TechEd: Microsoft Builds Cloud, Mobile Momentum

Top 10 Secret Reasons Microsoft CEO Ballmer Retired

After announcing nearly 40 Azure features at last month's Build conference, Microsoft didn't let up at this week's TechEd conference in Houston. The company unveiled a range of products to fill out new CEO Satya Nadella's "cloud-first, mobile-first" strategy.

"How can there be two firsts?" said Microsoft Corporate VP Brad Anderson, who presided over the keynote. "They're one and the same. You can't have a cloud without connected devices and vice versa. [Otherwise,] all you have is potential that goes untapped."

Tapping that data, of course, is complicated. It involves not only connecting devices to the cloud, but also a host of security and management concerns. To help organizations close the gaps (and to show, as Anderson repeatedly point out, how quickly Microsoft is iterating these days), Microsoft unleashed a deluge of products, some of which are available immediately and others coming later this year.

[Will Microsoft's next line of Surface tablets finally get it right? Read Microsoft Surface: Why More Is More.]

Microsoft kicked things off with Azure ExpressRoute, which lets companies establish private connections between on-premise assets and Azure. Available immediately, it's supported by partnerships between Microsoft and telecom providers such as AT&T, Level 3, and Verizon.

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Microsoft Azure Files, announced as a preview, is designed to simplify how users securely share files across devices and the cloud. Azure API Management, another preview release, enables companies to expose APIs through the cloud.

Coming as a preview in June, Microsoft Azure Site Recovery, known previously as Hyper-V Recovery Manager,

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lets businesses replicate and recover virtual machines and services to Azure if one of their data centers go down.

Microsoft Antimalware for Azure, another preview, allows customers to deploy anti-malware protection for both cloud services and virtual machines. Microsoft announced partnerships with Symantec and Trend Micro as part of the Antimalware for Azure unveiling.

In July, Microsoft will begin rolling out new encryption technologies for Office 365 enterprise customers. It will encrypt every file stored in SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business with its own key.

In another security-related announcement, Microsoft will expand its Data Loss Prevention capabilities, currently available in Exchange, to include documents stored in SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business for E3 enterprise customers. Designed to prevent employees from sharing sensitive content outside the organization, Data Loss Prevention's new features will unroll in June.

Adding to the Enterprise Mobility Suite recently unveiled along the Office for iPad suite, Microsoft also announced that Intune, one of the suite's components, will be able to manage Office for iOS and Android devices starting later this year. On a related note, Microsoft also released Azure RemoteApp as a preview. Microsoft reps said the product combines Microsoft's existing Remote Desktop Services technology with Azure's economies of scale, which should help IT to more quickly and easily scale up their operations. Microsoft also stressed that Azure RemoteApp will support a broad range of devices, not just Windows machines.

Finally, Microsoft announced several developer-centric announcements, building on news from last month's Build conference. The newest announcements include a preview of the next version of .NET optimized for the cloud; a preview of Visual Studio tools for Apache Cordova, which lets developers use HTML and JavaScript to build hybrid applications for a range of devices and operating systems; and expanded Visual Studio Online APIs that enable organizations to use Microsoft's online tools without abandoning the third-party development resources they rely on.

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