Microsoft Azure Launches New Services Aimed at Developers

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This article originally appeared at TheWHIR.

Microsoft is seeking to improve Azure’s appeal to developers with a set of new services and updates, the company announced Thursday. New services include DocumentDB and Search, while HDInsight support for Apache HBase has been made generally available and VM Depot images have been added to the Azure gallery.

Azure also added support for SQL Server AlwaysOn, Web Site WebJobs, and API Managment REST API, which allows nearly any management operation in the Management API Portal to be accessed programmatically.

“One of the core tenets of Microsoft Azure’s strategy is to build an open platform that gives developers flexibility in building applications using technologies of their choice,” Azure director of product marketing Vibhor Kapoor said. “Today we are excited to announce new services and updates that affirm our commitment to enabling developers build innovations how they want.”

The announcement also includes Azure availability for credit card purchase and deployment in 51 new countries.

DocumentDB is a managed NoSQL document database-as-a-service with “query processing and transaction semantics common to relational database systems.” It offers an additional NoSQL choice for leveraging user-generated data across multiple platforms, concurrent versions, or applications.

With Azure Search, developers can increase and decrease queries per second and document count as load changes to increase the cost effectiveness of searches. DocumentDB and Search are now available in the Azure Preview portal.

Azure expanded its network for private connection in July.  As it expands and adds new features, it will need to keep the service online to maintain the confidence of developers and other customers. Azure has suffered several service outages in August.

This article originally appeared at: http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/microsoft-azure-launches-new-services-aimed-developers