Top Microsoft Azure Highlights: New Partnerships, Privacy Approval from EU, and More

A recap of this week's news on SharePoint Pro, including new Microsoft partnerships, Azure privacy requirements, and thoughts on the future of Microsoft...

Microsoft Partnerships

This week, Microsoft Azure stole the spotlight for much of the news over here at SharePoint Pro. In particular, the company announced two different partnerships, where Microsoft is making it easier for enterprises to adopt Azure on their own terms. Not only does the strategic partnership bolster Microsoft's cloud first, mobile first initiative, but it also undoubtedly will help to increase the adoption of Azure across North America.

Azure Gets an A+ for Privacy, Security Requirements

Also on the Azure front, there's been a lot of positive news surrounding the cloud service itself. First, Azure recently received the EU's approval for their strict privacy requirements. What does this type of announcement mean for Microsoft? Well, plenty. Notably, the EU stated that Microsoft is the first company to have achieved this type of recognition, meaning that consumers can feel more confident in the security and privacy of the data that they are storing on Azure. Additionally, this news ties in really nicely with Microsoft's announcement regarding the Heartbleed vulnerability, where the company stated that it was not impacted by the flaw because it doesn't rely on OpenSSL for encryption. And although these two pieces of news might not seem like such a big deal by themselves, they really help us understand the message that Microsoft's trying to convey, where the company is touting Azure as a rapidly growing cloud service that customers can trust and rely on.

The Future of Microsoft

Last but not least, I also wrote a commentary on my thoughts about Microsoft's Build developer conference. And what I tried to convey in that piece is that Microsoft showed us that it's really listening to its stakeholders and acting on that feedback. And it's showing not only from the development front, but also the enterprise and consumer front. More on that in tomorrow's commentary on SharePoint Pro, however. With respect to this week's news, Microsoft seems to be clearly honing into its user's needs on the Azure front by delivering a secure and reliable service.