Azure Code Management & CI/CD

Other Azure Services

Internet of Things (IoT)

thousands or millions of devices around the world that collect data and send them back to the cloud for processing

Azure IoT Central

Ready-made UX and API surface for connecting and managing devices at scale, delivering reliable data for business insights.

• Application Platform as a service (aPaaS) offerings, bringing together each service beneath it for an easy-to-configure, comprehensive, and secure IoT offering.
• Visualizations and analysis of IoT data.
• Store data over a 30-day window
• IoT Central applications use multiple IoT hubs as part of their scalable and resilient infrastructure.

IoT Hub

Managed service to enable bi-directional communication between IoT devices and Azure

• Gateway to connect IOT device to cloud service or other IOT devices

• Connect, monitor, and control one or more IoT devices that can communicate with back-end services hosted in the cloud.

• Message routing integration automatically helps responding to a device-reported state change.

• IoT Hub scaling: scales message limit on your IoT Hub.

• PaaS solution that provides complete control over the collection and processing of IoT data.

To create a complete end-to-end solution, you can integrate the IoT Hub with other Azure services.

• Azure Event Grid
• Azure Logic Apps
• Azure Machine Learning
• Azure Stream Analytics

Azure Sphere

a secured, connected, crossover MCU used as a high level application platform for internet-connected devices

The Azure Sphere devices can run on two types of applications:

• High-level applications for containers.
• Real-time capable applications (RTApps) for bare metals.

Components:

Helps you protect your data, privacy, and infrastructure.

Azure Sphere chip – a microcontroller unit that provides real-time processing capabilities.

Azure Sphere OS – an operating system based on Linux that runs on an Azure Sphere chip.

Azure Sphere Security Service – it supports certificate-based authentication, automatic software updates, and failure reporting. By default, the data is encrypted at rest.

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Machine Learning/AI

A service to train, deploy, automate, manage, and track machine learning models.

• Deployed ML models: Azure ML SDK for Python, Azure ML Studio, and ML CLI

MLOps: Automate and accelerate the ML lifecycle

Azure ML designer: visually connect (drag-and-drop) datasets and modules without writing any code.

ML pipelines: Complete logical workflow and an ordered sequence of steps.

AutoML: Use the target metric you specify to train and tune a model.

Subscription Type

• Basic
• Enterprise editions.

Azure AI Services

Renamed from Azure Cognitive Services in 2023 (same service, new name).

Build cognitive intelligent applications without having AI or data science skills.

Supported Azure AI REST APIs that you can use:

• Vision:image classifier, computer Vision, Face Detection
• Speech: speech-to-text, text-to-speech, speech translation
• Language: NLP, Translator, Custom Question Answering (replaced the now-retired QnA Maker)
• Search
• Decision APIs: Anomaly Detector, Content Moderator, Personalization

Azure Bot Service

Create bot that uses natural language and speech capabilities to communicate with your users.

• It Can be integrated across multiple communication channels such as Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Facebook Messenger.
• Supports: Windows, Mac, or Linux.

Bot Framework Composer: visual editing canvas for conversation flows.

Bot Framework SDK: can create a bot that uses speech, understands natural language, and handle questions and answers.

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Azure DevOps

A set of tools to help planning, building, and deploying applications.

• Includes project management tools such as Boards and deployment tools such as Pipelines.

Azure Boards

Allows you to track features, user stories, tasks, and bugs associated with your project.

• You can also customize your dashboards and track progress easily during your project lifecycle.

Azure Pipelines

CI/CD service to build and test code automatically.

• Can deploy your codes to multiple targets at the same time.

Azure Repos

Store and manage your codes using a set of version control tools.

• It supports a version control system to track every change you made in your code.

GitHub

provides hosting for software development, distributed version control using Git, and source code management (SCM) functionality

GitHub Actions for Azure

Automates software development workflows.

• Build, test, package, release, and deploy projects on Azure.
• Each workflow is composed of individual actions that run after a particular event. These actions are defined in YAML files.

Azure Test Plans

A test management solution that supports end-to-end traceability.

• Run tests simultaneously using exploratory test sessions.

Azure Artifacts

Allows you to create, host, and share your code/packages with your team or other organization.

• Support: Maven, npm, NuGet, & Python packages

Azure DevTest Labs

A self-service sandbox that helps you create Dev/Test environments.

• You can quickly provision different environments by using reusable templates and artifacts.
• It also has a cost management feature to track your VMs and PaaS resources to stay within the allocated budget.

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Appendix

Machine Learning/AI

machine learning	AWS	Azure	Google Cloud
AI containers	AWS Deep Learning Containers	GPU support on AKS	Deep Learning Containers
AI prediction human review and moderation	Amazon Augmented AI (Amazon A2I)	Azure Content Moderator	N/A
AI machine images	AWS Deep Learning AMIs	Data Science Virtual Machines	Deep Learning VM Image
Chat bot builder	Amazon Lex	Azure Bot Service, Health Bot, Custom Question Answering	Dialogflow
Data labeling	Amazon SageMaker Ground Truth	Azure Machine Learning data labeling	Vertex Data Labeling
Document extraction, image content analysis	Amazon Textract	Azure Form Recognizer, Ink Recognizer, Computer Vision, Custom Vision	Vision API
Image and video recognition, indexing	Amazon Rekognition	Azure Face, Video Indexer	Video AI
Inference accelerator	Amazon Elastic Inference	GPUs on AKS	Cloud TPU, Edge TPU
Language recognition, sentiment analysis	Amazon Comprehend	Azure Immersive Reader, Language Understanding, Text Analytics	Cloud Natural Language AI, Healthcare Natural Language AI
Language translation	Amazon Translate	Speech Translation, Translator	Cloud Translation, Media Translation (beta)
Machine learning hardware	AWS Inferentia, AWS Trainium (preview*)	FPGA	Cloud TPU
Managed machine learning platform	Amazon SageMaker	Azure Machine Learning	TensorFlow Enterprise, Vertex AI
Notebooks	Amazon EMR Notebooks	Integrations through Visual Studio, Azure and GitHub	Notebooks
Online fraud detection	Amazon Fraud Detector	N/A	reCAPTCHA Enterprise
Prediction review and moderation	Amazon Augmented AI, Amazon SageMaker Clarify	Azure Content Moderator	N/A
Recommendation integration	Amazon Personalize	Personalizer	Recommendations AI
Speech recognition	Amazon Transcribe	Speaker Recognition (preview), Speech to Text Cloud	Speech-to-Text API
Text-to-speech	Amazon Polly	Text to Speech	Cloud Text-to-Speech API
Time-series forecasting	Amazon Forecast	N/A	N/A
Vision/speech modeling packaged devices	AWS DeepLens	Azure Kinect DK	N/A

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Related Posts

• AWS Code Management & CI/CD — the equivalent CI/CD tooling on AWS
• CI/CD Pipelines: From Commit to Production — the general CI/CD concepts this Azure-specific tooling implements