Microsoft and their Terraform providers, what's next?

This week I met with the new Program Manager for Microsoft's Terraform providers. They recently asked for feedback from the community on what it's like working with the provider and where there were areas for improvement.

For me, one of my biggest concerns with the provider is how long it takes for new features/services and updates to existing Azure services to get introduced into the provider. I spent a bit of time talking through that with the team. It is something that they certainly recognise as suboptimal and are actively working on to improve.

I had generally felt that the Microsoft support for Terraform was waning, especially with the release of Azure Bicep. At the very least, it felt like a second/third class citizen. Talking this through with the team from Microsoft, this is something else they're looking to fix as to them Terraform is a first-class citizen in the world of Azure. I feel there is a lot of work to be done in revamping and revitalising the Azure Terraform community to give it some more faith that Microsoft is committed to continuing to provide support and improve the Terraform provider.

What does all this mean for the community? This means we should be looking at the azurerm and other Microsoft maintained providers with renewed confidence and positivity.

Overall I think the experience was very positive; it gave me a lot more confidence that Microsoft wants (and will) continue supporting and enhancing the Terraform provider. I think the next few months will be critical to see what that support looks like from Microsoft.