Microsoft has been at the forefront of breakthrough solutions AI, emphasizing end customers, developers and IT professionals in the cloud while accelerating business migrations to Azure. Azure Storage has evolved to strengthen the development of Microsoft AI and the corporate cloud on board with innovations in the area of platform infrastructure, product offerings, and workload integration.
Last January we shared reflection 2023 and Outlook for 2024 – and what year it was! Microsoft has been at the forefront of breakthrough solutions AI, emphasizing end customers, developers and IT professionals in the cloud while accelerating business migrations to Azure. Azure Storage has evolved to strengthen the development of Microsoft AI and the corporate cloud on board with innovations in the area of platform infrastructure, product offerings, and workload integration. Remarkable main points since 2024:
- Azure Storage, Azure file system, enabled model training with exabytes and inference/AI applications for startups and businesses.
- Premium SSD V2s, our general storage of blocks, continued to grow two -digit mothers with extended integration for new workload such as Epic and Oracle.
- The Azure Elastic San, the only offer of the native industry, grew more than 10 times in a few months from the general Avilabity, emphasizing the strong interests of customers to the transition from San to Cloud.
- Azure Container Storage, our new Kubernetes Storage Management solution, simplifies the development of cloud native applications with a uniform experience for all storage support from transforming discs to azure discs.
When we enter by 2025, our focus remains on our customers, with a vision to provide an intelligent data platform that maximizes the value of their data. We measure our success according to the success of our customers and we will continue to develop strong foundations and innovation in favor of customers and partners. We are expanding sincere thanks to our customers and partners for their trust and cooperation and lead us to achieve more together.
Foundations for innovation
According to Microsoft’s SECURED FUTURE (SFI) initiatives, we have strengthened security across several categories – secondary by default, design and operations – resulting in improvement of the new platform in identity and secret protection, network security, engineering systems, monitoring and secure Design and secure design review. We also introduced the ability to navigate customers for data security and protection, including Microsoft Defender support for storage, support of interest (in preview), network security (in preview) and TLS 1.3 support. In 2025 we have plans to extend our secure security by default in various offers, using authentication based on identity and discouraging anonymous approach.
Our investment in the durability of the platform focuses on proactive alleviation of impressive customer, which results in predictive analysis. In the second half of 2024, we achieved a 52% reduction in high impact incidents compared to the 2023. Multiple -free -bounds for SSD V2/Ultra bonus discs and planned services for blouses and files (in preview). In 2025 we will use AI and create automation to further increase predictance and detection of failure, thereby reducing both the occurrence and recovery time of high impact incidents; And to seize customers with richer knowledge about monitoring work health signals for active relief.
Innovation for AI and the resulting workload
From the power supply of top AI solutions to the driving of smooth cloud experiences, the storage innovation has become the backbone of technological progress. However, how do organizations remain in this rapidly developing landscape? The answer lies Aimed innovation—Pargeted Advancements that transform the way we manage, approach and use data.
Acceleration of AI innovation with differentiated capacity
In 2024, in cooperation with Openai, we proceeded in cooperation with Openi, while Azure Storage served as the basis for life cycle AI. At Ignnite, we showed how OpenAi used Azure Blob storage during the life cycle, from ingestion of huge data files for model training to allow smooth management and data expansion without increasing operational complexity. Such a success is made possible with the accounts with the storage of blob, which provide highly scalable permeability to avoid close performance and simplify the infrastructure. More of these capacities that we developed in cooperation with AI-shop customers, such as Openai processing.
We are working on an exciting innovation that smoothly combines impartial data with Azure AI Services and Solutions of other AI companies, where these data on the spot, other clouds or in Azure. Building vicodial business applications AI requirements for access to a huge amount of unregistered data, but allowing secure and well-controlled access to critical business data across the cloud and on-pémises Maldings is the main challenge for customers. This developing solution will solve the challenge of safely connecting your data with Azure AI Services, such as Azure AI Foundry and Azure Machine Learning, through their deep integration with Azure Blob – without the need for data migration or copying. By accelerating access to AI, shortening time for insight and allowing logical unification of data from multiple sources, this solution will prepare a way for transformation progress in business AI. With the robust management of driven tools like Azure RBAC, it will give you complete control of your data assets. The limited view of this solution will soon be available, with general availability planned for 2025.
Aimed innovation for emerging workload
Since cloud-S-ST approach becomes the starting settings between startups and businesses, we are witnessing new workloads focused on AI training, security scanning built on status containers. We have introduced the increasing demand for storage secured for containers with the Azure containers storage that offers a number of storage options through the native Kubernetes interface with support for new block storage such as fleeting discs and elastic San. This is particularly advantageous for workload hosted on virtual machines (VMS) with graphics processing units (GPU), where the Terabbytes Local NVME can speed up model training and derivation. In addition, developers do not have to choose between durability and speed for ephemeral discs. Azure Container Storage offers replication with flexible possibilities, enhance high resistance within or across zones and the best performance on the market. In 2025, we will strengthen the integration with Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) by strengthening the experience of installing and improving cost efficiency with general support for elastic San.
Optimization for critical workload of mission
We continue to optimize the experience of operating the workloads of critical missions in our product portfolio. BRAGHT on the elastic San on the market, optimized for the price-output in scale and trouble-free on-dormy San migration to Azure. With general availability of Azure VMware Solution Integration, customers can use not only VM and containers, but also as a native data section VMware. We recently released SLA 99.99%support, Instant Snapshot (in preview) with Azure backup (in preview) and the capacity of self -government (in the preview). The capabilities of the thesis strengthen the Elastic San as the main choice for corporate storage on a scale. Looking forward, we focus on optimizing boxes for using database and bare metals, reduce access latency and improve IOPS scalabibility, and promote BCDR support.
In parallel, we are developing disk offers to meet the growing needs of businesses. In order to help customers expand the performance of the database during high -end operations, we have introduced the MBV3 VM series and supports up to 650,000 IOPS disks – more than 50% increase. We also enabled general availability for live changes in our premium SSD V2/Ultra Disk, which simplifies the extension of the storage on request. With added disk conversion support, customers can upgrade to these latest factory on the spot. In the coming year, we land on more improvements to the premium SSD V2/Ultra, which included an automated renewal after a disaster via the Azure Recovery (ASR) and Azure Migrate Integration.
The Azure Netap (ANF) enters NetApp Ontap as a native Azure service to the cloud, offering a wide range of protocol and sub-milling ltence. General release of large volumes, increase in scale from 50 TIB to 2 PIB with more than 700 000 IOPS and 12.5 GIBPS throughput, ANF for processing critical workloads of missions in sectors, such as electronic automation design and high -performance computer technology (HPC). We will continue to optimize cost efficiency and allow integration with Azure AI.
Azure Files offers fully managed file sharing for hybrid, lift and shift and cloud native applications. To bring you the benefits of pay-as-you-go as you-go, while we are predictable costs, we have introduced the standard files by new provision of the V2 model. You can scaling, IOPS and permeability according to the workload requirements, starting with 32 GIB. In 2025, we focus on alleviating the lifting and shifting of workload by means of simplified management and trouble -free data migration, while allowing cloud cases of native use with integrated identity and increased performance.
Management with our partnership ecosystem
We continue to strengthen our partner ecosystem to provide customers with selection and provide robust hybrid capabilities of adherence to high quality and security standards. In 2024 we cooperate with partners in providing a comprise intelligent layer for Azure, qumulo Native azure v2 and Native cloud (Introduction of innovative price/performance between Premium V2 and Blob discs) and Veeam Cloud Cloud A safe built on a blob. We are proud to join innovations and are excited to announce the upcoming edition in 2025:
- Sunni data Service will allow our common customers to access data stored in NASNI UNIFS via the API Blob APIs.
- Pure Storage will release a fully managed scalable service for block storage.
- The common customers will bring Dell managed by OneFs offers and the DELL data domain.
Looking forward with Azure storage
When we enter into 2025, the horizon for storage innovation is more exciting than ever. With progress such as controlled and, sustainable infrastructure and access to lightning, we will redefine what is possible in Azure storage. The following year, it is not just about storing more-it’s about authorizing business to achieve more with intelligent, scalable and future storage solutions. Here is a year of data transformation!