So much has happened in 2021, not just for  cloud computing, but in general, of course.   Now this being the last show  of the year, it's time for   the Azure This Year Awards. So sit  tight, grab the popcorn and enjoy. Welcome to the end of the year awards for Azure,  or what we like to call the Kroonenburgs. Now,   these might not be the awards that you expect,  but they are the ones that you deserve. And   let's not dilly dally and drag out the time like  on all those other awards shows. We are digging  

in...now. The first Kroonenburg of the evening is  for the most underrated Azure service of the year,   and the nominees are: Azure Storage for its  continued improvement and addition of new features   you never knew you wanted or needed. Immutable  tags, client side encryption, and index tags are   a few of the new features that you probably didn't  know existed. Azure App configuration for being   able to centrally manage application settings and  feature flags, as well as debug environments, fast   and efficiently. Event Grid for its versatility  and applicability, that's a hard word to say,   in a ton of scenarios, including checking claims  between services, pushing millions of events   to a large number of services, and checking any  number of properties in a system. And the vinner,  

the vinner, the winner is   Event Grid. Yeah, really. That wasn't a  hard choice. Congratulations Event Grid.   Now, if you wanna know more about hidden gems  and underrated services in Azure, check out the   blog post I wrote a couple of weeks ago on just  that topic. Link is in the description. And we go   from hidden services to not so hidden events. 2021  brought a few whoopsies in the cloud and we think   they should be remembered. So the nominees are:  the Azure AD outage in March, where pretty much   all of Azure login and authentication went  offline for two or more hours. The August Cosmos  

DB incident that exposed over 3000 customers data  to, well, everyone. And the Kroonenburg goes to   AWS for this week's trouble that took amazon.com,  Netflix, Disney +, Venmo, and many more.   So well done AWS. Ouch. Now, if you wanna know  what really happened in more detail on AWS,   head over to our sister show AWS This  Week. So let's get to the hands-on award   of the year, the best new or updated tool. And there are so many tools on Azure of which some  

were excellent. Some not so much. The nominees  are: Azure Virtual Desktop for allowing everyone   to work from home on a managed environment that  doesn't require any installation or software.   Azure SQL Database Ledger for providing  cryptographic evidence that centralized   data stores haven't been tampered with. And Azure  Arc for allowing VM containers and SQL databases   anywhere to be managed through Azure. And finally,  Visual Studio Code for allowing everyone to be a   developer, even if you have a Chromebook.  Yes. And the winner of the Kroonenburg is  

Visual Studio Code for now being a hundred percent  online and accessible through your browser.   Just a fantastic tool for any developer,  cloud or not. Well done Visual Studio Code.   Now we're getting to the pointy end of  the evening. The next two awards have been   at the top of the cloud computing mantlepiece  of several services. The first award is the best   serverless service of the year and the nominees  are: Azure Functions for providing the easiest   way to pretend there are no servers in the cloud.  Azure Functions for enabling complex architectures  

with decoupled and distributed projects. And Azure  Functions for enabling thousands of developers   to create fast and efficient solutions to real  business problems. And the Kroonenburg goes to   Azure Logic Apps for continuing to surprise  everyone with the powerful integrations of   hundreds of services with little effort and  amazing value. Congratulations, Logic Apps.   One of the things that Azure  does so, hang on, very well,   apart from giving us infinite compute is testing  our knowledge on the cloud itself. After all,   having a certification shows that you  understand the subject and that you are   taking your cloud journey seriously. So the  nominees for best Azure certification exam are  

AZ-305 Azure Solutions Architect Expert. This  certificate is finally consolidating all of the   goodness of Azure architecture into a single  exam. Still bloody hard though. Hmm. AZ-700   for recognizing networking in the cloud is what  binds all of Azure together. And AZ-800 and 801   for finally looking after the huge on-prem segment  that looks to using Azure in a hybrid capacity.   Ooh, it's a big one, really  big actually. And the winner is  

all of the certifications as they all help our  learners succeed in the cloud and make a better   career for them. So well done certifications.  That's it for 2021, I'll be back in the new   year with a whole lot more Azure. And who  knows, perhaps even a new co-host or two.   Thanks for now. Enjoy the time with your  family and loved ones. Keep being awesome. And I can't actually stretch my arms more than this, that's why I don't. But anyway.