Elastic has announced the private preview launch of its first-party integration with Microsoft Azure, which allows users to deploy and manage the Elastic Stack, including Elasticsearch and Kibana, directly from the Azure portal as a native service. This integration offers several advantages, such as simplified deployment, streamlined authentication through single sign-on (SSO) between Azure and Elastic consoles, automated log and metric ingestion from Azure services, and secure network traffic via Azure Private Link. Users can also receive consolidated billing for Elastic usage within their Azure bills. The integration facilitates running Elastic in any Azure-supported region, enhancing data locality and reducing latency. Users can provision prebuilt solutions like Elastic Enterprise Search, Observability, and Security, or create their own applications using the Elastic Stack. This native integration simplifies the process of managing Elastic instances, allowing users to monitor their health and status without leaving the Azure console and access advanced configurations with ease.