Melissa Ma, a Senior PM in the Azure product group, talks to us about the new Pronunciation Assessment service and SDK which makes it easy to build linguistic applications that can provide the user with realtime feedback on their speech.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode390.mp3 

YouTube: https://youtu.be/SdGeTmJtORw

Resources: 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cognitive-services/speech-service/how-to-pronunciation-assessment?pivots=programming-language-java

https://customers.microsoft.com/en-us/story/1379625676815325642-pearson-education-azure-cognitive-services

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-ai/speech-service-update-pronunciation-assessment-is-generally/ba-p/2505501

The Speech SDK supports pronunciation assessment, which assesses the pronunciation quality of speech input, with indicators of accuracy, fluency, completeness, etc.docs.microsoft.com

Other updates:

General availability: GitHub Codespaces

How to re-size Azure virtual networks that are peered—now in preview

Azure Blob storage - Inventory generally availability

Upgrade to Text-to-Speech Neural Voice  by 31 August 2024

The team talks to Bec Lyons, Program Manager of Logic Apps about the latest offering of Standard Logic Apps, connectors, and how to decide when to use Power Automate or Logic Apps. 

Media File: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode389.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/tV6w5Tlgt9E

Resources:

1.Find our documentation at https://aka.ms/LogicApps/Docs

2.Get started with Logic Apps at https://aka.ms/IntroToLogicApps

3.Samples: https://github.com/azure/logicapps

April Dunnam, one of the premier experts on the Power Platform, and now a Cloud Advocate at Microsoft, talks to us about how it facilitates easy app development on Azure. She talks about the scenarios for these apps, the connector ecosystem and the underlying architecture that make these apps work great on Azure.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode388.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/kURXnErpOSU

Resources:

https://aka.ms/learn-fusiondev

https://aka.ms/powerapps-devplan

https://youtube.com/c/aprildunnam

Other updates:

Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare expands portfolio with Azure Healthcare APIs

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/microsoft-cloud-for-healthcare-expands-portfolio-with-azure-healthcare-apis/

Advancing Azure Virtual Machine availability transparency

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/advancing-azure-virtual-machine-availability-transparency/

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/immutable-storage-with-versioning-for-blob-storage-is-now-in-public-preview/

Lior Kamrat, a Cloud Solution Architect focused on the Hybrid landscape, discusses the role Azure Arc plays and the scenarios is addresses. 

Media File: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode387.mp3

YouTube: Azure Podcast - Azure Arc - YouTube

Resources:

Azure Arc Jumpstart: aka.ms/AzureArcJumpstart

Updates:

New ways to deliver a secure hybrid workplace with Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365

General availability: Built-in Azure Policy support for Network Watcher Traffic Analytics

Azure Principal PM Daria Grigoriu discusses the new Static Web Apps service. She explains how the service works, the use-cases, and patterns that the service addresses and resources to get started. 

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode386.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/ht8lM7p03Cg

Resources:

https://aka.ms/swadocs

https://github.com/Azure/static-web-apps

Other updates:

Use Azure Cosmos DB as an ASP.NET session state and caching provider
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cosmos-db/session-state-and-caching-provider

What's in development, preview, or GA?
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/

Azure VM Image Builder Service Now Generally Available
https://www.infoq.com/news/2021/07/azure-image-builder/

Enhance your cloud skills and accelerate digital transformation with Inside Azure for IT
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-infrastructure/enhance-your-cloud-skills-and-accelerate-digital-transformation/ba-p/2524275

Rob Vettor, a Cloud Solution Architect at Microsoft, has a lot to say about Cloud Native Apps and tells us how to host them on Azure.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode385.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/nZjUkAyt4Jc

Resources:

Cloud Native eBook: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/architecture/cloud-native/

Dapr eBook: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/architecture/dapr-for-net-developers/

DotNet Conf on Microservices – 6 hour training class (June 30th, 2020)
• Microservices Workshop Module 1: Introducing microservices https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMDufMYAsmw&t=168s
• Microservices  Module 2: Modeling and architecting microservices https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7MM21aIsqk
• Microservices  Workshop Module 3: Microservice communication https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iL3Kxd4Auys
• Microservices Workshop Module 4: Deploying microservices to Kubernetes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3G7NB4waGbk
• Microservices Workshop Module 5: Deploying service mesh to Kubernetes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwEfynnevEU
• Microservices Module 6: Distributed data https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kVmb747vfM

Blog: www.thinkingincloudnative.com

Other updates:

General availability: Azure Spring Cloud Pricing Model Change | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Public preview: Azure Spring Cloud New Relic One integration and additional feature updates | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

General availability: Application Insights integration with App Services for Java & Node.js apps | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Public preview: Create AKS clusters without local user accounts | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Public preview: Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) smart defaults | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Drive growth with the most partner-focused business platform

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/drive-growth-with-the-most-partnerfocused-business-platform/

Manage RDP and SSH connectivity at scale with Azure Bastion 

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/manage-rdp-and-ssh-connectivity-at-scale-with-azure-bastion/

Innovate from cloud to edge on your terms with Azure

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/innovate-from-cloud-to-edge-on-your-terms-with-azure/

Public preview: API Management and Event Grid integration 

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/public-preview-api-management-and-event-grid-integration/

Principal Program Manager Cristina del Amo Casado talks to us about the Sae Deployment Practices framework and tools that are used to deploy software updates to millions of servers in Azure.

Media File: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode384.mp3

YouTube: Episode 384 - Safe Deployment Practices - YouTube

Updates:

Announcing App Service Environment v3 GA

Public Preview: Form Recognizer container support

Advancing safe deployment with AIOps—introducing Gandalf

Cynthia, Evan and Sujit discuss some recent work with various Azure services that are noteworthy and interesting.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode383.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/VqrntUY1FXQ

Brandy Brown and Sherryl Manalo, from the Commercial Software Engineering team at Microsoft share an innovative approach to reducing carbon emissions by using Spot VMs in Azure for data analytics workloads.

Media File: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode382.mp3

YouTube: Episode 382 - Reducing carbon emissions with Spot VMs - YouTube

Resources:
GitHub Repo: https://github.com/hybridflux/SparkOnSpot/

Updates:

Microsoft Azure available from new cloud regions in Arizona

Five more free services available with an Azure free account

Azure IoT Edge integration with Azure Monitor is now in public preview

We chat with Bharathram Sivaraman, Principal PM Manager of Azure Migrate on different pathways to migrate on-prem applications to the cloud. He walked us through the portal experience and explained the functionalities of app containerization, now available through Azure Migrate, which even looks through your existing environment to recommend a suitable container image.  

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode381.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/zG5f2OAhzTg

Resources:

Learn more about Azure Migrate: https://aka.ms/azuremigrate

Learn more about Azure Migrate App Containerization: https://aka.ms/appcontainerization

Other updates:

 Advancing in-datacenter critical environment infrastructure availability
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/advancing-indatacenter-critical-environment-infrastructure-availability/
Azure API for FHIR enables health organizations to deliver CMS Patient Access and Provider Directory APIs
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-api-for-fhir-enables-health-organizations-to-deliver-cms-patient-access-and-provider-directory-apis/
Azure Virtual Desktop: The flexible cloud VDI platform for the hybrid workplace
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-virtual-desktop-the-desktop-and-app-virtualization-platform-for-the-hybrid-workplace/