Ignite 2021 – The do not miss list for app developers

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Microsoft Ignite 2021 took place online November 2-5. This fall edition was full of dev news, and if you don’t want to miss anything related to App development and innovation, keep reading!

 

Session Highlights

 

What does it take to build the next innovative app?

 

During the Digital and App Innovation Into Focus session, Ashmi Chokshi and Developer and IT guests Amanda Silver, Donovan Brown and Rick Claus discussed processes and strategies to help deliver innovative capabilities faster.

 

Developers are driving innovation everywhere, and Ashmi started the conversation strong sharing how she sees the opportunity to drive impact. Then, Donovan presented his definition of cloud native, the benefits of a microservices architecture, and engaged in a discussion with Rick around DevOps and Chaos Engineering. This session also discussed how to transform and modernize your existing .NET and Java applications. Amanda Silver concluded with a demo showing how tools like GitHub Actions, Codespaces and Playwright can help with development, testing and CI/CD, no matter what language and framework you are using. 

 

The sketch below illustrates the cloud native and DevOps segment showcasing the new public preview of Azure Container apps, a fully managed serverless container service built for microservices that scales dynamically based on HTTP traffic, events or long-running background jobs.

 

 

To dive deeper into the latest innovation on containers and serverless to create microservices application on Azure, don’t miss Jeff Hollan and Phil Gibson’s session where they demoed Azure Container apps and the Open Service Mesh (OSM) add-on for Azure Kubernetes Service, a lightweight and extensible cloud native open-source service mesh built on the CNCF Envoy project. Brendan Burns, Microsoft CVP of Azure Compute, also shared his views on how Microsoft empowers developers to innovate with cloud-native and open source on Azure in this blog.

 

Another highlight of Ignite was the Build secure app with collaborative DevSecOps practice session, followed by the Ask-the-expert, where Jessica Deen and Lavanya Kasarabada introduced a complete development solution that enables development teams to securely deliver cloud-native apps at DevOps speed with deep integrations between GitHub and Azure.

 

Announcements recap

 

In addition to Azure Container apps and Open Service Mesh add-on for AKS, we also announced new functionalities for Azure Communication Services, API management, Logic Apps, Azure Web PubSub, Java on Azure container platforms and DevOps.

 

• Azure Communication services announced two upcoming improvements designed to enhance customer experiences across multiple platforms: Azure Communication services interoperability into Microsoft Teams for anonymous meeting join, generally available in early December; and short code functionality for SMS in preview later this month.

 

• Regarding Azure Logic Apps, updated preview capability and general availability to Logic Apps standard features have been made available for SQL as storage provider, Managed identity, Automation tasks, Designer, Consumption to standard export and connectors.

 

• Azure Service Bus premium tier namespaces now support sending and receiving payloads up to 100MB.

 

• New solutions for running Java Enterprise Edition (Java EE) applications on AKS and Azure Red Hat OpenShift (ARO) are now available in the Azure marketplace: Customers can now use Azure Marketplace offers for Oracle WebLogic Server on AKS and IBM WebSphere Liberty/Open Liberty on AKS and ARO to automatically provision resources on Azure.

 

• As for news around DevOps, developers can secure their deployments to Azure through OpenID Connect integration between Azure Active Directory and GitHub Actions. At Ignite, the DevOps Workflow Generator tool was also released to help customers visualize their entire DevOps toolchain and find ways to improve it.

 

The complete line up of Azure Application development sessions and blogs is listed below:

 

On-demand sessions:

 

Innovate anywhere from multicloud to edge with Scott Guthrie

Microsoft Into Focus: Digital & App Innovation with Amanda Silver, Donovan Brown, Ashmi Chokshi, Rick Claus, Ben Walters and Adam Yager

Innovate with cloud-native apps and open source on Azure with Phil Gibson and Jeff Hollan

Build secure apps with collaborative DevSecOps practices with Jessica Deen and Lavanya Kasarabada And Ask-the Experts session

Deep Dive on new container hosting options on Azure App Service and App Service Environment v3 with Stefan Schackow

Modernize enterprise Java applications and messaging with Java EE/Jakarta EE on Azure and Azure Service Bus with Edward Burns

Updates on Migrating to Azure App Service with Rahul Gupta, Kristina Halfdane, Gaurav Seth

Scaling Unreal Engine in Azure with Pixel Streaming and Integrating Azure Digital Twins with Steve Busby, Erik Jansen, Maurizio Sciglio, Aaron Sternberg, David Weir-McCall

Enterprise Integration: Success Stories & Best Practices with Derek Li

Build a basic cloud-native service using PostgreSQL and Node.js with Scott Coulton, Glaucia Lemos

Programming Essentials for Beginners with Cecil Phillip

Low Code, No Code, No Problem – A Beginner’s Guide to Power Platform. with Chloe Condon

 

Blog-posts:

 

Your hybrid, multicloud, and edge strategy just got better with Azure by Kathleen Mitford

Innovate with cloud-native apps and open source on Azure by Brendan Burns

Introducing Azure Container Apps: a serverless container service for running modern apps at scale by Daria Grigoriu

Announcing Public Preview of the Open Service Mesh (OSM) AKS add-on by Phil Gibson

Ignite 2021: New releases for Azure Communication Services designed to enhance customer experiences by Kristin Dunning

Power Apps – Pay-as-you-go Model, Standalone Mobile App Packages & Azure Integration by Zachary Cavanell

Build secure apps on hardened dev environments with secure DevOps workflows by Samit Jhaveri

Announcing the Public preview of Azure Chaos Studio by John Engel-Kemnetz

Putting tools in your hands to improve developer productivity by Alison Yu

What’s new in Azure App Service – Fall Ignite 2021 Edition!

Run Oracle Weblogic Server on Azure Kubernetes Service by Reza Rahman

Run IBM WebSphere Liberty and Open Liberty on Azure Red Hat OpenShift and Azure Kubernetes Service by Reza Rahman

Announcing Unreal Pixel Streaming in Azure by James Gwertzman

 

Additional learn resources: 

• Each session has a curated Microsoft learn collection with learn modules and paths, e-books recommendations, related blog posts etc. Here is the collection for Digital and App Innovation IntoFocus session: https://aka.ms/intofocus-digital-apps


• We also just released the new 2021 edition of the Developer’s Guide to Azure, free for you to download! 

 

We can’t wait to see what you create!

Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.