Microsoft Ignite has always announced many new products and new product features, and this year was no exception. Many exciting announcements, and below I list the major data platform and AI related announcements:

• Azure Arc enabled machine learning (preview): Build models on-premises, in multi-cloud, and at the edge with Azure Arc. It does this by deploying Azure Machine Learning to a Kubernetes cluster that resides on-prem or in another cloud. More info
• Azure Migrate new features: Discover and assess your SQL servers and their databases for migration to Azure from within the Azure Migrate portal, get target SKU recommendations, and estimate monthly costs. More info
• Azure SQL enhancements: Maintenance window – Azure SQL Database and Azure Managed Instance fixed maintenance windows (preview) – More info; Advance notifications – Enable you to prepare for planned maintenance events on your Azure SQL Database resources and minimize the impact of database failover on your sensitive workloads – More info
• Azure Purview (preview): Ability to scan Amazon AWS S3 and Amazon AWS subscriptions, Oracle DB, SAP ECC, SAP S4/HANA, Azure Synapse Analytics workspaces, Azure subscriptions and resource groups; Ability to implement hierarchical business glossary; Support for private endpoints; Purview-powered search in Synapse Studio; extension of free four capacity unit until June 1st. More info
• Azure Synapse Pathway: Migrate from your current data warehouse to Azure Synapse Analytics. It will translate existing SQL code optimized for your source system (e.g. Snowflake) to SQL code optimized for your new target system (e.g. Azure Synapse Analytics). This preview version of Azure Synapse Pathway supports conversion of database, schema, and tables from IBM Netezza, SQL Server, and Snowflake today. Soon, it will support for Teradata, followed by Redshift, BigQuery and Hive based Hadoop solutions. It will expand the surface area of conversion to database views, procedures, functions and more to further simplify the automation of analytics workloads into Azure Synapse. More info
• Azure Cosmos DB: API for MongoDB v4.0, GA; Continuous backup and PITR, Public Preview; RBAC with AAD integration, Public Preview; Azure Synapse Link, GA. More info
• Azure Managed Instance for Apache Cassandra (public preview): Connect to a on-prem Cassandra database. Eventually will have data replication from Cassandra to Cosmos DB. More info
• Azure Cache for Redis: Now with Enterprise tiers and active-active geo-replication which gives multi-master writes and five-9’s of availability. More info
• Azure Cognitive Search: Semantic Search Capability – When entering search phrases it returns instant answers (Short snippet of the most relevant query result), Better Query Understanding (Results based on meaning of words and not just syntax), and Intelligent Ranking (Contextual query ranking using deep neural networks). In addition, a new SharePoint connector makes it easier to ingest and explore SharePoint content within Azure Cognitive Search. More info
• Form Recognizer: Pre- build IDs: Passport and Driving License, Pre-built Invoices, 64 new languages, support for custom extraction. More info
• Azure Stream Analytics: Now provides support for single tenant dedicated clusters (GA). ​ Azure Stream Analytics Dedicated provides single tenant hosting for increased reliability with no noise from other tenants.  Customer resources are “isolated” and perform better during bursts in traffic. More info
• Power BI: Gen2, the latest update to Power BI Premium, is now available in public preview. This includes architectural updates for across-the-board improvements to performance, stability and security. Premium Gen2 delivers enhancements for every Power BI Premium customer, including: Flexibility to license per user or per capacity; Faster processing — up to 16x performance boost with Microsoft managed architecture; Autoscale to automatically add capacity when needed; and consistent and reliable cost management with utilization metrics. Power BI Premium Per User will become generally available on April 2, 2021. More info

For more details, check out the Microsoft Ignite book of news.

More info:

Microsoft Ignite Data and Analytics roundup: Platform extensions are the key theme

At Microsoft Ignite, expanding reach for Azure ML & Purview, Power BI Premium