Microsoft is adding another feature to its Azure cloud computing service. The company has announced a new Azure service that will help developers build event-based and serverless applications. Microsoft made the big announcement this week.
According to TechCrunch, the Redmond-based company is adding another layer of cloud feature. Called Event Grid, the newly announced computing service will provide a tool that facilitates the passing of event data between applications and then allows those applications to make a more accurate response. The new service has also been designed with a higher level of abstraction, so there are users won't any need to worry about IT infrastructure and provisioning.
Microsoft has launched the new service to cope with the increasing number of apps in Azure that being developed around events. These include IoT-enabled apps, mobile apps, and other applications that deal with business processes.
About the newly launched service
For a starter, an event is the piece of information written in JSON (JavaScript Object Notation), a lightweight data interchange file format that used for asynchronous browser/server communications. The event also includes some metadata about its source, unique identifier, and other data that details on what service created the event.
Microsoft has introduced a new service to deal with those increasing numbers of event-based applications on its cloud service.
Microsoft described the new Azure Event Grid as a piece of technology that simplifies event-based application and workflow creation. Event Grid works by taking in events from a number of sources and then categorizing those events into topics. Additionally, the developer can also use the new service to route events to specific or multiple endpoints.
The new Azure Event Grid complements the company’s serverless computer services, Azure Functions and Azure Logic Apps, and then provides developers access to a fully managed event routing service that works both on Azure platform and third-party service. The company first introduced its serverless offering Azure Functions in 2016.
The Azure Functions currently competes with Amazon’s AWS Lambda, an event-driven and serverless compute service that runs code in response to events and automatically manages the computer resources for the users.
For now, the new service still on preview stage and will support a limited number of services, which include Azure Functions, Azure Blog Storage, Applications Topics, Azure Automation and Logic Apps, Event Hubs, Resource Manager and WebHook endpoints. However, Microsoft also announced plans to add support for other services. These include Azure Active Directory, CosmosDB, the upcoming IoT Hub and more.
In term of pricing, pricing will depend on the total number of processed operations with the first 100,000 processed operations coming free.
Microsoft said that the during the service’s preview period, Azure Event Grid will cost around $0.30 cents per million operations, and then double that once the new service has reached general availability.
As for the availability, the new service will be made available in a limited number of geographies, with planned more areas in the coming months. Microsoft has created the Event Grid documentation to provide more information about how the new service works. In addition to Event Grid documentation, the company has also set up a page for Event Grid pricing and availability.
Other Microsoft announcement and news
Good news for developers and customers, Microsoft has just announced plans to offer a new training course for learning Azure Stack.
The Redmond-based company is reportedly working on a planned training course for those who want to become a certified Azure Stack operator, the Silicon Angle reported.
The company made the big announcement on a recent blog post, saying that the qualified operators will be responsible for maintaining the entire Azure Stack infrastructure, including deployment and integration, packaging and offering resources, and requested services. The company said that the planned training course is now in development, with a release date planned this coming September 18.
