SDK.

Another great place to start is wrapping your existing Kubernetes applications to create confidential containers with the help of a partner such as Anjuna, Fortanix, or Scone, or using an open source solution like Graphene or Occlum.

You can also safeguard keys with Azure Key Vault Managed HSM, take advantage of confidential machine learning using ONNX models with the Confidential Inference Beta project on GitHub, or even secure IoT with Azure IoT Edge security with enclaves.

Posted on September 29, 2020 by — Leave a comment

New Azure VMware Solution is now generally available

Last week, during Microsoft Ignite we announced the general availability of the new Azure VMware Solution. Designed, built, and supported by Microsoft, Cloud Verified by VMware, running VMware Cloud Foundation technologies, Azure VMware Solution enables customers to extend or migrate VMware workloads to the cloud seamlessly. Organizations can maintain existing VMware skills and operational processes, running VMware Cloud Foundation technologies, and leverage the benefits of Azure—all at the same time.

Since announcing the preview, we’ve seen tremendous interest from businesses for Azure VMware Solution. Driven in part by organizations adapting to and recovering from the global health crisis, organizations are increasingly adopting the cloud to ensure continuity, resiliency, and cost efficiency for their business.

As always, Microsoft is focused on delivering solutions that meet our customers where they are today. In a time where speed, simplicity and skill retention are critical, Azure VMware Solution provides organizations with a fast path to the cloud, so your business can continue to use the VMware platform you know, and modernize on-premises workloads at your pace.

Engineered to meet you where you are

The goal of Azure VMware Solution has always been to deliver the best, most secure, most functional cloud of choice for our customers. As a first-party Microsoft Azure service, built in partnership with VMware, we bring the best of both platforms together to deliver a high quality, integrated solution.

Azure VMware Solution has been engineered as a core Azure compute service to deliver you the speed, scale, and high availability of our global infrastructure. With a focus on simplicity the solution features a unified Azure portal experience, and seamless access to other Azure resources. Our Microsoft and VMware engineering teams also worked closely together to deliver new functionality to run familiar VMware Cloud Foundation technology, including vSphere, HCX, NSX-T, and vSAN. We also heard from our enterprise customers the importance of large scale bulk migration, so to further ease migration efforts, you will now be able to take advantage of HCX Enterprise edition (currently in preview) which includes Replication Assisted vMotion (RAV).

Finally, from our experience with enterprise migrations, we know the importance of planning and estimating your migration to cloud. We are pleased to share that Azure Migrate supports Azure VMware Solution, helping businesses discover all of your VMs running on-premises and create assessments based on sizing and cost analysis, so you can create your Azure VMware Solution private cloud to your needs.

Unmatched cost efficiency with Azure Hybrid Benefit

As a core Azure service, Azure VMware Solution also supports Azure Hybrid Benefits, allowing you to bring your existing Microsoft workloads, running on-premises to the cloud, in the most cost-effective way. You can now maximize the value of existing on-premises Windows Server and SQL Server license investments when migrating or extending to Azure. In addition, Azure VMware Solution customers are also eligible for three years of free Extended Security Updates on 2008 versions of Windows Server and SQL Server. These pricing benefits are only available on Azure and create simplicity and cost efficiency for your journey to cloud.

Seamless access to Azure services

Throughout development, delivering on a seamless connection to Azure services has been paramount. Azure VMware Solution is tightly integrated with the Azure global network backbone to ensure you can centralize all your cloud resources in Azure. Now, whether you are looking to migrate completely or extend your on-premises VMware-based applications, you gain access to Azure services that can enhance security, management, and unlock modernization across your entire environment. We know from our customer conversations that organizations need time to develop cloud competencies within the organization. Azure VMware Solution gets you to the cloud quickly, maintaining consistency in the VMware tools and operations that you have, and growing cloud skills over time.

To help ensure business continuity and improve security and management, Azure VMware Solution customers can incrementally attach Azure services to enhance the existing environment and processes, including:

Azure Backup combined with the Recovery Services vault for VM backup and recovery. Provides geo-redundant, longer-term, off-site storage for compliance purposes, and, at the same time, address short-term retention needs for restoring data. This is a cost-effective, scalable approach to backup.
Connect Azure Security Center and Azure Sentinel with Azure VMware Solution virtual machines (VMs) to quickly strengthen your security posture and protect against threats. As security threats continue to increase, this provides a streamlined way to apply advanced best practices to your environment.
Create efficiencies with enhanced management functionalities to support cloud and hybrid environments. Integration of Azure Monitor for vCenter logs provides visibility for VMs usage; Azure Update Manager for Lifecycle Management of Windows VMs; Azure Traffic Manager to balance application workloads running on Azure VMware Solution across multiple endpoints; Azure App gateway to manage traffic to webapps running on Azure VMware Solution; API Management to publish and protect APIs on Azure VMware Solution VMs for the developer community.
Optimization storage for VMs running on Azure VMware Solution with integration with Azure NetApp Files and Azure File Share. As you also modernize application storage strategies, you can now also integrate with Azure SQL services.

Expanding partner ecosystem

As you look to move workloads from your current datacenter, and extend existing VMware workloads from on-premises to the cloud, we recognize that confidence in supportability for partner technologies that you may use today is also important. Microsoft is working closely with key partners that are integral to your IT environment, including leading solutions for backup and disaster recovery, as well as other enterprise services that run on-premises today.

“Zerto and Azure have long been an ideal combination for businesses accelerating cloud adoption and looking to simplify data protection and disaster recovery (DR). Now, with Microsoft’s new generally available release of Azure VMware Solution, customers can use Zerto to replicate and protect VMs into the cloud and within the cloud, with the same seamless experience they have on premise. Users can replicate and recover into Azure VMware Solution in under two hours, providing the ability to implement a real-time, enterprise DR solution in less time than it takes to watch a movie. It’s fast, it’s easy to manage, and it’s a great platform for disaster recovery and data protection for hybrid cloud deployments.”

Gil Levonai, CMO and SVP of Product, Zerto

“Partnering with Microsoft Azure enables us to provide a robust and cost-effective solution for disaster recovery and business continuity. It’s an ideal combination: the JetStream DR software brings continuous data protection to enterprise VMware environments, Azure Blob Storage provides a cost effective means of maintaining recovery assets, and the Azure VMware Solution provides a highly available, reliable VMware platform that can scale to meet customers’ recovery and failover requirements.”

Tom Critser, Co-Founder and CEO, Jetstream

“Using Microsoft Azure has been a critical component of the success of Commvault’s solutions and we are happy to add support for Azure VMware Solution as part of a customer’s heterogeneous, enterprise-wide data environment. In leveraging Microsoft’s Azure infrastructure, our joint customers gain the benefits of ease, scalability, security, and cost reduction seamlessly combined with leading features of our products, making it a winning combination for customers.”

Randy De Meno, VP/CTO, Microsoft Products & Solutions, Commvault

“Veritas Technologies and the Microsoft Azure teams are mutually invested in our ongoing partnership to solve the most important customer needs in Azure VMware Solution. We worked very closely together in early testing and certification to deliver a level of protection and recovery that surpasses VMware admin’s expectations in Azure VMware Solution. Veritas data protection solutions ensure that no matter where VM data resides, it meets the enterprise data protection requirements of storage reduction, and automated intelligent policies. Veritas’s continued support for the next version of Azure VMware Solution further illustrates our strong partnership and aligned commitment to helping our joint customers in their ongoing adoption of hybrid cloud, including their VMware estate. VMware admins no longer have to choose between local or hosted when it comes to their workloads and can rest easy knowing their data is protected and recoverable from anywhere, to anywhere with Veritas NetBackup.”

Doug Mathews, VP Product Management, Enterprise Data Protection and Compliance, Veritas

“Veeam currently supports the backup of Azure-native virtual machines via Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure. Now, Veeam support for Azure VMware Solutions makes it possible to easily backup and replicate vSphere workloads to and from Azure. Through Veeam Availability Suite, simple workload protection and portability is possible across on-premises VMware, Azure VMware Solution, and Azure-native VM workloads. As the leader in Cloud Data Management, Veeam strives to partner with our 375,000 customers and help them achieve their business objectives. Our day one support for Azure VMware Solution is not only a testament to our customer commitment, but also in our investment and strong, long-term relationships with VMware and Microsoft.“

Danny Allan, Chief Technology Officer and SVP of Product Strategy, Veeam

Learn more about Azure VMware Solution

Posted on September 24, 2020 by — Leave a comment

Telstra-Microsoft partnership signals new generation digital foundations for Australian businesses

Companies collaborate on one of Australia’s largest digital twin, emissions reduction initiatives, and drive transformative operational models

Australia with city lights from space at night — Telstra-Microsoft partnership signals new generation digital foundations for Australian businesses.

SYDNEY and REDMOND, Wash. — Sept. 25, 2020 — Microsoft Corp. and Telstra have extended their long-standing strategic partnership to focus on accelerating the development and release of innovative and sustainable cloud-based solutions across multiple industries driving efficiency, amplifying decision making capability and enhancing customer experiences.

The partnership is founded on Telstra and Microsoft’s shared understanding that cloud, combined with 5G, will enable intelligent devices to be securely deployed on a much greater scale. Combining Microsoft Azure and Telstra’s network also supports Australian developers and independent software vendors (ISVs) as they develop solutions that leverage AI, low latency and increased resilience.

This will help enterprises build end-to-end digital processes and enable completely new transformative business models that leverage data to accelerate smart decision making, maximise business opportunities and grow revenues. Telstra and Microsoft will partner to:

harness IoT, Edge, AI and digital twin capability to develop important new industry solutions in areas such as asset tracking, supply chain management, telematics and smart spaces;
leverage Azure as preferred cloud for Telstra’s ongoing internal digital transformation.
explore and pursue technology and data-driven solutions to advance our sustainability and climate commitments and
build ground-breaking, nationally important solutions that leverage the Telstra Data Hub.

The companies will partner on digital twins for Telstra customers as well as for Telstra’s own commercial buildings and selected other infrastructure – which when fully deployed will be one of the largest Azure-based digital twins in Australia. Telstra’s digital twin will map physical environments in an online virtual setting, to create models that provide at-a-glance understanding of what is happening in the real world, and support improved what-if scenario planning.

Telstra is working with Microsoft as its preferred cloud provider for ongoing internal digital transformation. Azure will provide the digital foundations for Telstra’s strategic plan to streamline and simplify operations, transitioning from legacy and on-premises applications to modern cloud-based solutions.

Telstra CEO Andrew Penn said the strategic partnership brought together the best strengths of the two organisations.

“We already have a longstanding relationship with Microsoft and have worked together in areas that are market-leading to create unique experiences for our customers. Over the past 18 months, we have exclusively launched Xbox All Access for Australian gamers, were the first to launch Telstra Calling for Office 365, the only native Teams voice calling plan in Australia, which we recently expanded to include Microsoft Business Voice for SMB customers; and co-collaborated on Telstra Data Hub to help industries better manage their data securely.”

“Today’s announcement with Microsoft formalises the several streams of work we are already collaborating on. The global scale of Microsoft’s platform, tools, and applications, together with Telstra’s network solutions, reliability and leadership, will drive new and unique solutions for Australia,” Mr Penn said.

“In July, Telstra was certified carbon neutral in our operations. Significantly reducing emissions while the demand for connectivity and new digital technologies is rising rapidly is one of our biggest commitments, as well as one of our biggest challenges. Microsoft and Telstra both have ambitious climate targets and share a commitment to a net zero carbon future.”

“The outputs from all workstreams will also help deliver more innovative products for customers across all segments of the market, and will aim to enhance customer experience and engagement, solve business challenges, and drive a new level of technology leadership. This is a great opportunity to drive further digital innovation to strengthen the Australian economy, and to build a sustainable, connected future so everyone can thrive,” Mr Penn said.

“The broad adoption of cloud and 5G technology will create new opportunities for businesses worldwide, including in Australia,” said Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft.

“We’re expanding our partnership with Telstra and bringing together the power of Azure and Telstra’s network to build new solutions in critical areas like asset tracking, supply-chain management, and smart spaces, harnessing the latest advances in AI, digital twins, and mixed reality.”

# Notes to the Editor #

Focus areas of the extended partnership include, but are not limited to:

Digital twin, IoT and cloud: Telstra has selected Microsoft as a strategic partner in the design and build of a scalable and unified IoT platform leveraging Azure IoT that enables Telstra to simplify operations and significantly reduce time to market. Telstra is partnering with Microsoft to build a digital twin across its own commercial buildings with an initial deployment of five buildings including the flagship site at 242 Exhibition St in Melbourne. When fully deployed this represents one of the largest Azure-based digital twins in Australia. Once complete, the digital twin will allow Telstra to establish a digital nerve centre that promises enhanced transparency by modernising business processes and the work environment, enhancing digital interaction between personnel and enabling Telstra to improve operational efficiency.

Using its technology services provider, Telstra Purple, Telstra is working with Microsoft to provide an advanced digital twin solution for Downer Group’s asphalt plants. This ‘digital asphalt plant’; promises greater efficiency, reliability, and safety while at the same time increasing operational transparency and control. Through a collaborative design process, Telstra Purple and Downer identified the opportunity to leverage Microsoft Azure AI and edge services and Telstra’s Smart Spaces video analytics, to provide real time worker safety information directly to Azure Digital Twins. These ‘digital safety barriers’ identify and track dangerous activity across the plant. The companies envision the solution will be deployed in 33 asphalt plants across Australia.

Digital Foundation: Telstra is working with Microsoft Azure as its preferred cloud provider for ongoing internal digital transformation. Azure will provide the digital foundations for Telstra’s strategic plan to streamline and simplify operations, transitioning from legacy and on-premise applications to modern cloud-based solutions.

Telstra is expanding its use of Azure for several critical IT applications, including the creation of a Digital Foundation for the ongoing modernisation of IT infrastructure, and also underpinning Data Hub, IoT and Digital Twin Capability. Azure will also help Telstra achieve its sustainability targets.

Sustainability: Addressing climate change is one of the defining challenges of the decade. Our sector has the potential to enable emissions savings more than seven times greater than the emissions we generate through providing our customers with low carbon products and services such as cloud computing.

Telstra and Microsoft are committed to exploring and pursuing technology and data-driven work to advance our sustainability and climate commitments. The initial focus will be on reducing emissions, circular economy, and remote work. We will work together to pilot real-time data reporting solutions such as Microsoft’s Sustainability Calculator that will deliver greater understanding of our joint carbon footprint to achieve further emissions reductions.

Armed with that insight the companies will be able to identify and support the development of more efficient products and processes.

Telstra Data Hub (TDH): Collaborating over the past year, Microsoft and Telstra have made significant progress with the Telstra Data Hub which enables many-to-many data interconnects to occur through a common platform. Designed to facilitate complex data sharing and permission scenarios, while alleviating the need to create multiple, bespoke point-to-point integrations required between systems, Telstra Data Hub has been built using the companies’ technologies to help customers realise the value of their data, to share their data across industry and act as the foundation for new AI models.

Early customers include the Queensland State government, who are evaluating how to securely gather the critical data to manage the state’s natural water system, and in doing so not only develop an end-to-end view of the state’s water asset but to also provide immediate value to the industries that use the water to fuel the economy. Other users of Telstra Data Hub include the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute, where we are collaborating on a data sharing and analytics ecosystem focused on understanding sudden cardiac death in young people, as well as with Charles Sturt University on a data ecosystem for agricultural commodities.

Telstra

Telstra is Australia’s leading telecommunications and technology company, offering a full range of communications services and competing in all telecommunications markets. Our purpose is to build a connected future so everyone can thrive.

Microsoft

Media enquiries, contact:

Rudolf Wagenaar, Commercial Communications Lead, Microsoft Australia

E: ruwage@microsoft.com

M: 043 908 2550

Telstra

Steve Carey, General Manager, Media

Matthew Wu, Product & Technology Communications Lead

E: media@team.telstra.com

Posted on September 22, 2020 by — Leave a comment

Azure Static Web Apps with .NET and Blazor

Aaron

September 22nd, 2020

Azure Static Web Apps is a service that automatically builds and deploys full stack web apps from a GitHub repository. Azure Static Web Apps consist of a static web frontend, and an Azure Functions based backend. When you create a Static Web Apps resource, Azure sets up a GitHub Actions workflow in the app’s source code repository that monitors a branch of your choice. Every time you push commits to the watched branch, the GitHub Action automatically builds and deploys your app and its API.

As of today, Azure Static Web Apps now has first-class support for Blazor WebAssembly and .NET Functions in preview, available in all supported regions. This was one of the top user requests since Static Web Apps was announced at Build. You can develop and deploy a frontend and a serverless API written entirely in .NET.

Let’s give it a try!

Getting Started

To help you get started, we’ve created a GitHub repository template, which you can use as a starting point for your own projects.

In GitHub, click on the Use this template button to create a new GitHub repository using the template, providing it a name of your choosing (we’ll use my-blazor-app here) and click Create repository from template.

There are three folders in the template:

Client: The Blazor WebAssembly sample application
API: A C# Azure Functions API, which the Blazor application will call
Shared: A C# class library with a shared data model between the Blazor and Functions application

To run the app locally, start both the API and Client projects. The “Fetch data” page in the Blazor app requests weather forecast data form the backend Function API and display it on the page.

To run the app from the command-line, you’ll need to install the Azure Functions Core Tools for your platform of choice.

Deploying to Static Web Apps

To deploy this app as an Azure Static Web App, log into your Azure account (sign up for a free one here) and search for Static Web Apps.

Click Create, provide a Subscription, Resource Group and name for the application.

Next, sign into GitHub and locate your GitHub repo (my-blazor-app) and select the branch you wish to deploy.

Finally, select Blazor from the Build Presets, which will populate the App location, API location and App artifact location with Client, API and wwwroot. The first and second values are the path within the Git repository to where the project files for the Blazor and Functions app resides, so if you’ve modified the structure of the Git repository, make sure these values are updated to reflect. The third value is the output path that Blazor will compile into and doesn’t need updating.

Complete the wizard and Static Web Apps will create the GitHub Actions workflow file for you and deploy your application to Azure.

Summary

We started by forking a GitHub repository (but you could’ve also used a project created in Visual Studio/Visual Studio Code/etc.), created a Static Web App in Azure, and it setup a GitHub Actions workflow for us, automatically building and deploying our Blazor and Functions application. We’ve now got a statically hosted application with a serverless backend, ready to scale for our demands.

Additional Resources

To learn more about Blazor WebAssembly and .NET Functions on Static Web Apps, check out the quickstart docs, the Microsoft Learn module, as well as the comprehensive Static Web Apps docs.

Give Feedback

We’re excited to have Blazor WebAssembly and .NET Functions supported by Azure Static Web Apps, and can’t wait to see what you build with them. Let us know what you think by filing an issue on GitHub.

Posted on September 22, 2020 by — Leave a comment

AT&T and Microsoft to streamline cloud connectivity for IoT devices worldwide

A new solution built on AT&T’s global cellular network and Microsoft Azure Sphere will enable secured and effortless deployment of the IoT worldwide

Espresso barista with mobile device — AT&T and Microsoft are enabling businesses to connect devices and machines to their own secure cloud environments through an AT&T-powered guardian device with Azure Sphere.

DALLAS and REDMOND, Wash., Sept. 22, 2020 — AT&T and Microsoft are teaming up to enable enterprises to seamlessly connect machines and equipment to the cloud with highly secure network connectivity across the globe. As part of the effort, AT&T is working with Microsoft to deliver an integrated IoT solution with Azure Sphere. This AT&T powered guardian device with Azure Sphere will help businesses transform their operations quickly through massive IoT deployments at scale.

The AT&T powered guardian device is the latest example of how the two companies are working together through a strategic alliance to improve how people live and work today and in the future.

The new solution combines the secured architecture of Azure Sphere, a comprehensive IoT security solution including hardware, OS and cloud services with Azure IoT services and the global and multi-layered security of AT&T’s core network. The AT&T global SIM enables connectivity in more than 200 countries across 500 carriers. AT&T offers managed services to support day-to-day operations. The guardian device is easy to install and provides an end-to-end solution for connecting machines and equipment to the cloud, bypassing the need for public Internet.

The solution provides fast and highly secure activation right out of the box. It enables enterprises to easily connect existing equipment to the cloud and to Azure IoT Central. With this, a wide variety of industries can rapidly deploy IoT applications relying on the combined security benefits of the AT&T cellular network with Azure Sphere device security.

Think of fast food restaurants, coffee shops, elevators, hospitals, manufacturing plants and the ability to retrofit existing equipment into “smart” devices that are digitally enabled through highly secure cellular connections. Customers can connect their devices and machines to their own cloud environment without the need to connect to a Wi-Fi through a third party network connection that may not meet their high security standards.

“Our work with AT&T is a prime example of how the convergence of secure cloud computing and network technology helps businesses unlock new customer value and continuously simplify every aspect of our personal and professional lives,” said Corey Sanders, corporate vice president, Microsoft Solutions.

“AT&T and Microsoft share the belief that technology should serve people,” added Mo Katibeh, executive vice president and chief product and platform officer, AT&T Business. “Working with Microsoft we can offer a truly global solution with strong security and data insights that can help a broad array of industries simplify operations, manage costs, and become more agile in any market.”

AT&T and Microsoft launched their extensive multi-year alliance last year.

One area of focus is aimed at enabling new 5G, cloud and edge computing solutions to drive enterprise capabilities for companies around the world.

Find more information about the AT&T powered guardian device here and on the Microsoft Azure blog post from Galen Hunt, Distinguished Engineer and Managing Director, Microsoft Azure Sphere.

About Microsoft

*About AT&T Communications

We help family, friends and neighbors connect in meaningful ways every day. From the first phone call 140+ years ago to mobile video streaming, we innovate to improve lives. We have the nation’s fastest wireless network.** And according to America’s biggest test, we have the nation’s best wireless network.*** We’re building FirstNet® just for first responders and creating next-generation mobile 5G. With a range of TV and video products, we deliver entertainment people love to talk about. Our smart, highly secure solutions serve nearly 3 million global businesses – nearly all of the Fortune 1000. And worldwide, our spirit of service drives employees to give back to their communities.

AT&T Communications is part of AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T). Learn more at att.com/CommunicationsNews.

AT&T products and services are provided or offered by subsidiaries and affiliates of AT&T Inc. under the AT&T brand and not by AT&T Inc. Additional information about AT&T products and services is available at about.att.com. Follow our news on Twitter at @ATT, on Facebook at facebook.com/att and on YouTube at youtube.com/att.

© 2020 AT&T Intellectual Property. All rights reserved. AT&T, the Globe logo and other marks are trademarks and service marks of AT&T Intellectual Property and/or AT&T affiliated companies. FirstNet and the FirstNet logo are registered trademarks and service marks of the First Responder Network Authority. All other marks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.

**Based on analysis by Ookla® of Speedtest Intelligence® data median download speeds for Q2 2020. Akola trademarks used under license and reprinted with permission.

***GWS Ones core, September 2019.

For more information, contact:

For AT&T:

Jessica Swain

AT&T Corporate Communications

jessica.swain@att.com

+1 (415) 613-4267

Microsoft Media Relations

WE Communications for Microsoft

Phone: (425) 638-7777

Email: rrt@we-worldwide.com

Posted on September 2, 2020 by — Leave a comment

Azure Spring Cloud — a fully managed service for Spring Boot apps — is now generally available

Azure Spring Cloud—a fully managed service for Spring Boot apps—is now generally available. With Azure Spring Cloud, you can focus on building the apps that run your business without the hassle of managing infrastructure. Simply deploy your JARs or code and Azure Spring Cloud will automatically wire your apps with the Spring service runtime. Once deployed you can easily monitor application performance, fix errors, and rapidly improve applications.

Azure Spring Cloud is jointly built, operated, and supported by Microsoft and VMware. You can use Azure Spring Cloud for your most demanding applications and be assured that Microsoft and VMware are standing behind the service to ensure your success.

Azure Spring Cloud is now available in 10 regions—West US2, Central US, South Central US, East US, East US2, UK South, North Europe, West Europe, Southeast Asia, and Australia East—across four continents. We expect to add 10 more regions in the coming months. You can start using Azure Spring Cloud in production today.

In October 2019, Microsoft and VMware announced the collaboration of Azure Spring Cloud. Since then, many customers have approached us about this differentiated offer. Java developers in many organizations have used the service and provided us with plenty of feedback to prioritize features to help shape Azure Spring Cloud. We have enabled security features to manage secrets, hybrid deployments, control ingress and egress to apps, and secure communications using TLS/SSL. To support performance and reliability we have enabled autoscaling, log streaming, alerts, and self-diagnostics.

Developers say that it is simple to deploy, automate, operate, and monitor Spring Boot and Spring Cloud applications in Azure Spring Cloud. Our enterprise customers have benefited from fully managed infrastructure, automation, easier monitoring and troubleshooting, and increased developer productivity and satisfaction.

“The Azure Spring Cloud allows our teams to build new business services rapidly, as the platform and underlying infrastructure is fully managed. The platform is integrated with the Azure ecosystem, which enables us to achieve the desired level of automation and means to operate the services securely. Now that we have the first set of services running in production, it is all about doing more of the same using the Azure Spring Cloud to meet our critical delivery deadlines.”—Nicolas Andres, Head IT Group Finance Program, Swiss Re Management Ltd. (Switzerland)

“Raley’s is very pleased to collaborate with the Microsoft team. Spring Boot and Azure Spring Cloud have enabled our developers to focus more on feature development and more frequent deployments without worrying about underlying infrastructure or monitoring. The team is pleased with Spring Boot and Azure Spring Cloud, and looking to migrate the majority of our services to Spring Boot in next 6 months”—Abhay Kamble, Director, Unified Commerce, Raley’s (United States)

“As a leading integrated HR services provider, Liantis pursues new business opportunities in the digital economy, serving our customers with powerful applications and tools. The Azure Spring Cloud capabilities complement and extend our existing Spring Cloud software factory, allowing us to focus on the development of core business functionalities.”—Nicolas Van Kerschaver, CIO, Liantis (Belgium)

“Production is the happiest place on earth. I love seeing my applications there. I do not love wearing the pager! Spring Boot and Spring Cloud give me a framework for building resilient, cloud-native software. Azure Spring Cloud builds on the rich ecosystems of Microsoft Azure, Spring, and Kubernetes to deliver a turnkey platform optimized for Spring-based applications and services. Spring and Azure Spring Cloud let me deliver valuable software without worrying as much about the pager. They get me to production.” —Josh Long, Spring Developer Advocate, VMware

Distributed tracing

One of the Azure Spring Cloud features that customers have found particularly valuable is distributed tracing. Developers can easily identify issues in their applications and quickly troubleshoot and fix them.

Figure 1: Microservice transactions in Application Insights.

The diagram above captures microservice transactions in Application Insights for 4 hours with 70 percent sampling rate. We purposely dropped one of the microservices, to showcase services that are operating correctly (green) and those with bottlenecks (red). You can use integrated distributed tracing in Azure Spring Cloud to troubleshoot those bottlenecks, plan capacities and keep an eye on production.

Azure Spring Cloud in Managed Virtual Network

Security is a key tenet of Azure Spring Cloud. Customers want to isolate Azure Spring Cloud from the internet or place it in their own corporate networks. We are happy to share the preview of Managed Virtual Network in Azure Spring Cloud. This feature allows you to be in control of inbound and outbound network communications for Azure Spring Cloud and enables Azure Spring Cloud to interact with systems in on-premises data centers or Azure services in virtual networks.

In addition, the feature composes with Azure network resources such as Application Gateway, Azure Firewall, Azure Front Door and Express Route, and popular network products such as Palo Alto Firewall, F5 Big-IP, Cloudflare, and Infoblox. This way, you can secure the perimeters around your Spring Boot apps.

Figure 2: Reference architecture of Managed Virtual Network and Azure Spring Cloud.

Drive higher utilization of apps in Azure Spring Cloud with Autoscale

Autoscale has been one of the most sought-after features from customers. We are excited to share the preview of Autoscale in Azure Spring Cloud. It enables you to be more productive and cost-efficient by automatically scaling apps up or down based on load or schedule. Once Autoscale is enabled, you can be rest assured that the service will take care of your underlying infrastructure and the load on your apps.

In the load or metric-based mode, your apps will be horizontally scaled out to exactly how many apps and resources are needed for the load, but never go beyond the maximum limits that you set. Similarly, the number of apps and resources will be horizontally scaled-in to meet the minimum to meet your load, but never go below the minimum limits that you set. In the schedule-based mode, your apps will be scaled out and in based on your predefined schedule and limits.

Figure 3: Autoscaling in Azure Spring Cloud.

Build your solutions today

Azure Spring Cloud abstracts away the complexity of infrastructure management and Spring Cloud middleware management, so you can focus on building your business logic and let Azure take care of dynamic scaling, patches, security, compliance, and high availability. With a few steps, you can provision Azure Spring Cloud, create apps, deploy, and scale Spring Boot apps and start monitoring in minutes.

We will continue to bring more developer-friendly and enterprise-ready features to Azure Spring Cloud. To hear more from VMware on today’s announcement, head over to their announcement.

We would love to hear how you are building impactful solutions using Azure Spring Cloud. Get started today—deploy Spring apps to Azure Spring Cloud using quickstart!

Resources to get you started

Posted on August 25, 2020 by — Leave a comment

Empowering remote learning with Azure Cognitive Services

This blog post was co-authored by Anny Dow, Product Marketing Manager, Azure Cognitive Services.

As schools and organizations around the world prepare for a new school year, remote learning tools have never been more critical. Educational technology, and especially AI, has a huge opportunity to facilitate new ways for educators and students to connect and learn.

Today, we are excited to announce the general availability of Immersive Reader, and shine a light on how new improvements to Azure Cognitive Services can help developers build AI apps for remote education that empower everyone.

Make content more accessible with Immersive Reader, now generally available

Immersive Reader is an Azure Cognitive Service within the Azure AI platform that helps readers read and comprehend text. Through today’s general availability, developers and partners can add Immersive Reader right into their products, enabling students of all abilities to translate in over 70 languages, read text aloud, focus attention through highlighting, other design elements, and more.

Immersive Reader has become a critical resource for distance learning, with more than 23 million people every month using the tool to improve their reading and writing comprehension. Between February and May 2020, when many schools moved to a distance learning model, we saw a 560 percent increase in Immersive Reader usage. As the education community embarks on a new school year in the Fall, we expect to see continued momentum for Immersive Reader as a tool for educators, parents, and students.

With the general availability of Immersive Reader, we are also rolling out the following enhancements:

Immersive Reader SDK 1.1: Updates include support to have a page read aloud automatically, pre-translating content, and more. Learn about SDK updates.
New Neural Text-to-Speech (TTS) languages: Immersive Reader is adding 15 new Neural Text to Speech voices, enabling students to have content read aloud in even more languages. Learn about the new Neural Text to Speech languages.
New Translator languages: Translator is adding five new languages that will also be available in Immersive Reader—Odia, Kurdish (Northern), Kurdish (Central), Pashto, and Dari. Learn about the latest Translator languages.

Today, we’re adding new partners who are integrating Immersive Reader to make content more accessible, Code.org and SAFARI Montage.

Code.org is a nonprofit dedicated to expanding access to computer science in schools. To ensure that students of all backgrounds and abilities can access their resources and course content, Code.org is integrating Immersive Reader into their platform.

“We’re thrilled to partner with Microsoft to bring Immersive Reader to the Code.org community. The inclusive capabilities of Immersive Reader to improve reading fluency and comprehension in learners of varied backgrounds, abilities, and learning styles directly aligns with our mission to ensure every student in every school has the opportunity to learn computer science.” – Hadi Partovi, Founder and CEO of Code.org

SAFARI Montage, a leading learning object repository, is integrating Immersive Reader to make it possible for students of any language background or accessibility needs to engage with content, and enable families who don’t speak the language of instruction to be more involved in their students’ learning journeys.

“Immersive Reader is a crucial support for CPS students and families. During remote learning, particularly for our younger learners, student learning is often supported by parents, guardians, or other caregivers. Since Immersive Reader can be used to translate the student-facing instructions in our digital curriculum, families can support student learning in over 80 languages, making digital learning far more equitable and accessible than ever before! In addition, read-aloud and readability supports are game-changers for diverse learners” – Giovanni Benincasa, UX Manager, Department of Curriculum, Instruction, and Digital Learning, Chicago Public Schools

With Immersive Reader, all it takes is a single API call to help users boost literacy. To start exploring how to integrate Immersive Reader into your app or service, check out these resources:

To see the growing list of Immersive Reader partners and learn more, check out our partners page and Immersive Reader education blog.

Bring online courses to life with speech-enabled apps

With the shift to remote learning, another challenge that educators may face is continuing to drive student engagement.

Text to Speech, a Speech service feature that allows users to convert text to lifelike audio can facilitate new ways for students to interact with content. In addition to powering features like Read Aloud in Immersive Reader and the Microsoft Edge browser, Text to Speech enables developers to build apps that speak naturally in over 110 voices with more than 45 languages and variants.

With the Audio Content Creation tool, users can more easily bring audiobooks to life and finetune audio characteristics like voice style, rate, pitch, and pronunciation to fit their scenarios—no code required. Voices can even be customized for specific characters or personas; the Custom Neural Voice capability makes it possible to build one-of-a-kind voices, starting with 30 minutes of audio. Duolingo, for example, is using the Custom Neural Voice capability to create unique voices to represent different characters in its language courses.

To learn more about how to start creating speech-enabled apps for remote learning, check out the technical Text to Speech blog and other resources:

Improve productivity and accessibility with transcription and voice commands

AI can also be a useful tool for more seamless note-taking, making it possible for students and teachers to type with their voice. Transcribe in Word uses Speech to Text in Azure Cognitive Services to automatically transcribe your conversations. Now with speaker diarization, you can get a transcript that identifies who said what, when.

In addition, adding voice enables more seamless experiences in Microsoft 365. For students who have difficulties writing things down, they can use AI-powered tools in Office not just for dictation but also for controls such as adding, formatting, editing, and organizing text. Word uses Language Understanding, an Azure Cognitive Service that enables you to add custom natural language understanding to your apps, to make it possible to capture ideas easily. To learn more about Language Understanding and how it is powering voice commands, check out our Language Understanding blog.

For more details on how AI is powering experiences in Microsoft 365, read the Microsoft 365 blog.

Get started today

We can’t wait to see what you’ll build. Get started today with Azure Cognitive Services and an Azure free account.

Posted on August 21, 2020 by — Leave a comment

Universal Filmed Entertainment Group and Microsoft Azure announce partnership to accelerate live-action and animation productions

Companies pledge to bring together cloud and production expertise to create production asset platform for Universal and DreamWorks Animation films

UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif., and REDMOND, Wash. — Aug. 21, 2020 — Universal Filmed Entertainment Group and Microsoft Corp. on Friday announced a strategic partnership to cloud-optimize live-action and animation productions. The partnership aims to empower the creative community with cloud-based production workflows that enable frictionless remote collaboration and content creation. Working together, the teams will extend DreamWorks Animation’s cutting-edge production platform to include live-action production. They will bring those workflows into Microsoft Azure and ensure Universal’s ecosystem of partners can connect to them in open, standards-based ways.

This partnership will also enable the development of near-term solutions to accelerate a return to industry production during the global pandemic by engaging a broad array of industry partners to streamline workflows and remote collaboration.

“With this partnership, Universal is continuing to build on our commitment as an industry leader in transitioning to a cloud production model across our portfolio of studios. As outlined last year in the MovieLabs 2030 vision paper, streamlining our workflows will allow for a more efficient creative process, empowering the artists and storytellers we work with to make the best content possible,” said Michael Wise, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Universal Filmed Entertainment Group.

Jeff Wike, Chief Technology Officer at DreamWorks Animation added, “We are very excited to be collaborating with the Universal and Microsoft teams on this initiative. DreamWorks is focused on developing innovative technologies to achieve our studio’s creative ambitions, and we have been preparing for this opportunity by working with industry partners to optimize our internal solutions. Incorporating Microsoft’s Azure-based platform with our current infrastructure will enable us to provide increased and more flexible digital resources to our artists.”

For 25 years, DreamWorks has showcased the benefits of having artists and engineers work side by side to develop new pipelines and creative toolsets. For this new platform, DreamWorks and Universal technical teams will partner with Microsoft developers to extend and optimize pipelines to take advantage of Azure’s global hyper-scale storage and compute platform to support both animation and live-action content creation. Universal plans to leverage this new capability on Azure to enable easy remote production collaboration, asset reuse, and ubiquitous compute and storage to empower creatives to do their best work.

“Together with customers like Universal and DreamWorks, we are prioritizing cloud + edge technologies to help transform workflows, increase production output and reduce friction for creatives,” said Hanno Basse, media and entertainment CTO, Microsoft Azure. “Working together, we aspire to create technology for the industry, with the industry, so they can tell stories the world loves.”

Just over three years ago, Microsoft began its journey to help the media and entertainment industry extend their content creation workflows to the cloud. Since then partners such as Avid, Adobe, Technicolor, Bebop Technology, StratusCore and Teradici together with Azure HPC-Cache, Video Indexer and remote workstation technologies have helped customers render, edit and transform content through visual effects using hyper-scale cloud Microsoft Azure. Now, informed by these partners, customers like Universal and DreamWorks and industry bodies like the Entertainment Technology Center@USC, Microsoft is accelerating plans to help the industry optimize workflows, accelerate output with innovations like AI and deliver increased flexibility to meet the challenges of tomorrow.

About Universal Filmed Entertainment Group

Universal Filmed Entertainment Group (UFEG) produces, acquires, markets and distributes filmed entertainment worldwide in various media formats for theatrical, home entertainment, television and other distribution platforms. The global division includes Universal Pictures, Focus Features, Universal Pictures Home Entertainment, DreamWorks Animation Film and Television. UFEG is part of NBCUniversal, one of the world’s leading media and entertainment companies in the development, production and marketing of entertainment, news and information to a global audience. NBCUniversal owns and operates a valuable portfolio of news and entertainment networks, a premier motion picture company, significant television production operations, a leading television stations group, world-renowned theme parks and a suite of leading Internet-based businesses. NBCUniversal is a subsidiary of Comcast Corporation.

About Microsoft

For more information, press only:

Microsoft Media Relations, WE Communications for Microsoft, (425) 638-7777, rrt@we-worldwide.com

Universal Filmed Entertainment Group (UFEG), Allison Leffingwell, (818) 777-8430, Allison.Leffingwell@nbcuni.com

Posted on August 11, 2020 by — Leave a comment

Standard Chartered Bank partners with Microsoft to become a cloud-first bank

SINGAPORE and REDMOND, Wash. — Aug. 11, 2020 — Standard Chartered Bank and Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday announced a three-year strategic partnership to accelerate the bank’s digital transformation through a cloud-first strategy. This partnership marks a significant milestone for Standard Chartered in making its vision for virtual banking, next-generation payments, open banking and banking-as-a-service a reality. Leveraging Azure as a preferred cloud platform, the companies will also co-innovate in open banking and real-time payments to help the bank unlock new banking experiences for clients.

Embarking on a cloud-first strategy

As part of its digital transformation, Standard Chartered will adopt a multicloud approach, where significant applications, including its core banking and trading systems and new digital ventures such as virtual banking and banking-as-a-service, will be cloud-based by 2025, subject to regulatory approvals. The bank will also adopt a cloud-first principle for all new software developments and major enhancements.

As technology reshapes the banking industry, Standard Chartered recognizes that a cloud-first strategy is critical to the bank’s ambition to make banking simpler, faster and more convenient. By being digital-first, the bank will be able to meet the demand for seamless banking virtually anytime, anywhere, and make banking more accessible to people across its network.

Michael Gorriz, Group Chief Information Officer of Standard Chartered, said, “Cloud is a cornerstone of Standard Chartered’s strategy to meet the present and future banking needs of our clients. Cloud providers have invested massively in the reliability and automation of infrastructure and platforms. Using cloud services improves our ability to be agile and innovative, while increasing our operational efficiency and resilience. As disruption in the financial industry continues, we can focus on client benefits by deploying our solutions quicker and allowing for faster integration of new business models and partners. To realize our digital ambitions, Standard Chartered has chosen Microsoft as a strategic partner and this partnership marks a major milestone for the bank in adopting a cloud-first approach.”

Bhupendra Warathe, Chief Technology Officer, Cloud Transformation at Standard Chartered, added “The pandemic has shone a spotlight on the need for businesses and banks to be resilient from a risk mitigation, cost and security perspective. With the increasing trend of an always-on digital economy, commercial and consumer clients are looking for applications and services that empower them to do online banking from anywhere, flexibly and efficiently. The speed and scale of continuous innovation offered by Azure allows us to innovate with the latest AI services to meet evolving client needs. We can pilot new apps in one market and scale them rapidly across others. This is especially important for a bank with a footprint as broad and diverse as ours.”

Standard Chartered will adopt Microsoft Azure as a preferred cloud platform to meet the bank’s need for resilient data centers and cloud services and addressing customers’ security, privacy and compliance requirements across the bank’s global footprint.

The first set of capabilities to move to Microsoft Azure will be Standard Chartered’s trade finance systems, allowing for seamless cross-border trade for the bank’s corporate and institutional clients.

The partnership will also advance the bank’s digital workplace transformation with Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams providing modern productivity and collaboration tools to Standard Chartered’s 84,000 employees across its 60 markets.

Co-innovating the future of banking

Standard Chartered will also use Microsoft Azure artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics capabilities to enhance and automate banking processes as well as deliver hyper- personalization of its client products and experiences. Co-innovation in open banking application programming interface (API) and Internet-of-Things-based, real-time payments will also help the bank unlock new banking experiences for clients. Bill Borden, Corporate Vice President of Worldwide Financial Services at Microsoft, said, “Cloud computing is an enabler for financial institutions to modernize their infrastructure and systems, to gain the agility they need to respond to competitive pressures, regulatory environments and customer demand. We are committed to helping Standard Chartered Bank in its ongoing digital transformation journey as it strives to address evolving customer needs and build the next generation of banking experiences.”

Addressing the social needs of communities in the emerging markets

Standard Chartered strives to understand the evolving needs of its communities and be an enabler for change. As a part of the strategic partnership, the bank and Microsoft will explore sustainable finance and business initiatives to expand sustainability across the industry.

About Standard Chartered Bank

We are a leading international banking group, with a presence in 60 of the world’s most dynamic markets, and serving clients in a further 85. Our purpose is to drive commerce and prosperity through our unique diversity, and our heritage and values are expressed in our brand promise, Here for good.

Standard Chartered PLC is listed on the London and Hong Kong Stock Exchanges.

For more stories and expert opinions please visit Insights at sc.com. Follow Standard Chartered on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

About Microsoft

For more information, please contact:

Microsoft Media Relations, WE Communications for Microsoft, (425) 638-7777, rrt@weworldwide.com

Julie Gibson, Standard Chartered, julie.gibson@sc.com