TechEd 2014: Moving customers forward in a mobile-first, cloud-first world
The following post is from Brad Anderson, Corporate Vice President of Windows Server and System Center at Microsoft.
This week at Microsoft’s sold-out TechEd North America event conference in Houston, we announced several innovations to help enterprises realize the speed, scale and economics of a mobile-first, cloud-first world. These new technologies transform how we approach business innovation, creating an incredible opportunity for IT professionals, developers and technology users to drive value and boost productivity. But to do that, our customers need help breaking down barriers so they can embrace this fundamental shift.
A Hybrid Cloud infrastructure is the gateway to a cloud-first world, but the deployment process can be complex. This is why Microsoft has invested in new services designed to simplify the transition. To connect on-premises technology with the public cloud, we’ve announced the general availability Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute, as well as other enhanced computing and networking capabilities. We’ve also introduced a preview of Azure Files, a new technology that simplifies how files can be shared in the cloud across applications and services.
Connecting to the cloud is just the first step – it’s equally important to protect your cloud investments. I talk to a lot of customers who still perceive security as a barrier to cloud adoption. These customers are always excited to see Microsoft’s continued commitment to better protect their assets – on premises and in the cloud. This week, we introduced new products like the Microsoft Azure Site Recovery preview for disaster recovery and Microsoft Azure Antimalware to protect your VMs and services running Azure. We are also looking ahead to enhanced data-loss prevention and encryption technologies for Office 365 customers.
Microsoft recently announced the Enterprise Mobility Suite, a comprehensive set of cloud services that delivers on our commitment to help customers manage and protect their identity, mobile devices, applications and data. Today, we’ve extended that commitment with new technologies, including a preview of Microsoft Azure RemoteApp and a sneak peek into how Intune (one of the components of the Enterprise Mobility Suite) and Office 365 will deliver better protections to mobile productivity for Office for iPad, iPhone and Android phones later this year. The combination of Office 365 capabilities and the Enterprise Mobility Suite is truly magic, delivering the absolute best experience for protected mobile productivity with the level of security and control IT requires. Employees and IT will love this!
Developers attending this week’s TechEd will learn how to build applications optimized for any device, while leveraging the skillsets, platforms and environments they already use. As part of this, Microsoft is extending its commitment to provide tools to easily build cross-platform applications via new Visual Studio updates and tooling. Developers will also get a preview of the next version of ASP.NET, which will be shared as an open source project with the .NET Foundation.
The future of mobile-first, cloud-first is here, and we’re excited to bring the technology, support and experience that will help IT, developers and technology users alike thrive in this time of great change.
To hear more about what’s going on at TechEd, I encourage you to watch my keynote, check out the press site or read my blog.