Microsoft is hosting its Government Tech Summit today. At the Washington D.C. event, the company introduced new abilities for Azure Government, while also announcing two new regions. In terms of big news, Microsoft says Azure Stack will be made available for the government-specific cloud platform.
Using Azure Stack, customers will be able to share data and manage infrastructure in a safe environment. Integrated into Azure Government, Stack will allow connections on the Azure Marketplace and across billing, backup, and subscription.
New regions were announced for the platform. Government institutions wanting to manage classified data can do so through Azure Government Secret Regions. These regions were “designed and built specifically to support government agencies and partners who have Secret classified data workloads, these new regions will deliver multi-tenant cloud infrastructure and capabilities to U.S. Federal Civilian, Department of Defense, Intelligence Community and U.S. Government partners working within Secret enclaves.”
Also at the Government Tech Summit today, Microsoft unveiled two ExpressRoute locations. Coming soon to customers in the US, the locations provide security, high connection speeds, and reliability to cloud infrastructure.
Additionally, Microsoft says Azure DevTest Labs is coming to Azure Government. The sandbox environment allows customers to create tests while keeping costs down. Users can configure and share environments with developers at scale.
“Government customers can use Azure DevTest Labs to address challenges such as improving resource use and cost optimization, modernizing legacy applications and IT infrastructure, employing agile development and DevOps with minimal organizational structure changes, and nurturing citizen developers in low-risk scenarios.”
Further Announcements
Microsoft also introduced Logic Apps integration with Government. The solutions provides the ability to integrate applications and data across public, private, and on-premises cloud.
“Logic Apps enables you to transform workflows into intelligent actions with machine learning and cognitive services. You can also build smart integrations from connecting SaaS applications and hybrid deployments.”
Also, Power BI Embedded is making its debut on Azure Government. The PaaS services combines an array of data sources to provide rich analytical insights in real time.
“With Power BI Embedded, ISVs can quickly create, deploy, and manage data-rich applications using Power BI, to deliver stunning visuals, reports, and dashboards in their apps and connecting to hundreds of data sources to expose rich insights to customers.”
