May 11, 2017 05:34 AM EDT By Jean Fitzgerald, UniversityHerald Reporter

Microsoft Azure is on fire again, adding additional upgrades and some database enhancement on board. The software giant this week announced the latest burst of an upgrade for its cloud computing service, which includes a new distributed database service, IoT updates, and some major enhancement to Azure's database portfolio. Microsoft made the huge announcement at this week's annual Microsoft Build Developers Conference in Seattle.

Microsoft this week is hosting its annual Microsoft Build Developers Conference in Seattle, with the first keynote presentation kicks off on May 10. In the event, Microsoft is expected to detail and share more about the company's future plans for Windows, Cortana, Office 365, and Microsoft Azure.

This week, the Redmond-based software giant has just taken its NoSQL DocumentDB service a step further with the introduction of the new globally distributed database, called Azure Cosmos DB. Microsoft made the big introduction at Day 1 of it's 2017 Microsoft Build Developer Conference in Seattle.

Microsoft first started working on Azure Cosmos DB in late 2010 to help its vast army of developers to cope with the increased complexity and growing demand for distributed applications. In 2014, Microsoft has decided to introduce Azure DocumentDB in preview form for that developer who wanted a NoSQL service for their own application development. At that time, the company refers to the Azure DocumentDB as the next big leap in the evolution of DocumentDB, the TechCrunch reported.

And this week, Microsoft's DocumentDb service is now morphing into the newly introduced Azure Cosmos DB, moving all existing DocumentDB customers and their data to Azure Cosmos DB. The transition has officially started on May 10 with no additional charge for existing Azure DocumentDB customers.

 According to Microsoft, Azure Cosmos DB is a new distributed database service that grew out of the company's existing NoSQL DocumentDB service. For database starters, SQL (which stands for structured query language) is the standard way to interact with relational or other SQL databases.

In addition to the newly introduced Azure Cosmos DB, the software giant has also introduced Azure Database for MySQL and PostgreSQL at this week's Microsoft Build conference in Seattle. Microsoft has enhanced its support for popular database software like MySQL and PostgreSQL helping companies bring their Oracle databases or Microsoft SQL Server databases, to the Microsoft Azure cloud platform.

However, these new database services have also put the software company in a more direct collision with another cloud heavyweight, the Redwood City-based database stalwart, Oracle Corporation. That's because Microsoft has just announced a new migration service that been designed to steal Oracle's customers. These new database services have been designed to help big companies and developers to take their third-party and SQL Server databases and move them to Microsoft Azure SQL Database service.

As for the cloud benefit, Microsoft's new database service will offer customers a service that should provide high availability, data protection, data recovery and the ability to easily scale. It also offers a near-zero downtime migration for both Microsoft SQL Server and other third-party databases like Oracle and SAP, the Fortune reported.

Currently, these new database services are available in 11 of Azure's regions in the U.S., Europe, and the Asian region. For a more detailed information about pricing and availability, check out the Azure official website.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has decided to use one of this year's biggest tech events to remind developers about the edge computing. During the company's its first keynote presentation of the Microsoft Build 2017 conference in Seattle, the company has shown off a preview of Azure IoT Edge.

This new Azure IoT service, which slated for release later this year, will enable IoT devices to run cloud services, process data in near real-time, communicate with sensors and IoT-enabled devices connected to them, even with poor internet connections. For more information about this new IoT updates, check out the Microsoft Azure IoT page.

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