Microsoft launches Azure Event Grid to ease development of event-based apps

Microsoft has launched Azure Event Grid, a service to simplify development of event-based applications and simplify creation of serverless workflows. Most modern applications are built using events – whether it is reacting to changes coming from IoT devices, responding to user clicks on mobile apps, or initiating business processes from customer requests. With the growth of event-based programming, there is an increased focus on serverless platforms. With Azure Event Grid, developers can subscribe to any event that is happening across their Azure resources and react using serverless platforms like Functions or Logic Apps. It also allows to create custom events to publish directly on supported services like Blob Storage and Resource Groups. Event Grid comes with in-built handlers for events, like Functions, Logic Apps, and Azure Automation, that allow flexibility in handling events, supporting custom web hooks to publish events to any service, even 3rd-party services outside of Azure. Corey Sanders, Director of Compute, Azure, said on a company blog:

“We are working to deliver many more event sources and destinations later this year, including Azure Active Directory, API Management, IoT Hub, Service Bus, Azure Data Lake Store, Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Data Factory, and Storage Queues.”

Azure Event Grid has a pay-per-event pricing model. As a promotion, Microsoft is offering 100,000 operations per month for free. Beyond 100,000 per month, pricing is $0.30 per million operations (per-operation) during the preview.

What does Azure Event grid do?

Simplify event consumption

Eliminate polling—and the associated cost and latency. With Event Grid, your apps can listen for and react to events from virtually all Azure services, as well as custom sources. Simple, HTTP-based reactive event handling helps you build efficient solutions through intelligent filtering and routing of events. Also read: Microsoft announces Coco Framework to make blockchain enterprise proof

Build reliable cloud apps

Gain massive scale, dynamically, while getting near-real-time event delivery using a publish-subscribe model. Build better, more reliable apps through reactive programming, capitalizing on guaranteed event delivery and the high availability of the cloud.

Focus on product innovation

Develop richer app scenarios by enabling serverless logic to be triggered by multiple services and events. The pay-per-operation model of Event Grid complements modern serverless architectures, letting you focus on innovation and solving business problems—rather than infrastructure.