Apr 07, 2017 07:49 AM EDT By Aaron Hank, UniversityHerald Reporter

Microsoft Azure is on fire again, adding a number of key features on board. The software company this week announced its latest burst of an upgrade for the company's cloud computing service, Microsoft Azure. The main focus of the big update will be on Azure Stack and the enterprise IT market.

The Redmond-based software company this week launched an update to its cloud computing service, adding Azure PaaS services for Azure Stack and a refreshed Azure Stack TP3 on board. This is Microsoft's first version of Azure Stack to offer support for Azure Functions, the software giant's event-based serverless computing experience, the TechCrunch reported.

Microsoft last month announced the release of Azure Stack Technical Preview 3 (TP3) along with support for more modern application capabilities and security enhancements. This week, the feature now comes with supports for the cloud economic model on-premises with pay-as-you-use pricing. The company plans to announce the general availability of Azure Stack at some point this year, the website added.

In addition, Microsoft Azure's late update also includes the Azure App Service, Azure Function serverless computing and an updated versions of Azure SQL/MySQL database services. Microsoft has developed Azure Stack to take on with the likes of OpenStack and Cloud Foundry, two open source projects that been working for years to bring the operating concepts of public clouds and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offerings into the highly lucrative enterprise IT market.

For a starter, Cloud Foundry is an open source, multi-cloud application platform PaaS, originally developed by VMware and then later transferred to Pivotal Software, while OpenStack is a free and open-source software platform for cloud computing. Both OpenStack and Cloud Foundry have the advantage of having a huge head start and being an open source-based platform. For more about Azure Stack, check out Microsoft Azure website.

In another Azure-related story, a new market intelligence and IT survey conducted by market analyst firm 451 Research, shows Amazon Web Services slowly losing the cloud arms race, while Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud platform gaining more grounds. The 451 Research's IT survey also confirms the enterprise shift to a multi-cloud strategy in which Microsoft appears to be the main beneficiary, winning the cloud contest and now emerging as a "formidable competitor" to AWS.

Additionally, 451 Research also point out that AWS remains as the "most important" cloud provider in its recent conducted IT survey. However, the market research firm also reported that Microsoft Azure is coming fast and nearly close the gap with market leader AWS, Enterprise Tech reported.

According to 451 Research analyst Melanie Posey, the company's launch of Microsoft Azure Stack, which slated for mid-2017, could further erode AWS overwhelming cloud dominance and finally closing the huge gap with AWS. The Azure Stack, which billed as one of the most important cloud updates for this year, will allow application upgrades across hybrid clouds, including application development using a set of Azure services and even DevOps tools. 

Watch the Microsoft Azure Stack video below to learn more about the cloud computing tool:

See Now: Covert Team Inside Newsweek Revealed as Key Players in False Human Trafficking Lawsuit