Announcing Advanced Container Networking Services for your Azure Kubernetes Service clusters

Following the successful open sourcing of Retina: A Cloud-Native Container Networking Observability Platform, Microsoft’s Azure Container Networking team is excited to announce a new offering called Advanced Container Networking Services. It’s a suite of services built on top of existing networking solutions for Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS) to address complex challenges around observability, security, and compliance. The first feature in this suite, Advanced Network Observability, is now available in Public Preview.

What is Advanced Container Networking Services?

Advanced Container Networking Services is a suite of services built to significantly enhance the operational capabilities of your Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) clusters. The suite is comprehensive and is designed to address the multifaceted and intricate needs of modern containerized applications. With capabilities specifically tailored for observability, security, and compliance, customers can unlock a new approach to managing container networking.

Advanced Container Networking Services focuses on delivering a seamless and integrated experience that empowers you to maintain robust security postures, ensure comprehensive compliance and gain deep insights into your network traffic and application performance. This ensures that your containerized applications are not only secure and compliant but also meet or exceed your performance and reliability goals, allowing you to confidently manage and scale your infrastructure.

What is Advanced Network Observability?

Advanced Network Observability is the inaugural feature of the Advanced Container Networking Services suite bringing the power of Hubble’s control plane to both Cilium and Non-Cilium Linux data planes. It unlocks Hubble metrics, Hubble’s command line interface (CLI) and the Hubble user interface (UI) on your AKS clusters providing deep insights into your containerized workloads. Advanced Network Observability empowers customers to precisely detect and root-cause network related issues in a Kubernetes cluster.

This capability provides network flow information in the form of metrics or flow logs at pod-level granularity by collecting data in real time from Linux Kernel leveraging extended Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF) technology. Along with network traffic flows, volumetric data and dropped packets, it now brings domain name service (DNS) metrics and flow information with deep request and response insights.

• eBPF based observability powered by either Cilium or Retina.
• Container Network Interface (CNI) agnostic experience.
• Monitor network traffic in real time to identify bottlenecks and performance issues with Hubble metrics.
• Trace packet flows across your cluster to understand and debug complex networking behaviors with on-demand Hubble command line interface (CLI) network flows.
• Visualize network dependencies and interactions between services to ensure optimal configuration and performance with an unmanaged Hubble UI.
• Generate detailed metrics and logs to meet compliance requirements and enhance security postures.

Architecture diagram of Hubble interfacing with Cilium/Retina.

Container Network Interface (CNI) agnostic Hubble

Advanced Network Observability extends the Hubble control plane beyond Cilium. In Cilium based clusters, Cilium provides the eBPF events to Hubble. In non-Cilium based clusters, Microsoft Retina serves as the dataplane surfacing deep insights to Hubble, providing a seamless interactive experience for customers.

Visualizing Hubble metrics with Grafana

Advanced Network Observability supports two integration modes for visualization:

• Azure Managed Prometheus and Grafana.
• Bring your own (BYO) Prometheus and Grafana for advanced users comfortable with increased management overhead.

With the Azure-managed Prometheus and Grafana approach, Azure offers integrated services that simplify the setup and management of monitoring and visualization. Azure Monitor provides a managed instance of Prometheus, which collects and stores metrics from various sources including Hubble.

Querying network flows with Hubble CLI

With Advanced Network Observability, customers can use the Hubble command line interface (CLI) to query for all or filtered network flows across all nodes.

Customers will be able to identify dropped or forwarded flows from all nodes via a single pane of glass.

Service dependency graph with Hubble UI

Customers can deploy Hubble UI on to clusters with Advanced Network Observability enabled to visualize service dependencies. Hubble UI provides on-demand view of flows across the whole cluster and allows customers to select a given namespace and view network flows between different pods within the cluster surfacing in-depth information about each flow.

Benefits

Advanced network visibility

Advanced Network Observability offers unparalleled network visibility by providing granular insights into network traffic at the pod level. This detailed visibility enables administrators to monitor traffic flows, detect anomalies, and gain a comprehensive understanding of network behavior within their Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) clusters. By leveraging eBPF-based data collection from the Linux Kernel, Advanced Network Observability provides real-time metrics and logs that surface traffic volume, packet drops, and DNS metrics. This enhanced visibility ensures that network administrators can swiftly identify and address potential issues, thereby maintaining optimal network performance and security.

Cross node network flow tracking

With Advanced Network Observability, customers can track network flows across multiple nodes within their Kubernetes clusters. This allows precise tracing of packet flows, making it possible to understand complex networking behaviors and interactions between different nodes. Hubble CLI can query network flows enabling users to filter and analyze specific traffic patterns. This cross-node tracking capability is invaluable for debugging network issues, as it surfaces the entire network flow within a single pane of glass identifying both dropped and forwarded packets across all nodes.

Real-time performance monitoring

Advanced Network Observability provides customers real-time performance monitoring capabilities. By integrating Hubble metrics powered by either Cilium or Retina, users can monitor network traffic in real time, identifying bottlenecks and performance issues as they occur. This immediate feedback loop is critical for maintaining high-performance and ensuring that any degradation in network performance is promptly surfaced and addressed. The managed Hubble metrics and flow logs offer continuous, detailed insights into network operations, allowing for proactive management and rapid troubleshooting.

Multi-Cluster historical analysis

Advanced Network Observability coupled with Azure Managed Prometheus and Grafana extends its benefits to multi-cluster environments, providing historical analysis capabilities that are essential for long-term network management and optimization. By storing and analyzing historical data across multiple clusters, administrators can identify trends, patterns, and recurring issues that may impact network performance and reliability going forward. This historical perspective is crucial for capacity planning, performance benchmarking, and compliance reporting. The ability to review and analyze past network data helps in understanding the evolution of network performance over time and informs future network design and configuration decisions.

Source: microsoft.com

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Microsoft and Broadcom to support license portability for VMware Cloud Foundation on Azure VMware Solution

Microsoft and Broadcom have partnered closely for many years to support our mutual customers, and we continue to build and innovate together as customer needs change. Today, we are pleased to share that Microsoft and Broadcom are expanding our partnership with plans to support VMware Cloud Foundation subscriptions on Azure VMware Solution. Customers that own or purchase licenses for VMware Cloud Foundation will be able to use those licenses on Azure VMware Solution, as well as their own datacenters, giving them flexibility to meet changing business needs.

This provides an additional purchase option for Azure VMware Solution, which has been sold and operated by Microsoft since 2019. Customers can currently purchase the solution with VMware licenses included, and this option will continue to be available for customers that prefer to purchase their VMware licenses as part of their solution from Microsoft.

Azure VMware Solution delivers a fully managed VMware environment that is operated and supported by Microsoft. Customers can move VMware workloads to Azure “as is” with minimal to no refactoring. This streamlines migration and allows customers to continue using familiar skills while learning new Azure skills.  

By migrating to Azure VMware Solution, now available in 33 regions around the world, organizations can take advantage of Azure’s scalable and high-performance cloud infrastructure. Customers can deploy with business-critical capabilities such as backup, high availability, threat protection, and performance monitoring. Moreover, workloads running on Azure VMware Solution can be integrated with Azure’s portfolio of more than 200 cloud services to accelerate innovation, gain deeper insights from data with advanced AI services, and to modernize business applications. 

VMware Cloud Foundation delivers a private cloud platform that is ubiquitous, flexible, and integrated across cloud endpoints. By deploying VMware Cloud Foundation ​on​​ ​Azure, customers benefit from a highly optimized cloud operating model that provides the scale and agility of public cloud with the security and performance of private cloud. Running VMware Cloud Foundation ​on ​Azure enables organizations to modernize IT infrastructure with demonstrable TCO, provide developers a self-service private cloud experience resulting in greater productivity, and achieve better cyber resiliency and security.

With​​​​​​ improved license portability for customers with eligible VMware Cloud Foundation entitlements, customers will be able to purchase subscriptions of the new VMware Cloud Foundation software and have complete mobility to and from their on-premises environment to Azure VMware Solution. VMware customers that have already purchased and begun deploying the new VMware Cloud Foundation will be able to transfer the remaining value of an existing subscription to Azure VMware Solution. Additionally, customers will be able to move their VMware Cloud Foundation subscription between on-premises and Azure VMware Solution as their needs and requirements evolve over time. ​​​​​​Customers will retain the rights to their software subscription when moving their VMware Cloud Foundation subscription to Azure VMware Solution. 

VMware Rapid Migration Plan: Reduce your migration time and cost

In addition to the new VMware license portability benefit, the VMware Rapid Migration Plan provides an additional and comprehensive set of licensing benefits and programs to reduce the cost and time it takes for organizations to migrate to Azure VMware Solution.  

The plan includes:

• Price protection: With reserved instances customers can lock in pricing for one, three, or five years.  
• Savings for Windows Server and SQL Server: Windows Server and SQL Server are common workloads on VMware environments. With Software Assurance for on-premises Windows Server and SQL Server licenses, organizations can qualify for the Azure Hybrid Benefit discount to use existing Windows Server and SQL Server licenses in Azure VMware Solution. Free Extended Security Updates are available for older versions that face end of support.
• Migration support: Use Azure Migrate and Modernize to get resources, expert help, and funding from Microsoft and its partner ecosystem. 
• Azure credits: Customers that purchase a new reserved instance for Azure VMware Solution can get additional Azure credits valid for Azure VMware Solution or other Azure services. 

Supporting your cloud journey with Microsoft and Broadcom

We are committed to continued partnership and innovation to support our mutual customers as they adapt to changing business needs. VMware Cloud Foundation license portability to Azure VMware Solution will be available later this year, so now is a great time to contact your account team or Microsoft partner to start planning your move.

Source: microsoft.com

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IT trends show customers need computing power to take advantage of AI

IT professionals today are focused on generative AI and its potential benefits, but one of the biggest challenges they face is securing the necessary computing power. In a recent study, Microsoft surveyed more than 2,000 IT professionals across 10 countries on their tech readiness for and adoption of AI. The report highlights their concerns and challenges along the way and is now available to help inform your business’s AI strategy. Stay ahead of the game with the latest insights from Microsoft.

Leading the charge in AI adoption and use

IT professionals are at the forefront of AI adoption and use, with 79% of professionals using it multiple times a week. They are positive AI will have a positive impact on their company and role, make their jobs easier, and enable them to be strategic. The positivity crosses both the professional and personal spheres.  

IT professionals’ expectations of AI

AI in the professional sphere

68% of IT professionals surveyed have already implemented AI in their work, a testament to the field’s eagerness to embrace this cutting-edge technology. This widespread adoption is not just a trend; it reflects the strategic importance placed on AI as a tool for enhancing productivity, driving innovation, and maintaining a competitive edge in a rapidly changing digital economy. 

AI in personal lives

The influence of AI extends beyond the confines of the workplace, with 66% of those surveyed incorporating AI into their daily routines. This integration of AI into personal life underscores the technology’s versatility and its capacity to improve efficiency and decision-making in various aspects of life. It shows that people are not being pulled along in the newest IT trend—they are ready and excited to find additional uses outside of work to enhance their own productivity. 

Rethinking their tech stack requirements

The emergence of AI is already changing many aspects of cloud computing. Even companies that started in the cloud have questions to consider when it comes to their future cloud strategy. While IT professionals remain positive about the cloud amid the changing landscape of AI, they increasingly cite the need for changes to the infrastructure they support. 72% of respondents agreed that AI will fundamentally change their tech stacks.

With AI integration and a changing tech stack, proactively addressing uncertainties and changes that impact cloud computing is crucial. This includes adapting to new security paradigms, managing evolving skill requirements for AI-driven tasks, and optimizing cloud resources amid dynamic shifts in workload patterns. Additionally, IT professionals will need to ensure compliance with emerging regulations to effectively navigate the evolving landscape of AI-optimized cloud services.

Building AI confidence

As the IT landscape rapidly evolves with the integration of AI, professionals in the field are facing a mix of emotions and questions about the future. There’s a general optimism about the potential of AI to enhance productivity and innovation, yet IT experts are also mindful of skilling requirements and the pace of technological advancement. 

IT professionals are confident in their skills and the positive changes AI can bring to their roles and organizations. A significant 78% of IT pros surveyed have AI deployed or in pilot stages within their companies, indicating a strong move towards embracing AI technologies. However, this rapid adoption comes with its own set of challenges and questions around the pace of AI evolution, costs, and governance.

As organizations continue to invest in AI, it’s now more important than ever to focus on these concerns and drive the appropriate opportunities and messaging internally. Skilling will continue to be front of mind as IT Pros grapple with the rapid changes and investments that are happening in the space. The good news is there are a lot of tools and resources to help as people start to ramp up their AI skilling.

Looking for AI model accuracy, increased privacy and security

IT professionals are prioritizing AI model accuracy, privacy, and security when selecting a technology partner. AI model accuracy ranks highest, followed by a commitment to privacy and security, and a strong reputation as a technology leader. 

5 most important AI provider characteristics 

Accuracy remains the key to success

The march towards AI integration in IT is marked by a meticulous search for precision and a shield of privacy and security. Alliances with the right partners can guarantee the highest degree of AI model accuracy while accelerating usage of AI. Precision is paramount, as it forms the foundation upon which reliable and effective AI solutions are built. As IT professionals continue to grapple with skilling up in an accelerated timeframe, utilizing partners help relieve some of the gaps and accelerate the timeline for organizations wanting to integrate AI as quickly as possible without sacrificing quality. 

A commitment to privacy and security  

Beyond accuracy, IT professionals demand a steadfast commitment to privacy and security. In an era where data breaches are all too common, a technology partner’s ability to protect sensitive information is a critical criterion. IT professionals understand that robust security measures are not just a feature but a necessity, ensuring that AI solutions enhance rather than endanger their operations. 

Source: microsoft.com

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Azure Maps: Reimagining location services with cloud and AI innovation

I’m thrilled to share news about the evolution of our enterprise mapping software development kit (SDK) and API offerings. Today, we’re announcing the unification of our enterprise maps offerings under Microsoft Azure Maps. We are combining the technologies and data in Bing Maps for Enterprise with Azure Maps and retiring Bing Maps for Enterprise. This marks a significant milestone as we transform our enterprise maps offerings to focus on creating a platform that empowers our customers to innovate and bring their ideas to life using cutting-edge innovations in AI and cloud—all on a trusted platform.

This unification enables our customers to accelerate innovation by leveraging other Microsoft Azure cloud services while retaining many familiar features from Bing Maps for Enterprise within Azure Maps. Moreover, Azure Maps introduces several features not found in Bing Maps for Enterprise, including advanced service authentication methods, data residency compliance, geolocation, weather information, and custom indoor maps. Unifying our enterprise maps offerings under Azure Maps will greatly simplify our enterprise mapping offerings making it easier for customers to buy and use our services in a way that is consistent with other services at Microsoft.

The concept of “where” has become integral to the decision-making and how organizations navigate through the complex business environment. While the demand for geospatial information continues to grow, the context of “when” and “how” we utilize this information is evolving. At Microsoft, we have observed how technologies in cloud and AI are reshaping how our customers engage with the services we offer. 

Making the transition to Azure Maps

Bing Maps for Enterprise customers will have ample time under their existing and renewed contracts to transition to Azure Maps. Bing Maps for Enterprise will be retired on June 30, 2028, existing Bing Maps for Enterprise customers can continue to license Bing Maps for Enterprise APIs and services until then. We will however no longer be accepting new Bing Maps for Enterprise customers from June 30, 2024. Customers with an enterprise license have until June 30, 2028, to transition to Azure Maps, while customers on the free and basic license for Bing Maps for Enterprise have until June 30, 2025. We are committed to facilitating this transition and look forward to having you join us on this journey.

Simplifying and enhancing through Microsoft products

Currently, millions of developers and businesses have access to geospatial information through a range of Microsoft products—Excel, Power BI in Microsoft Fabric, and Dynamics 365. Customers use our geospatial services to manage wildfires, respond to public emergencies, deliver products to consumers doorsteps, and so much more.

IT managers and developers are increasingly seeking tools that help them adapt to the growing demands for more data and greater agility in the business-critical solutions they build. These demands extend beyond the solutions themselves; they also apply to the building blocks used to construct those solutions. As application complexity rises, our customers are increasingly requesting ways to simplify development, enhance collaboration, and create robust solutions with fewer integration points. By unifying our offerings, we can prioritize investments in supporting the ways that developers are building enterprise applications today.

Integrating with Azure solutions

Our customers seek to deliver business impact by leveraging AI services and tools within their solutions. The inclusion of Azure Maps in the Azure platform brings geospatial data closer to other Azure services, facilitating seamless integration. Azure Maps customers already benefit from AI deeply embedded in industry-leading functions like geocoding. Being part of the Azure ecosystem also streamlines access to complementary services from the Azure Marketplace. At Microsoft Build 2024, we announced the availability of NVIDIA’s cuOpt service within the Azure Marketplace. NVIDIA cuOpt, a world-record holding graphics processing unit (GPU)-accelerated optimization AI microservice, assists teams in solving complex routing problems with multiple constraints. By combining cuOpt with Azure Maps, customers can achieve dynamic routing and real-time re-optimization at scale, driving efficiencies and revenue growth. Azure Maps, alongside the Azure Marketplace, opens up new avenues for innovation, enabling businesses to tackle diverse challenges.

The aggregation of geospatial information with additional data unlocks new insights for businesses, enabling them to reduce operating costs, generate new revenue, and deliver better services to their customers. Azure Maps provides a holistic view, allowing you to understand not only what happened but also where it happened. By leveraging Azure Maps, you can make intelligent decisions and pivot faster by correlating the location of your business elements with your overall business goals. This orientation empowers your team to comprehend the situation and chart a path forward.

Start enhancing your location data today

Understanding “where” translates to knowing how to improve and move ahead. With Azure Maps, your organization gains easier access to, utilization of, and insights from location data. By combining our industry-leading cloud infrastructure with accurate, reliable location data and Microsoft applications like Power BI, you can generate predictive insights for your business.

Source: microsoft.com

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From code to production: New ways Azure helps you build transformational AI experiences

We’re witnessing a critical turning point in the market as AI moves from the drawing boards of innovation into the concrete realities of everyday life. The leap from potential to practical application marks a pivotal chapter, and you, as developers, are key to bringing it to bear.

The news at Build is focused on the top demands we’ve heard from all of you as we’ve worked together to turn this promise of AI into reality:

• Empowering every developer to move with greater speed and efficiency, using the tools you already know and love.
• Expanding and simplifying access to the AI, data—application platform services you need to be successful so you can focus on building transformational AI experiences.
• And, helping you focus on what you do best—building incredible applications—with responsibility, safety, security, and reliability features, built right into the platform. 

I’ve been building software products for more than two decades now, and I can honestly say there’s never been a more exciting time to be a developer. What was once a distant promise is now manifesting—and not only through the type of apps that are possible, but how you can build them.

With Microsoft Azure, we’re meeting you where you are today—and paving the way to where you’re going. So let’s jump right into some of what you’ll learn over the next few days. Welcome to Microsoft Build 2024!

Create the future with Azure AI: offering you tools, model choice, and flexibility  

The number of companies turning to Azure AI continues to grow as the list of what’s possible expands. We’re helping more than 50,000 companies around the globe achieve real business impact using it—organizations like Mercedes-Benz, Unity, Vodafone, H&R Block, PwC, SWECO, and so many others.  

To make it even more valuable, we continue to expand the range of models available to you and simplify the process for you to find the right models for the apps you’re building.

Azure AI Studio, a key component of the copilot stack, is now generally available. The pro-code platform empowers responsible generative AI development, including the development of your own custom copilot applications. The seamless development approach includes a friendly user interface (UI) and code-first capabilities, including Azure Developer CLI (AZD) and AI Toolkit for VS Code, enabling developers to choose the most accessible workflow for their projects.

Developers can use Azure AI Studio to explore AI tools, orchestrate multiple interoperating APIs and models; ground models using their data using retrieval augmented generation (RAG) techniques; test and evaluate models for performance and safety; and deploy at scale and with continuous monitoring in production.

Empowering you with a broad selection of small and large language models  

Our model catalog is the heart of Azure AI Studio. With more than 1,600 models available, we continue to innovate and partner broadly to bring you the best selection of frontier and open large language models (LLMs) and small language models (SLMs) so you have flexibility to compare benchmarks and select models based on what your business needs. And, we’re making it easier for you to find the best model for your use case by comparing model benchmarks, like accuracy and relevance.

I’m excited to announce OpenAI’s latest flagship model, GPT-4o, is now generally available in Azure OpenAI Service. This groundbreaking multimodal model integrates text, image, and audio processing in a single model and sets a new standard for generative and conversational AI experiences. Pricing for GPT-4o is $5/1M Tokens for input and $15/1M Tokens for output.

Earlier this month, we enabled GPT-4 Turbo with Vision through Azure OpenAI Service. With these new models developers can build apps with inputs and outputs that span across text, images, and more, for a richer user experience. 

We’re announcing new models through Models-as-a-Service (MaaS) in Azure AI Studio leading Arabic language model Core42 JAIS and TimeGen-1 from Nixtla are now available in preview. Models from AI21, Bria AI, Gretel Labs, NTT DATA, Stability AI as well as Cohere Rerank are coming soon.  

Phi-3: Redefining what’s possible with SLMs

At Build we’re announcing Phi-3-small, Phi-3-medium, and Phi-3-vision, a new multimodal model, in the Phi-3 family of AI small language models (SLMs), developed by Microsoft. Phi-3 models are powerful, cost-effective and optimized for resource constrained environments including on-device, edge, offline inference, and latency bound scenarios where fast response times are critical. 

Sized at 4.2 billion parameters, Phi-3-vision supports general visual reasoning tasks and chart/graph/table reasoning. The model offers the ability to input images and text, and to output text responses. For example, users can ask questions about a chart or ask an open-ended question about specific images. Phi-3-mini and Phi-3-medium are also now generally available as part of Azure AI’s MaaS offering.

In addition to new models, we are adding new capabilities across APIs to enable multimodal experiences. Azure AI Speech has several new features in preview including Speech analytics and Video translation to help developers build high-quality, voice-enabled apps. Azure AI Search now has dramatically increased storage capacity and up to 12X increase in vector index size at no additional cost to run RAG workloads at scale.

Bring your intelligent apps and ideas to life with Visual Studio, GitHub, and the Azure platform

The tools you choose to build with should make it easy to go from idea to code to production. They should adapt to where and how you work, not the other way around. We’re sharing several updates to our developer and app platforms that do just that, making it easier for all developers to build on Azure. 

Access Azure services within your favorite tools for faster app development

By extending Azure services natively into the tools and environments you’re already familiar with, you can more easily build and be confident in the performance, scale, and security of your apps.  

We’re also making it incredibly easy for you to interact with Azure services from where you’re most comfortable: a favorite dev tool like VS Code, or even directly on GitHub, regardless of previous Azure experience or knowledge. Today, we’re announcing the preview of GitHub Copilot for Azure, extending GitHub Copilot to increase its usefulness for all developers. You’ll see other examples of this from Microsoft and some of the most innovative ISVs at Build, so be sure to explore our sessions.  

Also in preview today is the AI Toolkit for Visual Studio Code, an extension that provides development tools and models to help developers acquire and run models, fine-tune them locally, and deploy to Azure AI Studio, all from VS Code.  

Updates that make cloud native development faster and easier

.NET Aspire has arrived! This new cloud-native stack simplifies development by automating configurations and integrating resilient patterns. With .NET Aspire, you can focus more on coding and less on setup while still using your preferred tools. This stack includes a developer dashboard for enhanced observability and diagnostics right from the start for faster and more reliable app development. Explore more about the general availability of .NET Aspire on the DevBlogs post.   

We’re also raising the bar on ease of use in our application platform services, introducing Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS) Automatic, the easiest managed Kubernetes experience to take AI apps to production. In preview now, AKS Automatic builds on our expertise running some of the largest and most advanced Kubernetes applications in the world, from Microsoft Teams to Bing, XBox online services, Microsoft 365 and GitHub Copilot to create best practices that automate everything from cluster set up and management to performance and security safeguards and policies.

As a developer you now have access to a self-service app platform that can move from container image to deployed app in minutes while still giving you the power of accessing the Kubernetes API. With AKS Automatic you can focus on building great code, knowing that your app will be running securely with the scale, performance and reliability it needs to support your business.

Data solutions built for the era of AI

Developers are at the forefront of a pivotal shift in application strategy which necessitates optimizations at every tier of an application—including databases—since AI apps require fast and frequent iterations to keep pace with AI model innovation. 

We’re excited to unveil new data and analytics features this week designed to assist you in the critical aspects of crafting intelligent applications and empowering you to create the transformative apps of today and tomorrow.

Enabling developers to build faster with AI built into Azure databases 

Vector search is core to any AI application so we’re adding native capabilities to Azure Cosmos DB with Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL. Powered by DiskANN, a powerful algorithm library, this makes Azure Cosmos DB the first cloud database to offer lower latency vector search at cloud scale without the need to manage servers. 

We’re also announcing the availability of Azure Database for PostgreSQL extension for Azure AI to make bringing AI capabilities to data in PostgreSQL data even easier. Now generally available, this enables developers who prefer PostgreSQL to plug data directly into Azure AI for a simplified path to leverage LLMs and build rich PostgreSQL generative AI experiences.   

Embeddings enable AI models to better understand relationships and similarities between data, which is key for intelligent apps. Azure Database for PostgreSQL in-database embedding generation is now in preview so embeddings can be generated right within the database—offering single-digit millisecond latency, predictable costs, and the confidence that data will remain compliant for confidential workloads. 

Making developer life easier through in-database Copilot capabilities

These databases are not only helping you build your own AI experiences. We’re also applying AI directly in the user experience so it’s easier than ever to explore what’s included in a database. Now in preview, Microsoft Copilot capabilities in Azure SQL DB convert queries into SQL language so developers can use natural language to interact with data. And, Copilot capabilities are coming to Azure Database for MySQL to provide summaries of technical documentation in response to user questions—creating an all-around easier and more enjoyable management experience.

Microsoft Copilot capabilities in the database user experience

Microsoft Fabric updates: Build powerful solutions securely and with ease

We have several Fabric updates this week, including the introduction of Real-Time Intelligence. This completely redesigned workload enables you to analyze, explore, and act on your data in real time. Also coming at Build: the Workload Development Kit in preview, making it even easier to design and build apps in Fabric. And our Snowflake partnership expands with support for Iceberg data format and bi-directional read and write between Snowflake and Fabric’s OneLake.

Spend a day in the life of a piece of data and learn exactly how it moves from its database home to do more than ever before with the insights of Microsoft Fabric, real-time assistance by Microsoft Copilot, and the innovative power of Azure AI.  

Build on a foundation of safe and responsible AI

What began with our principles and a firm belief that AI must be used responsibly and safely has become an integral part of the tooling, APIs, and software you use to scale AI responsibly. Within Azure AI, we have 20 Responsible AI tools with more than 90 features. And there’s more to come, starting with updates at Build.

New Azure AI Content Safety capabilities

We’re equipping you with advanced guardrails that help protect AI applications and users from harmful content and security risks and this week, we’re announcing new  feature for Azure AI Content Safety. Custom Categories are coming soon so you can create custom filters for specific content filtering needs. This feature also includes a rapid option, enabling you to deploy new custom filters within an hour to protect against emerging threats and incidents.  

Prompt Shields and Groundedness Detection are both available in preview now in Azure OpenAI Service and Azure AI Studio help fortify AI safety. Prompt shields mitigate both indirect and jailbreak prompt injection attacks on LLMs, while Groundedness Detection enables detection of ungrounded materials or hallucinations in generated responses.  

Features to help secure and govern your apps and data

Microsoft Defender for Cloud now extends its cloud-native application protection to AI applications from code to cloud. And, AI security posture management capabilities enable security teams to discover their AI services and tools, identify vulnerabilities, and proactively remediate risks. Threat protection for AI workloads in Defender for Cloud leverages a native integration with Azure AI Content Safety to enable security teams to monitor their Azure OpenAl applications for direct and in-direct prompt injection attacks, sensitive data leaks and other threats so they can quickly investigate and respond.

With easy-to-use APIs, app developers can easily integrate Microsoft Purview into line of business apps to get industry-leading data security and compliance for custom-built AI apps. You can empower your app customers and respective end users to discover data risks in AI interactions, protect sensitive data with encryption, and govern AI activities. These capabilities are available for Copilot Studio in public preview and soon (coming in July) will be available in public preview for Azure AI Studio, and via the Purview SDK, so developers can benefit from the data security and compliance controls for their AI apps built on Azure AI.

Two final security notes. We’re also announcing a partnership with HiddenLayer to scan open models that we onboard to the catalog, so you can verify that the models are free from malicious code and signs of tampering before you deploy them. We are the first major AI development platform to provide this type of verification to help you feel more confident in your model choice. 

Second, Facial Liveness, a feature of the Azure AI Vision Face API which has been used by Windows Hello for Business for nearly a decade, is now available in preview for browser. Facial Liveness is a key element in multi-factor authentication (MFA) to prevent spoofing attacks, for example, when someone holds a picture up to the camera to thwart facial recognition systems. Developers can now easily add liveness and optional verification to web applications using Face Liveness, with the Azure AI Vision SDK, in preview.

Our belief in the safe and responsible use of AI is unwavering. You can read our recently published Responsible AI Transparency Report for a detailed look at Microsoft’s approach to developing AI responsibly. We’ll continue to deliver more innovation here and our approach will remain firmly rooted in principles and put into action with built-in features.

Move your ideas from a spark to production with Azure

Organizations are rapidly moving beyond AI ideation and into production. We see and hear fresh examples every day of how our customers are unlocking business challenges that have plagued industries for decades, jump-starting the creative process, making it easier to serve their own customers, or even securing a new competitive edge. We’re curating an industry-leading set of developer tools and AI capabilities to help you, as developers, create and deliver the transformational experiences that make this all possible.

Source: microsoft.com

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Unleashing innovation: The new era of compute powering Azure AI solutions

As AI continues to transform industries, Microsoft is expanding its global cloud infrastructure to meet the needs of developers and customers everywhere. At Microsoft Build 2024, we’re unveiling our latest progress in developing tools and services optimized for powering your AI solutions. Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure is unique in how it provides choice and flexibility in performance and power for customers’ unique AI needs, whether that’s doubling deployment speeds or lowering operating costs.

That’s why we’ve enhanced our adaptive, powerful, and trusted platform with the performance and resilience you’ll need to build intelligent AI applications. We’re delivering on our promise to support our customers by providing them with exceptional cost-performance in compute and advanced generative AI capabilities.

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Powerful compute for general purpose and AI workloads

Microsoft has the expertise and scale to run the AI supercomputers that power some of the world’s biggest AI services, such as Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, ChatGPT, Bing, and more. Our focus as we continue to expand our AI infrastructure is on optimizing performance, scalability, and power efficiency.

Microsoft takes a systems approach to cloud infrastructure, optimizing both hardware and software to efficiently handle workloads at scale. In November 2023, Microsoft introduced its first in-house designed cloud compute processor, Azure Cobalt 100, which enables general-purpose workloads on the Microsoft Cloud. We are announcing the preview of Azure virtual machines built to run on Cobalt 100 processors. Cobalt 100-based virtual machines (VMs) are Azure’s most power efficient compute offering, and deliver up to 40% better performance than our previous generation of Arm-based VMs. And we’re delivering that same Arm-based performance and efficiency to customers like Elastic, MongoDB, Siemens, Snowflake, and Teradata. The new Cobalt 100-based VMS are expected to enhance efficiency and performance for both Azure customers and Microsoft products. Additionally, IC3, the platform that powers billions of customer conversations in Microsoft Teams, is adopting Cobalt 100 to serve its growing customer base more efficiently, achieving up to 45% better performance on Cobalt 100 VMs.

We’re combining the best of industry and the best of Microsoft in our AI infrastructure. Alongside our custom Azure Cobalt 100 and Maia series and silicon industry partnerships, we’re also announcing the general availability of the ND MI300X VM series, where Microsoft is the first cloud provider to bring AMD’s most powerful Instinct MI300X Accelerator to Azure. With the addition of the ND MI300X VM combining eight AMD MI300X Instinct accelerators, Azure is delivering customers unprecedented cost-performance for inferencing scenarios of frontier models like GPT-4. Our infrastructure supports different scenarios for AI supercomputing, such as building large models from scratch, running inference on pre-trained models, using model as a service providers, and fine-tuning models for specific domains.

One of Microsoft’s advantages in AI is our ability to combine thousands of virtual machines with tens of thousands of GPUs with the best of InfiniBand and Ethernet based networking topologies for supercomputers in the cloud that can run large scale AI workloads to lower costs. With a diversity of silicon across AMD, NVIDIA, and Microsoft’s Maia AI accelerators, Azure’s AI infrastructure delivers the most complete compute platform for AI workloads. It is this combination of advanced AI accelerators, datacenter designs, and optimized compute and networking topology that drive cost efficiency per workload. That means whether you use Microsoft Copilot or build your own copilot apps, the Azure platform ensures you get the best AI performance with optimized cost.

Microsoft is further extending our cloud infrastructure with the Azure Compute Fleet, a new service that simplifies provisioning of Azure compute capacity across different VM types, availability zones, and pricing models to more easily achieve desired scale, performance, and cost by enabling users to control VM group behaviors automatically and programmatically. As a result, Compute Fleet has the potential to greatly optimize your operational efficiency and increase your core compute flexibility and reliability for both AI and general-purpose workloads together at scale.

AI-enhanced central management and security

As businesses continue to expand their computing estate, managing and governing the entire infrastructure can become overwhelming. We keep hearing from developers and customers that they spend more time searching for information and are less productive. Microsoft is focused on simplifying this process through AI-enhanced central management and security. Our adaptive cloud approach takes innovation to the next level with a single, intelligent control plane that spans from cloud to edge, making it easier for customers to manage their entire computing estate in a consistent way. We’re also aiming to improve your experience with managing these distributed environments through Microsoft Copilot in Azure.

We created Microsoft Copilot in Azure to act as an AI companion, helping your teams manage operations seamlessly across both cloud and edge environments. By using natural language, you can ask Copilot questions and receive personalized recommendations related to Azure services. Simply ask, “Why is my app slow?” or “How do I fix this error?” and Copilot will navigate a customer through potential causes and fixes.

Starting today, we will be opening the preview of Copilot in Azure to all customers over the next couple of weeks. With this update, customers can choose to have all their users access Copilot or grant access to specific users or groups within a tenant. With this flexibility to manage Copilot, you can tailor your approach and control which groups of users or departments within your organization have access to it. You can feel secure knowing you can deploy and use the tool in a controlled manner, ensuring it aligns with your organization’s operational standards and security policies.

We’re continually enhancing Copilot and making the product better with every release to help developers be more productive. One of the ways we’ve simplified the developer’s experience is by making databases and analytics services easier to configure, manage, and optimize through AI-enhanced management. Several new skills are available for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) in Copilot for Azure that simplify common management tasks, including the ability to configure AKS backups, change tiers, locate YAML files for editing, and construct kubectl commands.

We’ve also added natural language to SQL conversion and self-help for database administration to support your Azure SQL database-driven applications. Developers can ask questions about their data in plain text, and Copilot generates the corresponding T-SQL query. Database administrators can independently manage databases, resolve issues, and learn more about performance and capabilities. Developers benefit from detailed explanations of the generated queries, helping them write code faster.

Lastly, you’ll notice a few new security enhancements to the tool. Copilot now includes Microsoft Defender for Cloud prompting capabilities to streamline risk exploration, remediation, and code fixes. Defender External Attack Surface Management (EASM) leverages Copilot to help surface risk-related insights and convert natural language to corresponding inventory queries across data discovered by Defender EASM. These features make database queries more user-friendly, enabling our customers to use natural language for any related queries. We’ll continue to expand Copilot capabilities in Azure so you can be more productive and focused on writing code.

Cloud infrastructure built for limitless innovation

Microsoft is committed to helping you stay ahead in this new era by giving you the power, flexibility, and performance you need to achieve your AI ambitions. Our unique approach to cloud and AI infrastructure helps us and developers like you meet the challenges of the ever-changing technological landscape head-on so you can continue working efficiently while innovating at scale.

Source: microsoft.com

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Azure Data, AI, and Digital Applications: Harness the Power of Intelligent Apps

In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, leveraging Azure Data, AI, and Digital Applications is essential for businesses aiming to stay ahead of the curve. By harnessing the power of intelligent apps, organizations can unlock unprecedented levels of efficiency, insight, and innovation. This comprehensive guide explores how Azure's suite of tools and services can transform your business operations and drive significant growth.

Understanding Azure's Data Capabilities

Azure offers a robust set of data services designed to help businesses store, manage, and analyze their data efficiently. These services are critical for building intelligent applications that can provide actionable insights and drive business value.

Azure SQL Database

Azure SQL Database is a fully managed relational database service that offers high performance, scalability, and security. It supports modern cloud applications and facilitates easy migration from on-premises databases. Key features include automated backups, built-in high availability, and advanced security features such as encryption and threat detection.

Azure Cosmos DB

For businesses requiring a globally distributed, multi-model database service, Azure Cosmos DB is an ideal choice. It offers seamless scalability and guarantees low latency, high availability, and consistency. Cosmos DB supports various data models, including document, key-value, graph, and column-family, making it versatile for different application needs.

Azure Data Lake Storage

Azure Data Lake Storage is designed for big data analytics, providing a scalable and secure data lake for high-performance analytics workloads. It integrates with Azure Data Services like Azure Databricks and Azure Synapse Analytics, enabling seamless data ingestion, processing, and analysis.

Harnessing the Power of AI with Azure

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is at the core of transforming business processes and applications. Azure provides a comprehensive suite of AI services that empower businesses to build, deploy, and manage AI models at scale.

Azure Machine Learning

Azure Machine Learning is a cloud-based service that allows data scientists and developers to build, train, and deploy machine learning models. It supports end-to-end machine learning lifecycle management, including data preparation, model training, deployment, and monitoring. With Azure Machine Learning, businesses can leverage automated machine learning (AutoML) to accelerate model development and improve accuracy.

Azure Cognitive Services

Azure Cognitive Services offers pre-built AI models that can be easily integrated into applications. These services include Vision, Speech, Language, and Decision APIs, enabling businesses to incorporate capabilities such as image and video analysis, speech recognition, language understanding, and anomaly detection into their apps without needing deep AI expertise.

Azure Bot Services

Azure Bot Services simplifies the process of building intelligent bots that can interact with users across various channels, including websites, mobile apps, and messaging platforms. These bots leverage natural language processing (NLP) to understand and respond to user queries, enhancing customer engagement and support.

Building Intelligent Applications with Azure

Intelligent applications leverage data and AI to deliver enhanced user experiences, improve decision-making, and drive operational efficiency. Azure provides a range of tools and frameworks to support the development of these applications.

Azure Logic Apps

Azure Logic Apps allows businesses to automate workflows and integrate various systems and services. With its visual designer, users can create workflows that connect cloud-based and on-premises applications, enabling seamless data flow and process automation.

Azure Functions

Azure Functions is a serverless computing service that enables developers to build and deploy event-driven applications. It supports various programming languages and can be triggered by numerous events, such as HTTP requests, database changes, or messages from other services. This flexibility makes it ideal for building microservices and automating backend processes.

Azure App Service

Azure App Service provides a fully managed platform for building, deploying, and scaling web apps and APIs. It supports multiple languages and frameworks, including .NET, Java, Node.js, and Python. With built-in DevOps capabilities, businesses can automate deployment and ensure continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD).

Integrating Data and AI for Maximum Impact

Combining data and AI enables businesses to create intelligent applications that deliver real-time insights and personalized experiences. Azure's integrated services facilitate this integration, ensuring seamless data flow and model deployment.

Azure Synapse Analytics

Azure Synapse Analytics is an analytics service that brings together big data and data warehousing. It provides a unified platform for data ingestion, preparation, management, and serving, allowing businesses to analyze large volumes of data in real-time. With built-in AI and machine learning capabilities, Azure Synapse Analytics enables predictive analytics and advanced data visualization.

Azure Databricks

Azure Databricks is an Apache Spark-based analytics platform optimized for Azure. It supports collaborative data engineering, data science, and machine learning workflows, enabling teams to work together efficiently. Azure Databricks integrates with other Azure services, such as Azure Data Lake Storage and Azure Machine Learning, to streamline the development of intelligent applications.

Azure Data Factory

Azure Data Factory is a data integration service that allows businesses to create, schedule, and orchestrate data workflows. It supports the ingestion of data from various sources, including on-premises databases, cloud-based storage, and SaaS applications. With its robust ETL capabilities, Azure Data Factory ensures that data is processed and transformed efficiently, ready for analysis and AI model training.

Enhancing Security and Compliance

Security and compliance are paramount when dealing with data and AI. Azure offers a comprehensive set of security features and compliance certifications to protect data and ensure regulatory adherence.

Azure Security Center

Azure Security Center provides advanced threat protection across hybrid cloud environments. It offers continuous assessment and security recommendations, helping businesses to strengthen their security posture. With integrated threat intelligence and AI-driven insights, Azure Security Center enables proactive threat detection and response.

Azure Active Directory

Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) is a cloud-based identity and access management service that ensures secure user authentication and authorization. It supports single sign-on (SSO), multi-factor authentication (MFA), and conditional access policies, enhancing security while simplifying user access to applications and data.

Compliance Certifications

Azure meets a wide range of industry and regional compliance standards, including GDPR, HIPAA, ISO 27001, and SOC 2. This extensive compliance portfolio ensures that businesses can confidently handle sensitive data and meet regulatory requirements.

Driving Innovation with Azure

By leveraging Azure's data, AI, and digital application capabilities, businesses can drive innovation and stay competitive in their respective industries. Azure's comprehensive ecosystem supports the development of intelligent applications that can transform customer experiences, optimize operations, and unlock new business opportunities.

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