Azure World Newsletter – Issue 4.15

July 26, 2023

Welcome to the fifteenth edition of the Azure World Newsletter in 2023.

Hello again, my friends from around the world. I’m so happy you continue to subscribe and read this bi-weekly newsletter on Azure. I enjoy sitting down each week to research and write this, and hopefully, you will continue to find value in it. Feel free to invite your co-workers or others to subscribe if you think they would find it helpful.

Some parts of the world, including where I live, are battling natural disasters like fires and flooding. I hope everyone is staying safe.

The unsubscribe link is at the bottom if you want to stop receiving these emails.

ONE.

Every three months, we get a peek inside Redmond’s books with their quarterly earnings announcement. This quarter, they were able to beat analyst expectations by earning more revenue and higher earnings than expected. Microsoft’s overall annual growth rose only 8% year-over-year.

Somewhat more relevant was how their “Intelligent Cloud” segment did. That segment was up 15% year-over-year and includes Azure, SQL Server, Windows Server, Visual Studio, GitHub, and other enterprise services.

Azure revenue reportedly grew 26% annually. They do not report this revenue in dollars, so it’s hard to compare the overall total with competitors in the space, such as Amazon Web Services.

I can remember, not too long ago, when Azure was growing at more than 50% year-over-year, and so clearly, the growth is starting to slow. They are still growing faster than AWS, so over time, Azure will close the gap, although it might take a long time.

This earnings report happens in the middle of some cutbacks at Microsoft. Recently, Satya Nadella mentioned there will be more job cuts coming up. And Microsoft has also frozen salaries.

For more:
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/25/microsoft-msft-q4-earnings-report-2023.html

TWO.

Last year, I noticed documentation on the Microsoft Learn website mentioning that Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) would be part of the new Microsoft Entra umbrella of services.

Well, the other shoe has dropped on that. Azure AD itself is being renamed Microsoft Entra ID.

Before criticizing the new name, I must stop and wonder why they had to change it. Did the Azure AD name make it confusing as to what the service could do? Were customers failing to adopt it because they were confused by the name? Was the old name limiting the service in some way?

Given that Windows Server Active Directory has a long history before the cloud was a dream, clearly, the Azure AD moniker was not that confusing. It was a continuation of what Windows AD was but in a cloud context. It was not a total feature-for-feature replacement, but there was a lot of overlap.

Were customers not adopting Azure AD because of the name? I don’t believe they were. Millions of enterprises around the world were using Azure AD.

But was the old name limiting the future potential of the service?

Maybe. This might be the reason they decided to change the name. Maybe Microsoft wants to grow the Azure AD brand beyond its “AD” roots.

So Microsoft Entra ID is re-branding itself as a “multi-cloud” identity security service. It does not require the use of AD internally, it does not require Windows, it does not even require Azure.

Entra ID is identity as a service that can be used quickly and easily in a variety of modern multi-cloud, heterogeneous environments.

Microsoft is quick to point out that only the name is changing. You don’t have to do anything to your apps or code. It’s just a rebranding.

I understand the need to change the old name. I don’t like the new one, but if they wanted to repaint their 30-year-old AD as a brand-new thing, I get that. But Entra is going to take some getting used to.

Surely there were better names. “Microsoft Identity Services” even.

For more on this:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/fundamentals/new-name

AZURE PLATFORM UPDATES.

As we enter the summer in North America, the pace of updates starts to slow down.

The following updates to the Azure platform were announced in the last two weeks:

Microsoft Dev Box is now generally available
Azure AD is becoming Microsoft Entra ID

Be sure and check out the Azure Updates page if any of these affect you.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/

COMING UP FOR ME.

I’m just putting the finishing touches on my new TOGAF 10 course. I hope to have it done by the end of July. Expect a discount link in the next newsletter for the new course.

I’m also enjoying a lovely summer so far. I made a quick trip back to Canada to visit family and friends for my birthday. And am now back in Portugal, getting back to work.