Azure Review: Performance benchmarks; DoD contracts; Database migration; Cost management; Developer tools

Julia White, the CVP for Azure touted recent performance numbers published by GigaOm indicating that Azure SQL Data Warehouse is 14 times faster than AWS Redshift or Google BigQuery. Director of product management for Azure Engineering Jurgen Willis overviewed new Data Lake Storage features like data encryption in transit and at rest, role-based access security, and virtual network integration and touched on additions to Data Factory and Data Explorer.

In the channel, A10 Networks has made its Application Delivery, Harmony Controller, vThunder ADC and Lightning ADC available in Azure Marketplace. In France, Microsoft Gold Partner, Sopra Seria announced the launch of hybrid cloud services, offering Azure Stack for the French market. Startup BrightBytes sold its DataSense data management platform to Microsoft for education data analysis.

Throughout 2018, the JEDI US Department of Defense cloud contract dominated headlines. Now in 2019, it seems that the $8.2 billion Defense Enterprise Office Solutions, or DEOS, contract will be the next one up for grabs. The DoD is trying to consolidate disparate IT systems for voice, video, email, content management, and collaboration. Only Defense Information Systems Agency Level 5 authorized organizations are entitled to apply, which automatically limits the pool to Microsoft, Amazon, IBM, and Oracle (Google Cloud has not achieved the same ranking yet). If Microsoft is able to secure the contract, it will be a coup for the company's Azure and Microsoft 365 offerings.

As Microsoft plans to restructure how it sells solutions in the channel, IDG reports that some partners are worried about being bypassed. For now, some partners like those in New Zealand will continue to have priority selling in their own geography.

Writing on the Azure Stack Blog, Bas Wassenaar examined availability sets, fault domains, and update domains. He wrote: