Cloud-native at Build 2023
Cloud-native development is a paradigm that aims to deliver scalable, resilient, and adaptable applications that can run on any cloud platform. Microsoft's cloud-native products, such as Azure Kubernetes Service, Azure Functions, and Azure DevOps, provide the tools and services to help developers build, deploy, and manage cloud-native applications with ease. We have seen this transformation take form in the way Zooniverse adopted Azure in order to become more efficient when updating their people-powered research platform and using the grant funding they run on. PosAm is able to help users find parking spaces faster, while also decreasing carbon emissions of vehicles as a result. We have now seen the powers that AI can bring and we see this in how Adaptive Biotechnologies is changing the diagnosis landscape with Cloud-native development and the infusion of AI.
To start off your Cloud-native Build 2023 Journey, you must not miss this featured session Building and scaling cloud-native, intelligent applications on Azure with Brendan Burns, Scott Hunter, and Mandy Whaley. In this session, you will learn how to run cloud-native serverless and container applications in Azure using Azure Kubernetes Service and Azure Container Applications. This session will help you choose the right service for your apps. You will also see why Azure is the best platform to host cloud-native and intelligent applications. There is even a showing of an app using Azure OpenAI Service and Azure Data. Come and learn all the new capabilities of our container platforms including how to deploy, test for scale, monitor, and much more.
Kubernetes On Azure:
There is so much in store for cloud-native development for this year’s Build. No better way to kick things off by talking about what is coming up for Kubernetes and Azure Kubernetes Service. From breakout sessions with our experts, labs, demos, and more, Build will get you excited about what’s to come for cloud-native. Here are some of the Kubernetes focused sessions below:
BRK225H: Integrating Azure AI and Azure Kubernetes Service to build intelligent apps
Build intelligent apps that leverage Azure AI services for natural language processing, machine learning, Azure OpenAI Service with Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and other Azure application platform services. Learn best practices to help you achieve optimal scalability, reliability and automation with CI/CD using GitHub. By the end of this session, you will have a better understanding of how to build and deploy intelligent applications on Azure that deliver measurable impact.
BRK222H: Deliver apps from code to cloud with Azure Kubernetes Service
Do you want to build and run cloud-native apps in Microsoft Azure with ease and confidence? Do you want to leverage the power and flexibility of Kubernetes, without the hassle and complexity of managing it yourself? Or maybe you want to learn about the latest and greatest features and integrations that Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) has to offer? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then this session is for you!
BRK242H: Build scalable, cloud-native apps with Kubernetes and Azure Cosmos DB
Develop, deploy, and scale cloud-native applications that are high-performance, fast, and can handle traffic bursts with ease. Explore the latest news and capabilities for Azure Kubernetes Service and Azure Cosmos DB, and hear from Rockwell Automation about how they've used Azure's cloud-scale app and data services to create global applications.
DEM170B: Build and deploy an intelligent app with AKS and OSS
Using a combination of open-source technologies and Azure apps, data, and AI services, build a scalable and flexible cloud-native app. Join this session to see a demonstration of the app built on open-source technologies for insights and best practices on building apps with Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Azure Cognitive Services, Azure Cosmos DB, Dapr, KEDA, and more.
What’s Next For Kubernetes On Azure:
Other than the amazing sessions, there are new enhancements for Azure Kubernetes Service. Here are the top announcemnets:
- Long-term support: To give enterprises more control over their environment, we are announcing Long-term Support for Kubernetes that will enable customers to stay on the same release for two years – twice as long as what’s possible today.
- Transactable Kubernetes apps: Now generally available, Transactable Kubernetes apps, allow AKS customers to explore a vibrant ecosystem of first- and third-party Kubernetes-ready solutions from Azure Marketplace, purchase, and securely deploy them on AKS with easy click-through deployments.
- Confidential Containers update: Microsoft has announced confidential containers in AKS, coming soon in preview, as a first-party offer that allows teams to run standard unmodified containers, aligned with the Kata Confidential Containers opensource project, to achieve zero trust operator deployments with AKS.
- AKS Fleet Manager: The new multi-cluster update feature, now in preview, gives teams the ability to orchestrate planned updates across multiple clusters for a consistent environment.
Serverless On Azure:
Cloud-native development will not be complete without Serverless. New advancements for Serverless architectures released at Build will be covered across different sessions. Here's a list of highlighted sessions to catch all things Serverless:
BRK221H: Focus on code, not infra with Azure Functions, Azure Spring Apps, Dapr
Explore an easy on-ramp to build your cloud-native APIs with containers in the cloud. Build an application using Azure Spring APIs to send messages to Dapr enabled message broker, triggering optimized processing with Azure Functions, all hosted in the same Azure Container Apps environment. This unified experience for microservices hosts multitype apps that interact with each other using Dapr, scale dynamically with KEDA, and focus on code, offering a true high productivity developer experience.
DEM120B: Build Intelligent Microservices with Azure Container Apps
Azure Container Apps is a great place to run intelligent microservices, APIs, event-driven apps, and more. Infuse AI with Azure Container Apps jobs, leverage adaptable design patterns with Dapr, and explore flexible containerized compute for microservices across serverless or dedicated options.
BRK226H: Modernizing your applications with containers and serverless
Dive into how cloud-native architectures and technologies can be applied to help build resilient and modern applications. Learn how to use technologies like containers, Kubernetes and serverless integrated with other application ecosystem services to build and deploy microservices architecture on Microsoft Azure. This discussion is ideal for developers, architects, and IT pros who want to learn how to effectively leverage Azure services to build, run and scale modern cloud-native applications. This session will be featuring our partner Barracuda Networks to share their Modernization journey.
LAB120: Build a Serverless Web Application End-To-End on Azure
Build modern, scalable, composable, serverless web applications using best-in-class developer tools and cloud-native technologies. We have you covered! Join us for this lab where we go from application specification (user stories) to a scalable, managed deployment (solution) using services like Azure Functions and environments like GitHub Codespaces.
What’s Next For Serverless On Azure:
Figure 1: The Serverless landscape on Azure
This Build, Microsoft has made new enhancements for development across its serverless landscape. The key announcements are summed up here at a glance:
- Azure Functions for building microservices - Developers can deploy containerized Azure Functions together with other microservices, APIs, workflows or any containerized app to quickly build event driven, cloud-native apps. With this public preview, Azure Function’s host, runtime, extensions, and Azure Function apps can be developed and deployed as containers using familiar Functions tooling including Core Tools, AzCLI/Portal/code-to-cloud with GitHub actions and DevOps tasks into the Azure Container Apps environment. Learn more.
- Azure Container Apps jobs – Available in public preview, jobs in Azure Container Apps encapsulate everything needed to run ad hoc tasks asynchronously, and execute to completion such as data processing, data migrations, recurring tasks like daily sales overview etc. Jobs may be scheduled, event-driven or run on-demand. Learn more.
- Easily create Dapr components in Azure Container Apps - Authoring Dapr components for Azure services in the Azure Container Apps portal is now significantly easier. You can focus on developing business logic code and need not worry about Dapr’s OSS concepts or required component metadata. Azure Container Apps, Dapr and Azure Service Connector author the component resource on your behalf. Learn more.
- V2 programming model for Azure Functions using Python - This programming model, now GA, is designed to provide a Functions development experience that is more familiar to Python developers. Leveraging the V2 programming model will provide an improved and seamless way to create functions, with the underlying deployment, debugging, and monitoring experience remaining the same. Key features include triggers and bindings declared as decorators and in-editor support with easy to reference documentation.
- Azure SQL bindings for Azure Functions - Easily integrate Azure SQL and Azure Functions with input and output bindings, generally available for use with Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance, and SQL Server. Reduce the boilerplate code required to develop Azure Functions, speeding up time to deployment whether you are building a fleet of microservices or a single solution. You can develop with SQL input and output bindings in .NET, Java, Python, Node.js, and PowerShell Azure Functions.
- ASP.NET Core integration in Azure Functions .NET isolated model - Azure Functions now supports a richer model for working with HTTP triggers in .NET isolated function projects. Apps can now be written to use familiar types from ASP.NET Core such as HttpRequest, HttpResponse, and IActionResult. This makes it easier for function authors to leverage their existing skills from ASP.NET Core and existing in-process Functions projects.
For a deeper dive on all Azure Functions announcements, read the Azure Functions Build blog update.
Learn more about Cloud-native at Microsoft Build
No matter what you’re building, using what language, building on what platform, we have the service just for you to build intelligent, AI-infused enterprise applications. Leverage the cloud-native platform on Azure to go from code to production while accelerating your time to market.
Here are other related cloud-native sessions and labs for you to checkout at Build.
