Microsoft Build announcements for IT Pros

By April Edwards, Senior Cloud Advocate and DevOps Practice Lead

15/06/2022

An ad for Microsoft Build, featuring an image of Bit the Raccoon.

Hello folks,

It’s been great to see in-person events take off again! Many events are working in a hybrid model, which seems to be working really well. It gives the opportunity for some people to appear in person and others to join remotely if they cannot make an in-person event.

A couple of weeks ago, Microsoft Build kicked off on a global scale. While it was streaming sessions around the clock, various locations held in person events: Japan, Germany, LATAM, UK, and France. There was a great in-person representation in the UK from various customers, partners and Microsoft MVPs, and it was great to see the amazing work that everyone has been doing in the community.

While Microsoft Build tends to be labelled as a ‘developer’ event, there was a large amount of announcements for the IT Pro community too.

Below is a list of some of the key announcements that targeted the IT Pro community:

SQL Server 2022 has a load of new features with a focus of modernising your apps.
Build and Deploy Containerised applications and databases for hybrid environments with Azure Arc. There is a lot of capability coming out for hybrid management.
There was also another great session on Azure Arc using Kubernetes, check out this session from my very own teammates Orin Thomas and Viniscius Apolinario!
Not only did PowerShell turn 15 years old recently, but there was a great session on how to deploy scripts from Azure AD PowerShell to Graph PowerShell.
Mark Russinovich gave a great session on Azure Innovation.
Accessibility is something that many don’t realise we need. Personally, I found I had ways of coping that I never even realised. This session shows how Microsoft has been enabling folks with hearing, vision, cognitive, learning, mobility disabilities and mental health conditions to do more. Learn how all of us can be more inclusive with the products we deliver from day 1.
Microsoft Certifications are a hot topic with customers and the community alike. Check out the session with the latest updates on MS Certification exams!

You can check out all the updates via the Microsoft Build Book of News.

For those of you that don’t want to tirelessly read through the Book of News, I’d like to direct you to a drawing by our own Nitya Narasimhan, who has visually sketched out ALL of the announcements from Build in one awesome drawing. It can be found here.

Want to do some skilling up?

Check out the Azure Skills Navigator for System Administrators, look at where to start and where to go to get skilled up.

Upcoming in the month of July is a load of in-person events. I encourage everyone to check out some of the great conferences coming up and maybe even join a local (or global) meetup group. There are some great technical sessions from the community, and community is key to driving our success!