Microsoft Ignite 2020 went fully virtual this year due to the pandemic, but that didn’t slow down the announcement pace. As someone who follows Azure closely, here are the announcements that matter most for developers and architects.
Azure Communication Services
This is potentially the biggest announcement for developers building communication features. Azure Communication Services (ACS) provides the same platform that powers Microsoft Teams, exposed as APIs and SDKs. You can now add voice calling, video calling, chat messaging, and SMS to any application.
The really interesting part is Teams interoperability – your custom app can call into Teams meetings. This opens up scenarios like customer service agents in a custom app joining customer calls on Teams.
// Example: Starting a video call
import { CallClient, VideoStreamRenderer } from '@azure/communication-calling';
import { AzureCommunicationTokenCredential } from '@azure/communication-common';
const callClient = new CallClient();
const tokenCredential = new AzureCommunicationTokenCredential(userToken);
const callAgent = await callClient.createCallAgent(tokenCredential);
// Start a call to another ACS user or Teams user
const call = callAgent.startCall([{ communicationUserId: recipientId }], {
videoOptions: { localVideoStreams }
});Azure Defender – Unified Security
Security Center and various Azure threat protection services are now unified under “Azure Defender”. This provides a single dashboard for security posture across Azure resources, hybrid environments, and multi-cloud (yes, including AWS and GCP resources).
For developers, the key takeaway is that security recommendations are now more actionable and integrated into the development workflow. You can get security findings in Azure DevOps pipelines and fail builds on critical issues.
Power Automate Desktop – Free RPA
Microsoft announced that Power Automate Desktop will be included free with Windows 10. This brings robotic process automation to everyone. While developers might dismiss RPA, it’s incredibly useful for automating legacy systems without APIs – something every enterprise has.
Azure Arc Enhancements
Azure Arc continues to expand its reach. New announcements include:
- Arc-enabled Machine Learning: Train and deploy ML models on any Kubernetes cluster
- Arc-enabled Data Services: Run Azure SQL Managed Instance and PostgreSQL Hyperscale on your infrastructure
- Arc-enabled Application Services: Deploy Azure App Service, Functions, and Logic Apps anywhere
This is Microsoft’s hybrid and multi-cloud strategy in action. Write once for Azure, run anywhere with consistent management.
.NET 5 and Blazor Updates
On the .NET front, Microsoft confirmed .NET 5 is on track for November release and previewed Blazor improvements including CSS isolation, lazy loading, and better tooling. The path to .NET MAUI (Multi-platform App UI) for cross-platform development was also detailed.
Key Takeaways
- Azure Communication Services enables Teams-like features in custom apps
- Security is unified under Azure Defender with DevOps integration
- Azure Arc is becoming the management plane for everything, everywhere
- .NET 5 and Blazor continue to mature for production use
References
Discover more from C4: Container, Code, Cloud & Context
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.