It\u2019s not just about adopting the right tools. It\u2019s about having a platform that gives every organization the confidence to embrace an AI-first approach. Azure is built for this moment, with bold ambitions to enable businesses of every size. By unifying AI<\/a>, data<\/a>, apps, and infrastructure<\/a>, we\u2019re delivering intelligence at scale.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re still wondering if AI can really deliver ROI, don\u2019t take my word for it; see how Kraft Heinz, The Premier League, and Levi Strauss & Co. are finding success by pairing their unique data with an AI-first approach.<\/p>\n With these updates, we\u2019re making it easier to build, run, and scale AI agents that deliver real business outcomes. <\/p>\n TLDR\u2014the Ignite announcement rundown<\/p>\n On the go and want to get right to what\u2019s new and how to learn more? We have you covered. Otherwise, keep reading for a summary of top innovations from the week.<\/p>\n Your AI and agent factory,\u00a0expanded: Microsoft Foundry\u00a0adds Anthropic Claude and Cohere models for ultimate model choice and flexibility\u00a0<\/p>\n Earlier this year, we brought Anthropic models to Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, and Copilot Studio. Today,\u00a0we\u2019re\u00a0taking the next natural step:\u00a0Claude Sonnet 4.5, Opus 4.1, and Haiku 4.5 are now part of Microsoft Foundry<\/a>, advancing our mission to give customers choice across the industry\u2019s leading frontier models\u2014and making Azure the only cloud offering both OpenAI and Anthropic models.\u00a0<\/p>\n This expansion underscores our commitment to an open, interoperable Microsoft AI ecosystem\u2014bringing Anthropic\u2019s reasoning-first intelligence into the tools, platforms, and workflows organizations depend on every day.<\/p>\n This week,\u00a0Cohere\u2019s\u00a0leading models join Foundry\u2019s first-party model lineup, enabling organizations to build high-performance retrieval, classification, and generation workflows at enterprise scale.<\/p>\n With\u00a0these additions to Foundry\u2019s 11,000+-model ecosystem<\/a>\u2014alongside innovations from OpenAI,\u00a0xAI, Meta, Mistral AI, Black Forest Labs, and Microsoft Research\u2014developers can build smarter agents that reason, adapt, and integrate seamlessly with their data and applications.\u00a0<\/p>\n Make AI agents smarter with enterprise context<\/p>\n In the agentic era, context is everything because the most useful agents don\u2019t just reason, they\u2019re capable of understanding your unique business. Microsoft Azure brings enterprise context to the forefront, so you can connect agents to the right data and systems\u2014securely, consistently, and at scale. This set of announcements makes that real.<\/p>\n Microsoft Fabric IQ turns your data into unified intelligence<\/p>\n Fabric IQ organizes enterprise data around business concepts\u2014not tables\u2014so decision-makers and AI agents can act in real time. Now in preview, Fabric IQ<\/a> unifies analytics, time-series, and operational data under a semantic framework.<\/p>\n Because all data resides in OneLake, either natively or via shortcuts and mirroring, organizations can realize these benefits across on-premises, hybrid, and multicloud environments. This speeds up answering new questions and building processes, making Fabric the unified intelligence system for how enterprises see, decide, and operate.<\/p>\n Introducing Foundry IQ, which enables agents to understand more from your data<\/p>\n Now in preview, Foundry IQ<\/a> makes it easier for businesses to connect AI agents to the right data, without the usual complexity. Powered by Azure AI Search, it streamlines how agents access and reason over both public and private sources, like SharePoint, Fabric IQ, and the web. <\/p>\n Instead of building custom RAG pipelines, developers get pre-configured knowledge bases and agentic retrieval in a single API that just works\u2014all while also respecting user permissions. The outcome is agents that understand more, respond better, and help your apps perform with greater precision and context.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t \t\t\tBuild and control task forces of agents at cloud scale<\/p>\n Agents, simplified: Microsoft Agent Factory, powered by Azure<\/p>\n This week, we\u2019re introducing Microsoft Agent Factory<\/a>\u2014a program that brings Work IQ, Fabric IQ, and Foundry IQ together to help organizations build agents with confidence. <\/p>\n With a single metered plan, organizations can use Microsoft Foundry and Copilot Studio to build with IQ. This means you can deploy agents anywhere, including Microsoft 365 Copilot, without upfront licensing or provisioning. <\/p>\n Eligible organizations can also tap into hands-on support from top AI Forward Deployed Engineers and access tailored, role-based training to boost AI fluency across teams.<\/p>\n Modernize and extend your data for AI\u2014wherever it lives<\/p>\n Great AI starts with great data. To succeed, organizations need a foundation that\u2019s fast, flexible, and intelligent. This week, we introduced new capabilities to help make that possible.<\/p>\n Introducing Azure HorizonDB, a new fully managed PostgreSQL database service for faster, smarter apps<\/p>\n Now in preview, HorizonDB<\/a> is a cloud database service built for speed, scale, and resilience. It runs up to three times faster than open-source PostgreSQL and grows to handle demanding storage requirements with up to 15 replicas running on auto-scaling shared storage.<\/p>\n Whether building new AI apps or modernizing core systems, HorizonDB delivers enterprise-grade security and natively integrated AI models to help you scale confidently and create smarter experiences.<\/p>\n Azure DocumentDB offers AI-ready data, open standards, and multi-cloud deployments<\/p>\n Now generally available, Azure DocumentDB<\/a> is a fully managed NoSQL service built on open-source tech and designed for hybrid and multicloud flexibility. It supports advanced search and vector embeddings for more accurate results and is compatible with popular open-source MongoDB drivers and tools.<\/p>\n SQL Server 2025 delivers AI innovation to one of the world\u2019s most widely used databases <\/p>\n The decades-long foundation of innovation continues with the availability of SQL Server 2025<\/a>. This release helps developers build modern, AI-powered apps using familiar T-SQL\u2014securely and at scale.<\/p>\n With built-in tools for advanced search, near real-time insights via OneLake, and simplified data handling, businesses can finally unlock more value from the data they already have. SQL Server 2025 is a future-ready platform that combines performance, security, and AI to help teams move faster and work smarter.<\/p>\n Fabric goes further<\/p>\n SQL database and Cosmos DB in Fabric<\/a> are also available this week. These databases are natively integrated into Fabric, so you can run transactional and NoSQL workloads side-by-side, all in one environment.<\/p>\n Get instant access to trusted data with bi-directional, zero copy sharing through SAP BDC Connect for Fabric<\/p>\n Fabric now enables zero-copy data sharing with SAP Business Data Cloud<\/a>, enabling customers to combine trusted business data with Fabric\u2019s advanced analytics and AI\u2014without duplication or added complexity. This breakthrough gives you instant access to trusted, business-ready insights for advanced analytics and AI.<\/p>\n We offer these world-class database options so you can build once and deploy at the edge, as platform as a service (PaaS), or even as software as a service (SaaS).And because our entire portfolio is either Fabric-connected or Fabric-native, Fabric serves as a unified hub for your entire data estate.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t \t\t\tStrengthen the databases at the heart of your data estate<\/p>\n Operate smarter and more securely with AI-powered control<\/p>\n We believe trust is the foundation of transformation. In an AI-powered world, businesses need confidence, control, and clarity. Azure provides that with built-in security, governance, and observability, so you can innovate boldly without compromise.<\/p>\n With capabilities that protect your data, keep your operations transparent, and make environments resilient, we announced updates this week to strengthen trust at every layer.<\/p>\n Unified observability helps keep agents secure, compliant, and under your control<\/p>\n One highlight from today\u2019s announcements is the new Foundry Control Plane<\/a>. It gives teams real-time security, lifecycle management, and visibility across agent platforms. Foundry Control Plane integrates signals from the entire Microsoft Cloud, including Agent 365 and the Microsoft security suite, so builders can optimize performance, apply agent controls, and maintain compliance.<\/p>\n New hosted agents and multi-agent workflows let agents collaborate across frameworks or clouds without sacrificing enterprise-grade visibility, governance, and identity controls. With Entra Agent ID, Defender runtime protection, and Purview data governance, you can scale AI responsibly with guardrails in place. <\/p>\n Azure Copilot: Turning cloud operations into intelligent collaboration<\/p>\n Azure Copilot<\/a> is a new agentic interface that orchestrates specialized agents across the cloud management lifecycle.\u202fIt\u202fembeds\u202fagents directly\u202fwhere\u202fyou work\u2014chat,\u202fconsole,\u202for\u202fcommand line\u2014for a\u202fpersonalized\u202fexperience that connects action,\u202fcontext,\u202fand governance.<\/p>\n We are introducing new agents\u202fthat simplify how you run on the cloud\u2014from\u202fmigration\u202fand deployment to\u202foperations\u202fand\u202foptimization\u2014so\u202feach action aligns with enterprise policy.\u202f<\/p>\n Migration and modernization agents deliver smarter, automated workflows, using AI-powered discovery to handle most of the heavy lifting. This shift moves IT teams and developers beyond repetitive classification work so they can focus on building new apps and agents that drive innovation.<\/p>\n Similarly, the\u202fdeployment agent streamlines infrastructure planning with guidance rooted in Azure Well-Architected Framework best practices, while the\u202foperations and optimization agents accelerate issue resolution, improve resiliency, and uncover cost savings opportunities.<\/p>\n Secure code to runtime with AI-infused DevSecOps<\/p>\n Microsoft and GitHub are transforming app security with native integration for Microsoft Defender for Cloud and GitHub Advanced Security<\/a>. Now in preview, this integration helps protect cloud-native applications across the full app lifecycle, from code to cloud.<\/p>\n This enables developers and security teams to collaborate seamlessly, allowing organizations to stay within the tools they use every day.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t \t\t\tStreamline cloud operations and reimagine the datacenter<\/p>\n Build on an AI-ready foundation<\/p>\n Azure infrastructure is transforming how we deliver intelligence at scale\u2014both for our own services and for customers building the next generation of applications. <\/p>\n At the center of this evolution are new AI datacenters, designed as \u201cAI superfactories<\/a>,\u201d and silicon innovations that enable Azure to provide unmatched flexibility and performance across every AI scenario.<\/p>\n Azure Boost delivers speed and security for your most demanding workloads<\/p>\n We\u2019re announcing our latest generation of Azure Boost<\/a> with remote storage throughput of up to 20 GBps, up to 1 million remote storage IOPS, and network bandwidth of up to 400 Gbps. These advancements significantly improve performance for future Azure VM series. Azure Boost is a purpose-built subsystem that offloads virtualization processes from the hypervisor and host operating system, accelerating storage and network-intensive workloads.<\/p>\n Azure Cobalt 200: Redefining performance for the agentic era<\/p>\n Azure Cobalt 200<\/a> is our next-generation ARM-based server, designed to deliver efficiency, performance, and security for modern workloads. It\u2019s built to handle AI and data-intensive applications while maintaining strong confidentiality and reliability standards.<\/p>\n By optimizing compute and networking at scale, Cobalt 200 helps you run your most critical workloads more cost-effectively and with greater resilience. It\u2019s infrastructure designed for today\u2019s demands\u2014and ready for what\u2019s next.<\/p>\n Keeping you at the frontier with continuous innovation<\/p>\n We\u2019re delivering continuous innovation in AI, apps, data, security, and cloud. When you choose Azure, you get an intelligent cloud built on decades of experience and partnerships that push boundaries. And as we\u2019ve just shown this week, the pace of innovation isn\u2019t slowing down anytime soon.<\/p>\n Agentic enterprise, unlocked: Start now on Microsoft Azure<\/p>\n I hope Ignite\u2014and our broader wave of innovation\u2014sparked new ideas for you. The era of the agentic cloud isn\u2019t on the horizon; it\u2019s here right now. Azure brings together AI, data, and cloud capabilities to help you move faster, adapt smarter, and innovate confidently.<\/p>\n I invite you to imagine what\u2019s possible\u2014and consider these questions:<\/p>\n What challenges could you solve with a more connected, intelligent cloud foundation?<\/p>\n What could you build if your data, AI, and cloud worked seamlessly together?<\/p>\n How could your teams work differently with more time to innovate and less to maintain?<\/p>\n How can you stay ahead in a world where change is the only constant?<\/p>\n Want to go deeper into the news? Check out these blogs:<\/p>\n Ready to take the next step?<\/p>\n Explore technology methodologies and tools from real-world customer experiences with Azure Essentials<\/a>.<\/p>\n Check out the latest announcements<\/a> for software companies.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1086170_Azure_T1-NewsAmp_Ignite_BlogHeaders_Blog_1A_1260x708-1.png\")
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