Microsoft Ignite 2019 (November, Orlando) brought significant announcements for engineering teams using the Azure platform. The announcements that have direct engineering impact are worth separating from the marketing.
Azure Arc preview
The Azure Arc preview announcement was the most significant strategic announcement for enterprise infrastructure at Ignite 2019. The ability to project Azure management capabilities (Azure Policy, Azure Monitor, Azure RBAC) onto non-Azure infrastructure addresses the hybrid and multi-cloud reality of enterprise environments. The preview targets connected machines (Linux and Windows servers) and Kubernetes clusters.
Azure Kubernetes Service improvements
AKS at Ignite 2019: ephemeral OS disks (faster node provisioning and lower cost), private cluster general availability (no public API server endpoint), confidential computing node pools preview (AMD SEV-SNP), and Windows node pool improvements for Windows container workloads. The AKS improvements at each Ignite show the consistent investment Microsoft is making in the platform.
Azure Synapse Analytics preview
The convergence of Azure SQL Data Warehouse, Azure Data Lake Analytics, and Azure Data Factory into Azure Synapse Analytics was previewed. The unified workspace (Synapse Studio) integrates SQL, Spark, and pipeline authoring in a single development experience. The direction: break down the silos between analytical workloads that have historically required separate Azure services.
.NET 5 roadmap
The .NET 5 roadmap presentation at Ignite clarified the unification path: .NET 5 (releasing November 2020) will be the single .NET platform for server, cloud, desktop, mobile, gaming, and IoT. The convergence of .NET Core and .NET Framework into a single product line that eliminates the confusion between the two platforms.