Microsoft is going to help customers more with unexpected downtime problems in the Azure cloud. For this purpose, the tech giant is developing separate Azure Service Health pages for individual customers. AI will be used to send better and faster notifications.
Downtime in public cloud environments, such as Microsoft Azure, is always inconvenient, no matter how well one prepares for it. If, in addition, the communication surrounding downtime leaves something to be desired, it only becomes more challenging to deal with the downtime.
Improved communication around Azure
Microsoft wants to improve this communication for its Azure public cloud. The tech giant realises that good communication is vital when problems occur with Azure. The tech giant is expanding its Azure Service Health portfolio with more options to better inform their customers.
With the Azure Service Health suite, customers can receive personalized support for solving problems related to Azure, such as downtime and scheduled maintenance. Azure Service Health consists of Azure Status, Service Health and Resource Health.
Fast and dedicated troubleshooting
Microsoft wants to inform its Azure customers of any downtime within 15 minutes. To do this, the tech giant hires additional staff but also wants to send automated notifications faster and more intelligently. Automated notifications already take care of half of all communication of the tech giant regarding downtime.
Microsoft also stated it wants to use Twitter more often for communication about outages. The general service page will remain but will focus more on providing information about downtime in specific cloud regions.
Deployment of AI
Microsoft also wants to use AI technology to optimize automated communication. With AI, it should soon be possible to automatically identify which services are affected by the downtime of the public cloud platform. In addition, AI should help with troubleshooting and send personalised solutions based on multiple scenarios to customers as quickly as possible.
Also for other services
In addition to Azure, Microsoft intends to use these new forms of communications for other services in the near future. Think of Microsoft 365 and the Power Platform services.