It's Microsoft Build Time! This year (like last year) the annual developer event is 100% online. Microsoft Build 2021 started yesterday, May 25, and will continue until tomorrow, May 27. And I've watched each session of Build to find out the top three trends around the cloud — just for you!

What’s happening at Microsoft Build 2021?

There aren't any "clouds will change the world forever" news from this year's conference, there were many improvements and upgrades to many things. I think this is a sign of the products maturing and becoming more stable. I'll have that.

Here are the three biggest trends from Microsoft Build that should be of interest to ekascloud.

1. Cloud Native

Finally, the number one trend from Build: cloud-native.
In case you are not familiar with the term, "cloud-native" refers to using services that are 100% alive on the cloud platform, such as containers, service meshes, microservices, and immutable infrastructure. And there are a bunch of updates. ready?

As mentioned above, App Services, Functions, Logic Apps, API Management, and Event Grid can now run on Kubernetes clusters anywhere in on-premises, multi-cloud, and edge environments with Azure Arch.
Native support for the WebSocket API in Azure API Management is now in preview.
Azure Communication Services has a new UI library, call recording, direct routing, and more.
Azure Logic Apps has new hosting options, improved performance and developer workflow, and 4000 additional actions for consumption levels.
Two new Azure Marketplace offers for Java Enterprise Edition (EE) and Jakarta EE workloads are now generally available.
Durable Functions — an extension to Azure Functions that lets you write serverless workflows — now supports PowerShell.
And a whole lot more….. phew!

2. Hybrid

One of Azure’s strong points is number two: hybrid.

With a historical customer base of Windows Server, Active Directory, and many other Microsoft products, there are many companies that have existing infrastructure that could benefit from a little cloud power.
In Microsoft Build 2021, a lot of focus was on Azure Arc. The Arc service lets you run any Windows, Linux, SQL Server, or Kubernetes cluster in data centers, whether on-premises, in Azure, or in any other cloud. Arc is for multi-cloud - however, you define it. And at Build, a few more goodies were announced for Ark.

Azure App Services are now "Arch enabled" (as Microsoft likes to call it) via Kubernetes, so you can run your Azure native app services like Functions, App Services, Logic Apps, and Event Grids almost anywhere Huh.
Open Service Mesh (OSM) is now in preview with Arch. The OSM add-on simplifies integration between OSM and Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes clusters.
Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS) on Azure Stack HCI is in GA, and is fully Arc enabled.

3. Data

Microsoft Build 2021 has the third strongest trend data. Of course, data is the food for any computing system, so it makes sense that Microsoft is upping its Azure data game.

The most interesting new data feature for Azure SQL Database is the ledger capability. It adds tamper-evident capabilities to your Azure SQL database using blockchain technology, but without blockchain infrastructure.

Microsoft has removed all the complexity of setting up a blockchain for your data and made it a button in Azure. You simply enable "laser functionality" on the table you want and keep using SQL in general. But now you can tell if the data has been tampered with. Nifty!

Other notable mentions in the Azure data space are: