This is the last chapter of our book, and is probably quite interesting. We will try to cover many topics in this chapter, so as to keep ourselves updated and aware of the most recent trends in the IT world.

We'll start by covering some technology topics that are not only the basis for the modern cloud infrastructure services such as IaaS and PaaS, but have also simplified the management, development, and testability of software applications. We will then look into some software development practices which have become common due to these modern technologies.

Only time can tell which trends will truly take off, as in the software industry, things can change rather quickly. Here, we talk about the current hot trends in relation to the .NET Core platform. This chapter gives a high-level view of some of the recent market trends and practices and how they can be achieved with .NET Core and Microsoft's tools and technologies.

We will cover various topics in this chapter, which include the following:

• Virtual machine and containerization
• DevOps practices
• Introduction to CI and CD in the cloud
• Multi-container sample microservice in Azure using Docker
• Big Data and Microsoft

• Introduction to Business Intelligence (BI) and Big Data
• Introduction to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning