How do you keep up with Azure, and how do you decide whether to adopt a new service?

How you keep up: the Azure updates feed and roadmap, the well-written official architecture centre, and hands-on work in a personal subscription. Certifications are useful for structure and for filling gaps you did not know you had, but say plainly that they are not a substitute for having run something.

How you evaluate a new service:

• Is it generally available in your region? Preview services have no SLA and can change or be withdrawn. This alone rules out most new things for production.
• Does it solve a problem you have, measured? Managed services trade cost and flexibility for reduced operational burden, which is often a good trade — but only if the burden was real.
• What is the exit cost? The more managed and proprietary the service, the harder it is to leave. That is acceptable for some workloads and not others; the point is to decide deliberately.
• Can your team operate it? Choosing AKS with nobody who knows Kubernetes creates a bigger problem than it solves.

Note: Naming a service you chose not to adopt, with the reasoning, is the strongest version of this answer.