Microsoft Developer Advocate Anthony Chu gives us the details on the newly released Azure SignalR Service that allows web and mobile applications to display real-time data with minimal effort, Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode250.mp3 Azure SignalR Service documentation https://docs.microsoft.com/azure/azure-signalr/?WT.mc_id=signalrservice-azpodcast-antchu Azure SignalR Service bindings for Azure Functions documentation https://docs.microsoft.com/azure/azure-functions/functions-bindings-signalr-service?WT.mc_id=signalrservice-azpodcast-antchu Develop real-time features with Azure SignalR Service https://myignite.techcommunity.microsoft.com/sessions/66604?WT.mc_id=signalrservice-azpodcast-antchu Build real-time serverless apps with Azure Functions and SignalR Service https://myignite.techcommunity.microsoft.com/sessions/66631?WT.mc_id=signalrservice-azpodcast-antchu   Other updates: Advanced Threat Protection for Azure Storage now in public preview - Azure Storage Advanced Threat Protection detects anomalies in account activity and notifies you of potentially harmful attempts to access your account. This layer of protection allows you to address threats without the need to be a security expert   or manage security monitoring systems. Threats are surfaced by defining security alerts that trigger when anomalies in activity occur. These alerts integrate with Azure Security Center which include details of suspicious activity and recommendations on how to investigate and remediate threats. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/advanced-threat-protection-for-azure-storage-now-in-public-preview/ Cloud Scale Analytics meets Office 365 data – empowered by Azure Data Factory - Azure Data Factory enables you to bring the rich organizational data in your Office 365 tenant into Azure in a scalable way and build analytics applications and extract insights based on these valuable data assets. Microsoft Graph contains rich data about workers and their workplace, including information about how people work and how they communicate, collaborate, and manage their time. Microsoft Graph data connect brings this data to Microsoft Azure, which gives you access to the best development and hosting tools to work with this data. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/microsoft-graph-data-connect-empowered-by-data-factory/ Bring Your Own Keys for Apache Kafka on HDInsight - Azure HDInsight includes Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) support for Apache Kafka. This capability lets you own and manage the keys used to encrypt data at rest. All managed disks in HDInsight are protected with Azure Storage Service Encryption (SSE). By default, the data on those disks is encrypted using Microsoft-managed keys. If you enable BYOK, you provide the encryption key for HDInsight to use and manage it using Azure Key Vault. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/bring-your-own-keys-for-apache-kafka-on-hdinsight/ Ephemeral OS Disk in limited preview - Ephemeral OS Disk is a new type of OS disk created directly on the host node, providing local disk performance and faster boot/reset time. Ephemeral OS Disk is supported for all virtual machines (VM) and virtual machine scale sets (VMSS). Ephemeral OS Disk is ideal for stateless workloads that require consistent read/write latency to OS disk, as well as frequent reimaging operations to reset VMs to their original state. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/mariadb-public-preview/ Public preview: Azure Database for MariaDB - The Azure Database for MariaDB service is now available in preview. It offers an enterprise-ready, fully managed database service that uses the community edition of MariaDB. The service features open-source compatibility, built-in high availability, dynamic scaling, and flexible pricing. Customers can lift and shift to the cloud and use languages and frameworks of their choice, leveraging the power of MariaDB running on Azure.