Microsoft Adds Azure Search Added For UK Cloud Customers

British developers can now integrate advanced search options into their apps after Microsoft made Azure Search available in the UK region.

As a reminder, Azure Search is a search-as-a-service solution that allows developers to incorporate searches into their applications, without them needing to manage infrastructure or having to become search experts.

Azure Search had been launched as a preview way back in August 2014 in the US, before more personalised search features for its ‘search-as-a-service’ offering was officially launched in the US in early 2015.

Search-As-A-Service

And now this ‘search-as-a-service’ offering is available for UK customers, after Microsoft announced the feature, which allows for people to search for online content in 56 languages.

And Microsoft has made the product easy to use, as Azure Search can analyse the text typed into an app’s search box regardless of verb tenses, gender, irregular plural nouns or word breaks.

Developers can also allow for search suggestions and highlighted text to be enabled, so users can find what they want quickly and easily.

Other features are also offered including geo-spatial support, which allows people to find information on a topic based on location.

“Azure Search helps developers create apps that work for them and their customers,” explained Graham Hill, Director of Microsoft’s UK Commercial Strategy Group. “It is a great addition to the range of services now available through our data centres in the UK, which offer flexibility, security and data resisdency.”

Busy Time

At the same time Microsoft also announced the availability of Managed Disks (MD) in its UK data centres. The MD function apparently takes away the notion of a storage account for disks, enabling customers to scale without needing to worry about the limitations that are typically associated with storage accounts.

Microsoft has been busy improving its Azure cloud platform of late.

Earlier this month for example it gave customers the ability to set encryption by default on their files with the launch of a preview for Storage Service Encryption (SSE) for Azure File Storage.

And Microsoft has also recently given Azure customers in the UK access to Azure Backup and Site Recovery services delivered via the company’s data centres in the UK.

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