Ignite 2021: Microsoft opens another data center in China, announces new tools for Azure Data and AI

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Published onMarch 2, 2021

published onMarch 2, 2021

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Microsoft’s annual Ignite 2021 conference is underway, and there’s a lot of Azure and cloud news coming out of the event. The biggest of them all is the announcement that Microsoft is opening a new datacenter region in northern China. Of course, there are also new tools for Azure Data and AI, too.

First off, there’s the news about the new datacenter region.Despite strict laws set forth by the Chinese government, Microsoft has managed toestablish another new datacenter regionin northern China. Details are scarce, but the company says that the region will enable more Chinese customers to experience Azure and the rest of Microsoft 365. This brings their total Azure regionsin China up to five, in addition to China East, China East 2, China North, and China North 2.

Now, for the rest of the stuff. There are some new improvements for Azure Data. These are all designed to ease customer deployments, improve reliability, as well as cross-platform capabilities. The big one here is thelaunch of Azure Synapse Pathway, which will allow Microsoft’s customers to simplify and accelerate migrating legacy cloud data warehouse to Azure Synapse Analytics. Other changes announced are below.

Finally, we end with Azure AI. The new features for Azure AI are, of course, catered for developers. Microsoft is introducinga new semantic search capability in Azure Cognitive Search.They believe this new search capability should deliver results based on user intent as opposed to a keyword-based searced used by others in the industry. Also introduced is a new SharePoint connector for Azure Cognitive Search, to ingest and explore SharePoint content from within the service. The list below will coversome other changes.

There’s still a lot of news coming out of Microsoft Ignite. We remind you to stay tuned to OnMSFT all week long for the biggest news coming out of the annual IT and developer extravaganza. We’ll be watching right alongside you!

Radu Tyrsina

Radu Tyrsina has been a Windows fan ever since he got his first PC, a Pentium III (a monster at that time).

For most of the kids of his age, the Internet was an amazing way to play and communicate with others, but he was deeply impressed by the flow of information and how easily you can find anything on the web.

Prior to founding Windows Report, this particular curiosity about digital content enabled him to grow a number of sites that helped hundreds of millions reach faster the answer they’re looking for.

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Ignite 2021: Microsoft opens another data center in China, announces new tools for Azure Data and AI#

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Copilot in Outlook will generate personalized themes for you to customize the app

Microsoft will raise the price of its 365 Suite to include AI capabilities

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Outlook will let users create custom account icons so they can tell their accounts apart easier

Ignite 2021: Microsoft opens another data center in China, announces new tools for Azure Data and AI