Security researchers have discovered a critical flaw in NLWeb, a new tool unveiled by Microsoft just over two months ago, that allows remote users to read sensitive files without authorization.

NLWeb is a so-called agentic AI tool that allows users to search web pages using a generative AI chatbot, which will remember the users’ preferences.

Ramanathan Guha, a technical fellow at Microsoft, demonstrated how this works using the website Serious Eats during Microsoft Build in May 2025.

While searching for recipes for the Hindu festival of Diwali, Guha mentioned to the chatbot that he is vegetarian. According to Guha, this means the website will only recommend vegetarian recipes when he’s searching for inspiration from now on.

So far, so useful, but it seems new and exciting tools open the door to new and exciting vulnerabilities.

The bug was discovered by Aonan Guan and Lei Wang in a security audit of the NLWeb open source repository.

According to Guan, who wrote about his discovery in a Medium post, the flaw “allowed any remote user to read sensitive files, including system configurations (/etc/passwd) and cloud credentials (.env files), using a simple, malformed URL”.

Guan identified a code block using os.path.normpath() that he said “immediately raised a red flag”.

“The function normalizes path separators but does not prevent a user from "climbing" out of the intended directory with ../ sequences. It's a classic path traversal flaw waiting to be exploited,” he noted.

Guan pointed to three separate oversights in the code that he said led to the vulnerability: improper sanitization, an expanded attack surface, and a lack of final path validation.

What’s being done about the NLWeb flaw?

While the flaw was discovered on 28 May and a vulnerability report submitted the same day, Guan has only just made his and Lei’s findings public.

Additionally, while Microsoft Security Response Center committed a patch on 30 June it confirmed to Guan on 1 July that it wouldn’t be issuing a CVE for the issue.

There is no suggestion from Guan that organizations deploying or experimenting with NLWeb should abandon their projects.

Instead he advises they:

• Update their instance immediately “to any version including or after commit 8ffdb0f from the official GitHub repository”
• Implement WAF/reverse proxy rules
• Never bind NLWeb directly to a public IP address, thus avoiding direct public exposure
• Configure monitoring systems to issue high-priority alerts for suspicious HTTP 404 or 400 error responses for URIs that have path traversal patterns

“This case study serves as a critical reminder that as we build new AI-powered systems, we must re-evaluate the impact of classic vulnerabilities, which now have the potential to compromise not just servers, but the ‘brains’ of AI agents themselves,” Guan said.

ITPro contacted Microsoft for comment on the report, but hadn’t received a response at the time of publication.

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Windows on Arm was Microsoft’s hope for a post-Intel future, with devices that sip power but offer complete connectivity. With Microsoft’s next Surface event looming, is the platform still relevant today?

Microsoft expected developers to leap at the chance to compile their applications for its platform after the first Windows on Arm machines emerged in 2018. After all, as Apple has since ably demonstrated, there are benefits to moving away from traditional Intel-based architecture. 

We noted improvements in performance and power efficiency on macOS machines running on Apple silicon, while the desktop experience was unchanged. Could the same be true for Windows on Arm?

In short, no. Not with Microsoft’s relative neglect when compared to its x64-based stablemate. The firm has squandered the opportunity to move users on from an Intel-based norm and has dithered in the process.

While, for better or worse, Apple forced developers to migrate to its M-series CPUs, the majority of Windows applications have continued to target Intel and AMD due to simple market forces and the absence of clear guidance from Microsoft.

Microsoft’s Windows on Arm efforts have moved in stops and starts. Its exotic – and expensive – Surface Pro X has been gradually updated over the years, culminating in a rebrand in the form of the SQ3-powered Surface Pro 9 in 2022. Microsoft's partners have also had a go with their takes on the architecture, with varying degrees of limited success. However, an inexpensive option – a real alternative to the x64 platform – for the masses has yet to materialize. 

Then there was the attempt to lure developers with the promise of Project Volterra, unveiled at Build 2022, and finally released as the Windows Dev Kit 2023. Since then, things have gone rather quiet. I have a Windows Dev Kit 2023, as it happens, and the ownership experience hasn’t been a good one.

Everything that’s wrong with Windows on Arm

The Windows Dev Kit 2023 comprises a Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 along with 32GB RAM and a 512GB SSD. On paper, it is an impressive bit of kit. It even bears a distinct resemblance to Apple’s Mac Mini, except at a keener price point and an external power brick.

But, after almost a year of usage, I’m sad to report that if the Windows on Arm dream isn’t dead, then the Windows Dev Kit 2023 doesn’t offer any promising signs of health.

We’ll start with the hardware. On my machine, some things simply don’t work properly. The clock, for example, runs slow and requires synchronization. Getting output from the Mini Display port connector is a little random; I’ve had to sacrifice a USB-C connector in the name of reliability. Sometimes it wakes up, sometimes it doesn’t – and I need to hold down the power button sometimes.

These are all niggles one expects from a first-generation device, and renaming Volterra to the ‘Windows Dev Kit 2023’ implies Microsoft knows it isn’t ready for the market.

One would’ve at least expected some of the issues to have been ironed out in the months since release, though, and yet they persist. Even as Windows itself is updated, the Windows Dev Kit 2023 encapsulates all that’s wrong with the Windows on Arm program.

Then there is the software. It took until November 2022 for Microsoft to release a fully supported version of Visual Studio for Arm64 – a release that came after the Windows Dev Kit 2023 became available.

Even users keen enough to try Windows Insider builds on the device are frequently disappointed when Microsoft opts not to offer a build to Windows Insiders with Arm64 hardware with little or no explanation. Hardly a developer-friendly approach.

The disappointment continues when using the device. It doesn’t offer a snappy experience when compared with the Mac Mini, which has less RAM and storage. While it doesn’t quite feel like wading through treacle, as with previous Windows on Arm devices, it’s certainly sluggish.

To make matters worse, running Windows on Arm in a virtual machine (VM) on Mac – we used Parallels – is a better experience than using Microsoft’s own hardware. All of this leads us to believe that, perhaps like its consumers, Microsoft is losing faith in Windows on Arm. While Microsoft has dithered with the operating system, Intel and AMD’s chips have improved. Battery life is no longer as catastrophic for Intel-based devices compared to Windows on Arm hardware, eroding the advantages of Arm-based chips.

Behind all of this is the specter of Arm in the Data Center, arguably a much better place for it in the Microsoft ecosystem. After all, with more apps delivered via the browser, is there much point in having Windows developers produce native Arm code, if not to run on a server?

Microsoft has a final opportunity in this year’s Surface event to make good on its Windows on Arm promise. Devices need to be inexpensive and reliable, and the company must demonstrate Windows on Arm is a viable option for users rather than adventurous power users. If it doesn’t, one can only conclude the company has little interest in the platform.

Windows on Arm: Unfulfilled potential

Ignoring Windows RT, a short-lived and locked-down version of Windows for Arm chips that turned up in early Surface tablets, Windows on Arm (or Windows on Snapdragon) finally arrived in 2018 in the form of Lenovo’s Yoga C630 WOS.

The device enjoyed superb battery life, 4G connectivity, and the look and feel of a proper Windows device. But it had some issues, and it didn’t take long for customers and reviewers alike to realize. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 850 processor might have been able to cope with lighter productivity tasks, but users attempting serious work soon found themselves yearning for an Intel or AMD-based alternative. 

The biggest headache was one of emulation. As soon as a user attempted to move outside of the Arm app ecosystem, the experience of Intel emulation (assuming it worked) was more akin to swimming through honey. Sure, it was an improvement on the total absence of x86 support from Windows RT, but users were still presented with an experience some way off that available from similarly priced Intel or AMD-based kit.

Even more astonishingly, large swathes of Microsoft’s own software had not been recompiled to run natively. Its Edge browser required emulation. As did Teams. It would take until 2020 before either emerged in native form.

Microsoft tried again in 2019 with the Surface Pro X – despite lacking important native software – and hoped to bring some of the Surface magic to the beleaguered platform. One intention of the Surface line was to show manufacturers how Microsoft reckoned its software could be packaged. In that regard, it has largely succeeded.

Could the same be applied to the Windows on Arm ecosystem? With the Surface Pro X, Microsoft set out to find out. But while Arm devices were traditionally associated with cheaper hardware, the Surface brand was not. Furthermore, Microsoft decided to ask top dollar for the Surface Pro X, powered by the company’s own take on Qualcomm’s chips in the form of the SQ line. The problem was you could grab a high-end Surface Pro 7 for a similar price, and it was arguably a good deal more useable. 

The platform has continued to languish as the years have rolled by, with Microsoft occasionally tossing it a bone in the form of a native version of Visual Studio, or other productivity apps that really should have been ready at launch. 

It’s difficult to see Microsoft's approach as anything other than neglect; if it doesn’t seem interested in the technology, why should its customers be?

Microsoft has announced the addition of a Power BI add-in to PowerPoint and Outlook that will allow businesses to share live and easily manipulated data as part of office presentations.

The company believes it will add an extra dimension to storytelling with data, and will replace the need for businesses to generate new screenshots from Power BI and paste them into PowerPoint.

The new add-in will let users insert a live Power BI report that can be interacted with directly from within the presentation. This will allow businesses to show clients how data changes with different variables introduced, and answer any questions on-the-fly without having to leave the presentation.

Microsoft also added a ‘freeze view’ component that allows users to take a single Power BI configuration and treat it as a static image, should they wish.

To insert a Power BI report, users select a tool and drag a window across the slide, similar to how drawing a text box works. A box then appears in which the Power BI report’s URL can be inputted and loaded.

The resulting window can then be resized like a text box can and the data displayed within can be manipulated as if it could directly from within the Power BI platform.

“This new capability brings fully interactive and up-to-date data into your discussions during meetings,” said Lukasz Pawlowski, principal program manager at Microsoft in an explainer video. “Presenters can quickly explore data to answer questions without slow ‘I’ll get back to you’ [responses].”

The Power BI integration is also coming to Outlook so the same reports can be accessed and shared amongst departments without having to leave the email client.

Adopting a UI reminiscent of Microsoft Teams, the Power BI integration in Outlook will help people tasked with composing status update emails at the start of the day.

These individuals can add a preview card to emails that links directly to the Power BI report from which the status update email’s conclusions are taken, in case the recipient wants to verify the data.

A Microsoft Teams chat can also be created directly from within the Power BI view in Outlook in case a team member wants to quickly follow up on something, for example.

Microsoft 365 users will soon see a Power BI button added to the ‘Insert’ tab in the PowerPoint ribbon. If it isn’t there, it can be added from the Office store, provided administrator rules allow for this.

Power BI will be available to both users of the Outlook client and the Outlook web app, and can be located in the apps list.

The latest update shows Microsoft's commitment to bringing technical skills to non-technical business employees. Power BI sits under the Power Platform umbrella of products, which gained a fifth tool as it was launched yesterday.

Building out from Power Apps portals, Power Pages was one of the first headline announcements made at Microsoft Build. The new low-code web development platform was launched to help businesses develop their own web pages and web apps without the need to recruit developers.

While a little coding knowledge is required, the platform will be familiar to everyone who uses Office 365 products, like PowerPoint and Excel, and can be used by developers and non-developers alike.

Microsoft has launched a set of new Azure services that organizations can now run on any CNCF-conformant Kubernetes cluster using its Azure Arc multiple-cloud service.

At its virtual Build 2021 event, Microsoft said its cloud services, such as Azure App Service, Functions, Logic Apps, API Management, and Event Grid, would now all be Arc-enabled (in preview form). Azure Arc, launched in 2019, is Microsoft's tool to help firms manage Kubernetes container clusters across clouds and on-premises data centers.

The firm said that these Azure application services can be deployed to any Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF)-conformant Kubernetes cluster connected via Azure Arc.

The services now enabled includes Azure App Service for creating and managing web apps and APIs with a fully managed platform and features like autoscaling, deployment slots, and integrated web authentication; Azure Functions for event-driven programming with autoscaling, and triggers and bindings to integrate with other Azure services; Azure Logic Apps for creating automated workflows for integrating apps, data, services, and backend systems, as well as Azure API Management for dealing with internal and external APIs.

"The app services are now Azure Arc-enabled, which means customers can deploy Web Apps, Functions, API gateways, Logic Apps and Event Grid services on pre-provisioned Kubernetes clusters," the firm said in a statement.

"This takes advantage of features including deployment slots for A/B testing, storage queue triggers, and out-of-box connectors from the app services, regardless of run location. With these portable turnkey services, customers can save time building apps, then manage them consistently across hybrid and multi-cloud environments using Azure Arc."

Microsoft added that with this capability now in preview, customers don't have to choose between the productivity of platform as a service (PaaS) and the control of Kubernetes, as the same app services can run with either model.

Gabe Monroy, vice president for Azure Developer Experience at Microsoft, said in a blog post that one of the challenges he heard from customers was that despite the enhanced control and ecosystem benefits of Kubernetes, Kubernetes is difficult for developers to use directly. Developers must learn many advanced concepts and APIs, which can hurt their productivity.

"With today's announcement, developers no longer have to choose between the productivity of Azure application services and the control of Kubernetes," he added.

Microsoft has been slowly making Teams a more collaborative environment, and at Build 2021, the tech giant announced a handful of Teams updates that'll continue the path towards a more collaborative offering.

Microsoft announced that it'll give developers significantly more liberty within the interface. This freedom will begin with Teams no longer relegating third-party apps to the sidebars. Instead, Teams is testing a main-stage collaboration tool that'll allow these apps to live front and center on the main screen.

This would be useful for a brainstorming session where there's a whiteboard in the middle of the meeting for jotting down ideas and key points, for example.

Teams will also allow developers to create custom scenes for company meetings and to use APIs that allow them to automate key tasks at specific times during a meeting. For example, reminding the host to start a wrap-up Q&A session with at least 15 minutes remaining.

Real-time transcription, translation, and note-taking during meetings are slated to arrive this summer. Of course, admins will have the ability to activate and deactivate these features with ease. This way, if there is a meeting that involves sensitive or confidential details, you can deactivate these services to keep the information secure.

Finally, using Fluid Framework components, Microsoft plans to allow users to work on tables, lists, and text fields in one Teams conversation and copy them into another conversion or into an Office 365 app. These files would also be editable by colleagues in real-time.

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, collaboration and video conferencing software providers have been booming. Teams has been among those seeing quite the boost, as the company now says it has over 145 million daily users. And with remote working here to stay for many companies, now's the perfect time for Microsoft to show off the flexibility of Teams.

In any normal year, Seattle would currently be flooded with developers, in town for Microsoft’s annual Build developer conference. Of course, this is no normal year and like many events, Build 2020 was run as a virtual conference. That didn’t stop Microsoft unveiling a deluge of announcements, however, with everything from Azure container management and AI development tools to a new Windows Terminal app and WSL improvements.

In this week’s episode of the IT Pro Podcast, we’re taking a deep dive into some of the most interesting announcements from Build 2020, digging into what they mean both for Microsoft’s customers and for its overall strategy. For more information on everything Microsoft revealed made at its virtual show, check out our guide to every Build 2020 announcement.

Footnotes

• Is a bot your next employee?
• Microsoft Build 2020: More than 50 products unveiled during online-only conference
• Microsoft, not Amazon, is going to win the cloud wars
• The IT Pro Podcast: Is the future multi-cloud?
• Wunderlist creator wastes no time announcing new Superlist productivity app
• Microsoft Azure review: Competitive cloud pricing takes a bite out of AWS
• Replaced by an AI: Would you retrain for a new job?
• What is ethical AI?
• The IT Pro Podcast: Can AI ever be ethical?
• IT Pro 20/20: Living at the mercy of technology
• View from the airport: Microsoft Ignite 2019

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During its Build 2020 developer conference on Tuesday, Microsoft unveiled the new supercomputer built in collaboration with OpenAI, an artificial intelligence startup found by Elon Musk. Microsoft announced that the supercomputer hosted in Azure was developed exclusively to train OpenAI’s large-scale artificial intelligence models.

Microsoft joined hands with OpenAI back in 2019 under a multiyear supercomputer partnership, where the tech giant invested $1 billion. The supercomputer developed is a combination of over 285,000 CPU cores, 10,000 GPUs and 400 Gbps of network connectivity for each GPU server in a single system. This has helped Microsoft’s supercomputer developed for OpenAI bag one of the top five positions on the list of the top 500 supercomputers in the world.

Hosted in Azure, the supercomputer benefits from robust modern cloud infrastructure, sustainable data centers, rapid deployments and access to Azure services.

“This is about being able to do a hundred exciting things in natural language processing at once and a hundred exciting things in computer vision, and when you start to see combinations of these perceptual domains, you’re going to have new applications that are hard to even imagine right now,” Microsoft’s chief technical officer, Kevin Scott, explained.

Previously, there have been AI implementations dedicated to performing single tasks, like translating languages and recognizing specific objects in images. However, modern research focuses on developing massive models to perform multiple tasks at the same time. According to Microsoft, this can involve moderating game streams or possibly creating codes after analyzing Github. Convincingly, such large-scale models will make AI more beneficial to consumers and developers alike.

As a part of its ‘AI at Scale’ Microsoft has built a cluster of large AI models - the Microsoft Turing models, to improve the language understanding tasks across Bing, Dynamic, Office, and other productivity products.

Microsoft intends to make its large AI models, optimization tools and supercomputing resources available to developers, data scientists and business customers through Azure AI services and GitHub to help them leverage the power of AI at Scale.

Microsoft also revealed a new version of DeepSpeed, an open-source deep-learning library for PyTorch that cuts the amount of computing power required for large distributed model training. The update is more efficient than the previous version released just three months ago and train models 15 times larger and 10 times faster.

In the midst of the global coronavirus pandemic, Microsoft is unveiling a major new cloud-computing initiative focused on the health care industry.

The Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare is now available in public preview and through a free trial for the next six months. General availability is scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2020.

This is to be the first of several public cloud infrastructures designed solely for one industry’s needs, company officials said. Future offerings could be geared toward major Microsoft vertical markets, such as banking, defense/intelligence, manufacturing or retail, among others.

This new Industry Cloud product line will combine Microsoft’s existing cloud capabilities with specific APIs, models and processes required by each industry. For instance, the health care cloud has a focus on in-depth analytics, HIPAA compliance, data accessibility and the ability to create a consumer-friendly patient experience.

“Too often, the tools providers use to coordinate patient care are fragmented and impede the collaborative workflows required in a complex care environment,” the company said in an announcement. “To address these challenges, we have been building capabilities in Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams that streamline healthcare workflows and provide a secure platform for connected care coordination.”

The company said health care organizations can use this industry-specific cloud to extend the value of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing, Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Azure IoT.

Microsoft unveiled the Cloud for Healthcare at Build 2020, its annual developer conference that’s being held online-only for the first time this year.

Through aggressive expansion, Microsoft has firmly established itself as No. 2 in the cloud infrastructure market. While it still trails behind the overall market leader, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft’s cloud business is growing fast.

In fact, Microsoft is gaining on AWS and is expected to dominate the market over the next three years, according to a recent Goldman Sachs survey of IT executives.

While AWS has long been a favorite of startups and developers, Microsoft has concentrated on large, established enterprises. The growing healthcare market remains one of its top priorities.

The launching of Microsoft’s Cloud for Healthcare follows the 2018 release of a number of cloud-powered health initiatives that grew out of Microsoft’s healthcare-focused research unit, Healthcare NExT.

Microsoft didn’t spend all of its time at this year’s Build conference talking about its three core product lines of Azure, Windows and Microsoft 365. There were a handful of more general announcements around some of its other activities, too.

One of the most impressive things to come out of these was the news that the cloud-based supercomputer Microsoft has been developing with OpenAI is not only complete but also one of the world’s most powerful machines. Elsewhere, the company has unveiled a number of new social initiatives, and a tool to let customers measure the performance of their dev teams.

Microsoft builds an AI supercomputer in the cloud

Last year, Microsoft announced that it was partnering with OpenAI to help develop new cloud-based supercomputing resources to accelerate its work in researching safe general AI. At this year’s Build conference, the first fruits of that partnership came to light, with the news that Microsoft has created one of the top five supercomputers in the world in terms of raw computational power.

Comprised of “285,000 CPU cores, 10,000 GPUs and 400 gigabits per second of network connectivity for each GPU server”, the monster system was built exclusively for OpenAI’s use, but Microsoft says it’s the first step towards making the technology available for everyone to use. The company also announced an updated version of its DeepSpeed PyTorch deep learning library, which Microsoft claims is significantly more efficient than the previous version.

Project Bonsai machine teaching system for industrial control systems unveiled

Industrial control systems are one area in which artificial intelligence has huge potential for improving efficiency and stability. Microsoft is hoping to further AI development within this sector with the preview of Project Bonsai, a machine teaching service that allows developers, engineers and experts to proactively specify desired approaches and results when training AI systems, rather than relying solely on data.

In order to help developers come to grips with the new tool, it’s also releasing Project Moab, a robot consisting of three articulated arms that are used to hold up a platform. By teaching this robot to balance a ball, engineers can get to grips with the fundamentals of how Bonsai works before applying it to their own use cases. The robot is available to 3D print now, and pre-built units will be available for purchase later this year.

Skype TX interoperability and NDI support for Teams bring professional production to virtual conferences

Microsoft isn’t alone; many companies (including IT Pro) are now turning to digital broadcasts as an alternative to in-person events while global lockdowns remain in effect. Maintaining a high level of production can be challenging under these circumstances, but Microsoft is helping to keep standards high with new NDI support and Skype TX interoperability for Teams coming in the next couple of months.

Aimed at reproducing sophisticated broadcast content, these features essentially allow producers to ingest A/V feeds from Teams and Skype into professional broadcast production suites. While this solution may be slightly too advanced for every company to take advantage of, it should help increase the overall production quality of some larger virtual conferences.

Microsoft launches Developer Velocity Assessment tool

Now more than ever in this time of quarantine, developers are the new kingmakers, and ‘developer velocity’ is quickly being established as the newest buzzword for quantifying the productivity of your development operation.

In order to help companies measure this, Microsoft has released a new Developer Velocity Assessment tool to benchmark their dev teams and compare their performance and maturity to other organisations. The assessment will also identify areas for improvement with recommendations to help organisations improve their score.

Microsoft sets sights on healthcare with Industry Cloud

In a bid to target specific industry verticals with specialised needs and requirements, Microsoft is launching a new Industry Cloud product line. The new line will combine the company’s existing cloud capabilities with specific APIs, models and processes required by the sector in question.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, the first industry to be tackled is healthcare, with a focus on in-depth analytics, compliance and data accessibility. Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare is available in public preview now, with general availability scheduled in Q4 this year.

HoloLens 2 starts shipping to more territories in autumn

The second version of Microsoft’s HoloLens mixed-reality headset will begin shipping to more countries starting this autumn. The headset is already available in key markets such as North America but will be coming to more locations in Europe, Asia and Scandinavia.

Azure IoT Developer Specialty certification and training resources available now

Microsoft’s certification for Azure IoT specialists is now available to any developer who wishes to earn it, after being in beta since January. The course covers all of the tools and processes which make up Microsoft’s IoT portfolio, with free learning resources for self-guided study. Paid instructor-led training is also available.

Azure NetApp Files hits four-nines availability

As part of the conference, Microsoft made the announcement that its Azure NetApp Files service for mission-critical workloads hit four-nines availability - AKA 99.99% uptime. In actuality, the milestone was reached back in February, but the company decided to wait until Build to formally announce it.

Turing optimisations coming to ONNX runtime

For engineers and data scientists working with machine learning models, Microsoft is bringing a set of optimisation techniques to its open source ONNX Runtime which was originally developed for the Turing model. Coming next month, these optimisations will allow dev to further accelerate model workloads running on frameworks like PyTorch and TensorFlow.

Learn TV brings all Microsoft’s content together

On the subject of coronavirus resiliency, Microsoft is launching a new content channel hosting technical content, information and insights for developers. Learn TV will collect content produced across Microsoft’s business, and curate it to help developers grow their skills.

Microsoft’s ‘tech for good’ mission continues with X4Impact

Microsoft is also extending its largesse to the non-profit sector, where it will be partnering with Giving Tech Labs to launch a new innovation hub dubbed ‘X4Impact’. This hub aims to create a ‘trusted online exchange’ where non-profits and charitable foundations can collaborate on social problems, and will aggregate resources and data from trusted sources.

Microsoft Learn Student Ambassadors Program launched to fuel STEM education

STEM education is an issue which most tech professionals can get behind, and one which can always benefit from more resources. To that end, Microsoft has created the Microsoft Learn Student Ambassadors Program, which gives students the chance to get involved in the sector through open-source contribution, free training and resource and experience with the latest technology, as well as mentoring from top tech professionals.

Microsoft Authentication Library expands platform support

For developers baking Microsoft-enabled security into their applications, the Microsoft Authentication Library now supports Angular in general availability and Microsoft.Identity.Web for ASP.NET Core in preview, giving them more flexibility in how they develop and implement it in their apps.

Microsoft’s broader suite of productivity and business apps doesn’t always get as much attention as other areas like Windows or Azure during developer conferences like Build, but this year’s show saw some notable announcements for customers.

The most eye-catching is a brand-new addition to the portfolio in the form of Microsoft Lists, but there were also previews of some of the smart under-the-hood features that Microsoft is planning to bring to its apps in the near future.

Microsoft Build 2020: Newly-announced Microsoft 365 products

Microsoft Lists

Just weeks after Microsoft finally shuttered the popular Wunderlist productivity app that it purchased in 2015, the company has announced its own souped-up productivity tracker in the form of Microsoft Lists. The latest addition to the Microsoft 365 portfolio, Lists integrates with Teams, SharePoint, Excel and other products, and will start rolling out this summer.

The app acts as a super-powered amalgamation of to-do list, calendar and project management tool, allowing you to share lists with team members, categorise them with labels and other data, and even create simple automation rules to automatically update specific fields or notify certain people. Developers can also use Power Apps and Power Automate to make Lists even more flexible.

Microsoft Build 2020: Microsoft 365 products now in preview

Fluid Framework

Previously announced at last year’s Ignite conference, the Fluid Framework is Microsoft’s latest effort to integrate its Office apps by allowing users to create and embed dynamic components that can be ported and accessed between apps, and this year’s Build saw the first demonstration of how it’s going to work in practice. The system is based on compartmentalising elements into ‘Fluid Components’; for example, if you wanted to add a table to an email, you could click a button in Outlook and import it directly from an Excel spreadsheet.

What’s really impressive, though, is that the components are still linked to the files. So you can update the table without leaving the email, and that change will be instantly synced to the spreadsheet, and if one of your colleagues goes into the spreadsheet and amends it, the table in your email will update in real-time.

Microsoft is planning to support a broad range of Fluid Components including tables, lists, charts and more. The functionality will be available in early preview for certain Microsoft 356 Enterprise and education subscribers starting in a few months, although it will be limited to web-based Office and Outlook apps for now. The company is also going to be making Fluid Framework open source, and is inviting developers to help build out its capabilities.

Project Cortex adds intelligence to the Microsoft Graph

Part of Microsoft’s mission to bring AI into as many businesses as possible, Project Cortex was also announced at Ignite last year as a way to apply AI-based analysis to the Microsoft Graph in order to automatically categories and organise knowledge resources throughout an organisation. Project Cortex will go into general availability within the next few months, but there are now new developer APIs accessible to more than 75 organisations who are participating in the private preview programme.

Microsoft Build 2020: Microsoft 365 products now in general availability

Bookings app brings scheduling to Microsoft Teams

Back in March, Microsoft announced a new app integration for Teams, which would allow customers to manage appointments and schedules with the general public from within the app. This is now generally available after being trialled with customers including healthcare organisations such as Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust for both physical and virtual appointments. Administrators can manage appointments on behalf of multiple departments, and the Microsoft Graph API can be used to integrate the system into existing workflows and internal apps.

Shifts is a similar tool for managing employee schedules and rotas within Teams, and Microsoft has now released Graph APIs for developers to integrate it with third-party staff management platforms, and new Power Automate actions for building Shift actions into workflows across different apps. New triggers and templates will also help automate and optimise processes within the app to save time.

Bing WORK lets you search your entire company

Bing has suffered in popularity compared to Google, but Microsoft is attempting to make it more attractive to business users with the general availability of a ‘WORK’ tab for enterprise Office 365 customers. Appearing below Bing’s main search bar, this tab (if enabled by admins) surfaces results specific to that organisation, including internal domains, staff profiles, dashboards and reports.

Microsoft Build 2020: Microsoft 365 products with updated features

New Teams developer tools

Microsoft is pouring resources into developing its Teams collaboration software in a bid to keep up with Slack. That includes new tools to make it easier for developers to build Teams apps, such as the newly-announced extensions for Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code. These extensions are currently in public preview, and give devs an easy way to build, configure and publish apps specifically for Teams from within their IDE.

It’s also streamlining the integration between its Power Platform tools and Teams with simpler UIs, enabling more granular permissions for the Teams Microsoft Graph API, making it easier to submit and manage Teams apps and giving admins the ability to create custom templates for users who want to set up a new team.

Elsewhere, Azure Active Directory Single Sign-On will soon mean that users won’t have to sign in to apps within the Teams client in order to use them, will be able to pop out certain apps and channel tabs into a new window and will be able to trigger context-specific actions from messages on mobile. Teams apps will also soon be able to access mobile device features like location and camera functionality, and new security and permissions features will allow admins to give greater control and flexibility to team owners and end-users without impacting global access permissions.

Developers will also be getting the ability to run code within Teams for the purposes of previewing and collaborating with colleagues, in a feature which is being dubbed ‘Code Conversations’.

Microsoft Bing for Commerce

Microsoft Bing for Commerce - the company’s solution for retailers that want to embed search functionality within their own sites and apps - is being updated with new analytics and AI tools, included simple guided workflows for implementing them. Version 1 of the Bing for Commerce SDK is also available now, allowing devs to implement the technology in a variety of programming languages including Java, C# and Python. Finally, customers will soon be able to integrate the software directly into their DevOps pipelines for faster iteration.

Microsoft Edge

Alongside the back-end developments to Edge, Microsoft has announced some user-facing changes to its browser as well. Users will be able to perform a search in the Edge sidebar via the context menu without having to open a new tab (with results including intranet content for users who are signed in with an Azure Active Directory account), and when users try and open a link requiring enterprise credentials, they’ll be automatically asked if they would like to switch profiles. Commercial customers will also receive support for on-premise syncing of their Edge data.

Windows PowerToys

Microsoft recently resurrected the much-loved PowerToys add-on for Windows, comprising a number of tools and utilities for customising various OS features. Windows power-users will be glad to hear that new capabilities have now been added with the PowerToys 0.18 release, including an application launcher shortcut that’s oddly reminiscent of macOS’ Spotlight feature, and a tool for customising your keyboard inputs by remapping key bindings and shortcuts at a system level.

Yammer

For those organisations still using Yammer, users can now like, view and reply to Yammer posts that they’ve been tagged in directly from Outlook without having to open Yammer. This feature was announced at last year’s Ignite and released for the Outlook web app in March, but is now generally available for all customers.

Developers are always keen to get new toys to play with, and this year Microsoft’s Build conference delivered some absolute corkers. Not only did the company release the first official 1.0 version of its new Windows Terminal command-line interface, but it also announced a new package manager, new .NET development tools and even a couple new additions to PowerToys.

These cool new additions haven’t come at the expense of functionality though, and Microsoft has also shared more details on foundational changes to how Windows app development will work in future. One key example of this is Project Reunion, which aims to close the gulf between Win32 and UWP apps.

Microsoft Build 2020: Newly-announced Windows products

Windows Package Manager

Developers love a shortcut - some of the world’s most game-changing technologies were invented by smart people who wanted to find a quicker way to do things, after all - so the new Windows Package Manager is likely to be a big hit indeed. Similar to the Linux equivalent, Windows Package Manager (AKA winget) allows developers to search and install common open-source tools via the command line, or even via a script.

Not only is this hugely more convenient for developers than navigating to a web page to download and install specific tools, but it could also make the onboarding process for new technical staff dramatically easier. Rather than spending hours or days manually installing specific tools and configurations, one script can be used to grab and install everything that’s needed.

The repository of software that winget can pull from is open-source and Microsoft is asking devs to add their tools to it. Windows Package Manager is currently in preview, with the 1.0 release pencilled in for May next year.

.NET MAUI

The proliferation of different device categories and form factors in recent years has been tough for developers to keep up with, but Microsoft is hoping to ease that burden with the introduction of the .NET Multi-platform App UI - or .NET MAUI, to give it its much snappier acronym.

Based on the Xamarin.Forms cross-platform development framework, MAUI allows developers to use a single codebase and project file to develop native applications for multiple different devices with minimal additional work. MAUI will be available in all of Microsoft’s IDE tools and will support XAML and MVVM code patterns, as well as Blazor and MVU with C#.

Microsoft is aiming to make the transition to MAUI (which will reach general availability alongside .NET version 6 in November 2021 after going into preview later this year) as easy as possible for existing Xamarin.Forms developers. MAUI will use the same controls and APIs, with migration guides and support available to help devs make the switch.

Project Reunion

The Universal Windows Platform, announced alongside Windows 10 a number of years ago, was an ambitious effort to create a library of highly portable applications that could run across all multiple device categories including PC, Xbox, mobile, HoloLens, IoT and more. The project faltered, however, as developers proved unwilling to abandon the trusty Win32 API that remains the basis for most desktop applications.

Microsoft’s latest attempt to kick-start the growth of the UWP ecosystem is Project Reunion, a suite of tools, updates and frameworks designed to unify the Win32 and UWP APIs, making it easier to add newer functionality to older apps and port them across to UWP. Microsoft will be decoupling both apps from the OS, enhancing backwards-compatibility for new code, and introducing new capabilities like the ability to embed web content within desktop applications via Chromium and Edge.

Microsoft Build 2020: Windows products now in preview

Preview 4 for .NET 5 is now available

.NET is one of the foundational building blocks of the Microsoft ecosystem, and the fourth preview of .NET 5 is now officially available prior to the full release in November. The latest release continues to bring Microsoft closer to its goal of unifying all the various offshoots of .NET under a single banner, but it hasn’t quite managed to unite its .NET Core and Xamarin tools for this release due to the coronavirus crisis - that’ll be coming in .NET 6, according to the company.

What developers will get with this release is a raft of performance improvements for various functions, native support for Windows ARM64 devices (like the Surface Pro X) and new container APIs, as well as C# 9 and F# 5. As with the majority of the announcements form this year’s Build, the focus is very much on enabling developers to work on modern cloud-native and multi-platform applications with Microsoft’s tools.

Host single-page JavaScript apps with App Service Static Web Apps

Reactive web applications are all the rage these days, and Microsoft is supporting this with a new Azure App Service hosting option for stative web apps. The service is now in public preview and allows devs to host JavaScript-based single-page apps built on frameworks including Angular, React and Vue with fast deployment and minimal configuration. It also integrates with GitHub Actions to connect these apps toCI/CD pipelines for quality and security testing purposes.

Microsoft Build 2020: Windows products now in general availability

Windows Terminal brings some colour to the command line

Arguably one of the coolest products hitting general availability at this year’s Build is the new Windows Terminal app. Initially previewed at last year’s show, the 1.0 version includes a heap of cool features, such as GPU-accelerated text rendering for faster performance and support for Unicode and UTF-8 characters - which means it officially supports emojis.

It’s also incredibly customisable, including the ability to add background images and GIFs, custom keyboard shortcuts and bindings, and even multiple profiles, each with their own separate customisations. One popular feature is a setting to give the terminal window the appearance of an old-school CRT monitor, complete with glowing green text and scan lines.

Windows Terminal can be used with all the various command-line systems Microsoft supports, including Windows, PowerShell and Windows Subsystem for Linux. It’s been in public preview for a while, but with the 1.0 release, Microsoft says it’s now stable enough for enterprise use.

Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 brings GPU acceleration and GUI apps

Developers everywhere were flabbergasted when Microsoft unveiled Windows Subsystem for Linux back in 2016, giving users the capability to run native Linux distros on top of Windows for the very first time. The latest version of the software, WSL 2, was previewed at last year’s Build, and it’s generally available in the next Windows feature update.

The headline changes are that it’s between three and six times faster than the original software, according to Microsoft, and boots in just two seconds. It also runs on top of a genuine VM-based Linux kernel image, resulting in full compatibility with a ‘proper’ Linux environment.

More changes are on the way, too; WSL will soon be able to take advantage of GPU hardware acceleration via Nvidia CUDA and DirectML to provide more compute horsepower for things like machine learning tasks, and it will also be able to render Linux apps which require a graphical user interface, greatly enhancing its flexibility. Integration with the Windows File Explorer is also set to be introduced, allowing devs to access files stores within their WSL directories without having to fire up a distro. These changes, along with a simplified single-command installation experience, are set to launch later in its development cycle.

Microsoft Build 2020: Windows products with updated features

Visual Studio

Microsoft’s family of IDE tools has received a lot of love at this year’s Build; Visual Studio’s Live Share collaborative development tools now support both text and voice chat capabilities for smoother knowledge transfer, and there are lower costs and preview instances for Microsoft’s Visual Studio Codespaces.

This particular feature gives developers access to a cloud-hosted environment in which to run code, which can be accessed by multiple people to collaborate on projects. In Visual Studio 2019, Windows-based Codespace instances (which are still in private preview) can now be used to build C++, ASP.NET Core and .NET Core projects

Windows for IoT

Microsoft’s Windows for IoT offering, which provides a basis for running embedded IoT devices in the field, will be significantly improved over the next year. The next LTS Windows release will bring the Windows 10 IoT Core and Windows 10 IoT Enterprise platforms together, for example, while device footprints will be able to be shrunk thanks to size reductions in the Windows for IoT OS itself of up to 40%.

Devices will be able to receive over-the-air updates, and will also be able to run Linux containers through Azure IoT Edge. These features will be available soon in preview, before rolling out fully next year.

ASP.NET Blazor

JavaScript is one of the most popular languages around for web development, but there’s still an awful lot of people that know C#. Microsoft’s ASP.NET Blazor product allows those people to build interactive front-end web components using C# instead of JavaScript, and it now supports WebAssembly as well, enabling the construction of client-side web abbs that run completely in the browser with .NET tools.

According to Microsoft, these .NET-based apps run faster and have less of a memory overhead than traditional JavaScript-based apps, and the addition of WebAssembly means that developers can reuse .NET code and libraries with Blazor.

Windows may be where Microsoft made its name, but Azure is where it makes its money. The company’s cloud platform was unmistakably the star of the show at this year’s Build, with a slew of announcements targeting everything from AI development and data analysis to container orchestration and IoT deployment.

Microsoft was keen to show off Azure’s enterprise chops, with the vast majority of features geared towards large organisations with hybrid or multi-cloud infrastructures and large internal development teams. Security and compliance were also high on the agenda, demonstrating the company’s awareness of its customers’ priorities.

Microsoft Build 2020: Newly-announced Azure products

Responsible ML features for Azure Machine Learning

Microsoft is also announcing a suite of new features within its Azure Machine Learning tool to support its ‘Responsible ML’ initiative. It’s launching new tools based on its open source InterpretML framework to help AI developers understand and explain the decisions made by their machine learning models - a crucial step in detecting and removing bias from AI.

They will also be able to use ‘what-if’ analysis to see what happens to a model’s predictions when specific values are changed. Similarly, Azure Machine Learning’s new Fairlearn package can be used to assess the fairness - or otherwise - of AI models and rectify any problems by recommending adjusted models.

Privacy is another key concern regarding AI development, particularly where personally identifiable information is being used to train models. Developed in partnership with Harvard data specialists, the new WhiteNoise differential privacy toolkit aims to allay some of these concerns by allowing developers to inject ‘statistical noise’ into datasets, obscuring genuine personal information with minimal impact on the model’s accuracy.

For developers working with extremely sensitive confidential data, newly-announced capabilities will allow them to build models for confidential datasets without actually being able to see or access the raw data themselves.

Compliance and traceability are key for any enterprise looking to explore machine learning, and Microsoft is set to release new capabilities to support the tracking of assets and details regarding ML model development via an audit trail, as well as new documentation guidelines to make sure that development is transparent and responsible.

Azure Synapse Link

Business analytics is the next gold rush, as companies scramble to start extracting value from their data sets. In order to support this, Microsoft has unveiled Azure Synapse Link, a cloud-based tool for hybrid transactional analytical processing (HTAP) tasks. For non-data scientists, what this means is that customers will be able to run analytics on the real-time transactional data stored in their operational databases with, with one-click configuration and continuous insights.

Microsoft is touting the benefits of cloud-based HTAP in terms of reduced cost and complexity versus traditional on-premise equivalents, and the tool will be competing with other services like AWS’ Aurora.

Azure Synapse Link is available now within Azure Cosmos DB, Microsoft’s cloud-based NoSQL database product, and will be coming to Azure SQL, Azure Database for PostgreSQL, Azure Database for MySQL and other platforms in an unspecified point in the future.

Azure Cosmos DB serverless & ‘autopilot mode’

Serverless computing is the latest innovation spreading through the public cloud market, allowing developers to pay for compute power not based on time or capacity consumption, but on a per-operation basis - ideally suited to sporadic workloads. To support this, Microsoft has introduced a serverless pricing structure for Azure Cosmos DB, which is available for all users now.

Also in general availability is the snappily-titled ‘autoscale provisioned throughput’ pricing model. This was originally referred to as ‘autopilot mode’ when first previewed, in reference to the fact that it automatically maintains capacity and scales up or down depending on the workload, keeping within set SLAs. It can be paired with Cosmos DB’s free tier, and supports a number of new capabilities for cost management. Azure CLI and PowerShell support are also set to be introduced soon.

Azure RTOS embedded development kits

IoT is another nascent sector that Microsoft is hoping to plant its stake in, and part of its strategy for doing so is its Azure RTOS (real-time operating system) embedded development suite for building IoT devices.

To help accelerate this, it’s partnering with a number of OEMs, including Qualcomm, NXP, Microchip, ST and Renesas, to launch new embedded development kits with the goal of accelerating development cycles for new IoT products. RTOS now also includes an Azure Security Center module for vulnerability and threat monitoring - a notable measure given the notorious insecurity of many IoT devices.

Microsoft Build 2020: Azure products now in preview

Azure Stack Hub brings fleet and container management to on-prem Azure

Somewhat counterintuitively, Azure services don’t just run in the public cloud. Microsoft customers can also use Azure Stack Hub to run Azure services and deployments within their own on-premise data centres, effectively acting as a private or hybrid cloud solution but using the same Azure management tools.

Microsoft has previewed a number of updates to the service at this year’s Build event, including a fleet management product to centralise management of all a customer’s Azure Stack Hub instances, support for the partitioning of AMD GPUs and a version of the Azure Kubernetes Service Resource Provider for easier on-premise container management.

These features will be available soon in private preview, while support for Red Hat’s ManageIQ cloud management tools (previously known as CloudForms) is now available as a public preview.

Azure Arc gains Kubernetes and SLES support

Last year, Microsoft unveiled Azure Arc, a single-pane-of-glass management tool designed to let admins run Azure services across a wide range of infrastructures and environments using their existing toolsets snd security policies. The announcement lent further credence to the notion that multi-cloud operations are swiftly becoming the default for enterprises and was met with widespread approval.

At this year’s Build, the company previewed Arc support for Kubernetes and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, allowing those workloads to be seamlessly managed via Azure Arc across cloud, edge and on-premise environments. Both services are available now in preview.

Azure routing preferences let admins pick their potato temperature

Until now, Microsoft has kept a tight grip on the traffic of any customers using its services, routing it through its own network rather than letting it pass over the public internet to reach its destination - a practice amusingly referred to as ‘cold potato routing’, in reference to the fact that the traffic doesn’t change hands.

Microsoft says this is to ensure the performance and integrity of the traffic, but customers will now be able to choose for themselves whether they want a hot or a cold potato approach for their application traffic, with the preview availability of a new feature allowing the customer to select their routing preference. Performance will vary base on ISP and network performance, but egress costs may be more favourable with a public internet routing approach.

New ‘what-if’ analysis & deployment script templates for Azure Resource Manager

Cloud deployments can be a stressful prospect for many developers, with the frightening prospect of bringing down a critical system if something goes wrong. Two new tools for Microsoft’s Azure Resource Manager are helping to allay those fears; a ‘what-if’ analysis tools that allows devs to preview the effects of a deployment before actually committing to it, and Deployment Scripts to let them set up entire environments by executing Bash or PowerShell scripts within Resource Manager Templates.

Microsoft pushes SQL to the fringes with Azure SQL Edge

Edge computing is becoming increasingly popular among enterprises with remote sites who want to collect and analyse data without having to shuttle it all the way out to the cloud first. To meet these needs, Microsoft is previewing Azure SQL Edge, a lightweight database engine designed specifically for edge deployments that can be run on both ARM and x64 devices in both connected and disconnected environments. It’s only available in selected regions, but in regions where it is available, customers can use it with no transaction costs for the duration of the preview period.

Azure Synapse Analytics previews more data analysis tools

At Ignite 2019, Microsoft unveiled Azure Synapse Analytics, the latest iteration of the Azure SQL Data Warehouse platform and its latest effort to meet its customers’ rapacious demands for data and insights. After being in private preview, the Azure Synapse Analytics’ latest features have now passed into the public preview phase, with integrated Park and SWL engines, built-in authoring for Power BI and serverless data lake exploration.

Azure Maps Private Atlas lets companies chart their own landscape

Azure contains a number of location-based technologies under its Azure Maps umbrella, and they can do more than get you from point A to point B. Its Private Atlas product, for example, allows companies to create maps of private spaces and populate them with sensor data, asset information, inventory details and more, allowing for much more accurate tracking and monitoring of internal real-estate. Azure Maps Private Atlas is now in public preview.

Azure Quantum leaps into preview

Quantum computing is being hailed by many as the next great frontier in software engineering, and Microsoft is hoping to speed its development with the limited preview of Azure Quantum. This suite of cloud services, which Microsoft says is build on 20 years of quantum research, allows companies to start experimenting with quantum development, including educational resources, pre-built ‘quantum-inspired’ solutions and access to software and hardware from partners like 1QBit, Honeywell, IonQ, and QCI.

Azure Active Directory External Identities help bring external partners in from the cold

Active Directory (AD) is the beating heart of many organisations, governing everything from payrolls to printer access. Integrating external partners such as customers and suppliers into AD can be a headache, but with the public preview of Azure Active Directory External Identities, that headache may be a little bit easier to deal with. It enables developers to integrate services for external users into their applications, as well as letting admins manage their entire directory without switching between tools. It’s also set to make collaboration between staff and non-employees easier, thanks to more seamless access and sharing.

Publisher Verification brings blue ticks to apps

Managing application permissions can be a bit of a security minefield, but the public preview of Publisher Verificiation allows developers with a verified Microsoft Partner Network account to mark their enterprise Active Directory apps as verified, which will show up when users are asked to consent to the permissions they request. IT admins will also be able to track the percentage of verified and non-verified apps within their estates, and can even configure policies to bar users from downloading unverified apps.

Microsoft Build 2020: Azure products now in general availability

Azure Peering service brings stability to Microsoft’s SaaS tools

Online services (including Microsoft’s own) have been somewhat wobbly since the coronavirus crisis upended working patterns across the globe, but one of the company’s newest services is aiming to add a little more stability.

The Azure Peering Service, which is now generally available, is aimed at customers who need maximal connectivity and provides automatic optimal routing to Microsoft’s cloud services, as well as traffic insights and analytics, and the capacity to select a preferred service provider for your cloud access.

Azure Kubernetes Service adds support for Windows Server, private clusters and Azure Advisor integration

Kubernetes looks set to be the future of application development, and Microsoft is amping up support for the container orchestration platform within its cloud. Its Azure Kubernetes Service now supports Windows Server containers, allowing devs to lift and shift Windows workloads onto a managed Kubernetes service and take advantage of all of the attendant benefits. It also means that Windows and Linux containers can both be run side by side with the same toolset.

To help beef up security, Azure Private Link also now allows customers to make their clusters fully private by housing their Kubernetes API server inside their Azure virtual network. They will also be able to receive proactive tips and recommendations on container hygiene and security, thanks to a new integration with Azure Advisor.

Azure Spatial Anchors let devs map the world in mixed reality

Microsoft’s forays into mixed reality haven’t been given much breathing room at this year’s Build, but it has announced that Azure Spatial Anchors, which give the ability to persistently map real-world locations at scale, is now generally available. Mixed reality is still in its infancy, but Microsoft is hoping that these tools will encourage more development of the ecosystem.

IoT Hub now supports virtual networks

IoT security is a thorny issue, but thanks to the newly-available support for virtual networks within Microsoft’s IoT Hub, customers now have the added peace of mind that none of their IoT traffic will be going over the open internet.

Microsoft Build 2020: Azure products with updated features

Azure Cognitive Services

AI development remains firmly at the top of Microsoft’s priority list, as demonstrated by the changes to its Azure Cognitive Services, a feature which allows developers to access AI components and functionality from within apps via API calls. The Personaliser API now includes an ‘apprentice mode’, which allows it to learn from existing personalisation solutions in real-time, with the ability to shield it from public view until it’s performing to desired levels.

The Language Understanding module also now has improved labelling for breaking apart complex languages structures to aid speech comprehension, while the QnA Maker service now supports role-based access control for collaborators. Sentiment analysis modules Language Understanding and Text Analytics are now generally available in containers, while Speech to Text and Neural Text to Speech are being extended to new regions.

Azure Cognitive Search is also being expanded with new capabilities, including smoother integration with Azure Machine Learning and the ability to include custom search rankings for domain-specific search results - both of which are currently in preview.

Microsoft Bot Framework

Carrying on the theme of AI development, the Microsoft Bot Framework Composer is now generally available. This open source tool allows developers to quickly get started with the dialogue composition aspects of bots, without having to worry too much about the technical scaffolding supporting them.

The Bot Framework SDK has also been integrated with Microsoft Teams to help devs build bots for the collaboration platform, and no-code bots built with Power Virtual Agents can now be reused as skills by other bots within an organisation. For interactions that require a bot to hand over to a human employee for customer engagement, Microsoft has introduced new integrations with customer service platforms to its Azure Bot Service to make the handover as easy as possible for developers to structure.

Azure Database for PostgreSQL and MySQL

Alongside the changes to Cosmos DB, Microsoft has also announced a number of new features for its PostgreSQL and MySQL products. Azure Database for PostgreSQL is getting new migration tools for moving deployments to Azure Database for PostgreSQL Hyperscale and wal2json logical decoding, the latter of which is now in preview.

Both Azure Database for PostgreSQL and for MySQL are also getting Azure Active Directory Authentication, Private Link support for added security, and three-year terms on Reserved Instances Pricing, all of which are generally available. Organisations will also be able to use their own keys to encrypt data at rest, with previews starting next month.

Azure Digital Twins

Microsoft’s Azure Digital Twins platform will be getting new features this summer too, including support for OPEN Modelling Language, rich query APIs and simpler integration with Azure products like IoT Hub. Digital twinning is in its relative infancy, but the new capabilities will hopefully make it more accessible for Azure developers.

Azure IoT Central

Azure IoT Central offers devs an easy way to create or customise IoT solutions via a SaaS portal, and it now integrates with Azure Sphere and IoT Edge for remote management and security. It’s also getting support for Indoor Mapping, courtesy of Azure Maps, a new template for public safety apps, and a public preview of a new diagnostics tool for accessing raw device data within the portal.

Azure Security Center

For cloud security professionals, Microsoft is upping the capabilities of Azure Security Center with the general availability of the Secure Score API and suppression rules. The former gives businesses a more intuitive way to track and measure their risk and security posture, while the latter allows the rules-based suppression of alerts that admins know are based on safe behaviour.

Azure Cosmos DB

Aside from the new pricing structures and HTAP features, Microsoft has also announced a few smaller-scale updates for Azure Cosmos DB. These include the general availability of customer-managed encryption keys stored via Azure Key Store, access to version 4 of the Java SDK for Cosmos DB, point-in-time backup and restore options and new deletion tools for the Cosmos DB change feed.