These are the 4 big Data & AI announcements at Microsoft Build

(This post has been written on 24/05/2023 after the announcements on Microsoft Build)

Red hot news from Microsoft Build today, Microsoft biggest conference for new announcements & products. It's clear that we are at the forefront of an AI revolution that is being pushed by the latest releases from Microsoft. As element61, we are committed to unleashing the full potential that these releases bring in data & analytics. Here is an overview of the key take-aways from Microsoft Build:

 

openai logo

Building AI-Powered Applications:

Microsoft keeps investing in AI & its related tools with the following most notable innovations:

  • Azure AI Studio: can be best explained as a closed ChatGPT on your own data.
  • Azure AI prompt flow: getting your prompts right will be crucial to get decent output from your models. This tool should help streamline prompts & the workflows within the available open-source models.
  • Azure OpenAI Plugins: Simplifies the process of building and consuming APIs with Azure OpenAI Plugins. You will easily connect to plugins like Azure Cognitive Search, Azure SQL, Azure Cosmos DB, Microsoft Translator, and Bing Search.
  • Foundation models in Azure Machine Learning: a collection of foundation models, including OpenAI Service models and those from Hugging Face.
  • Vector search in Azure Cognitive Search will improve the capability to store, index, and search within datasets using semantic similarities.

 

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Microsoft Fabric: The new Analytics & AI Azure service to know.

This is how element61 looks at it:

  • It's a new service/layer bundling the best of Synapse, Data Factory, AzureML, and much more.
  • It leverages OneLake - a new storage layer using full Delta - to store & manage all data
  • Bundling this with Synapse Serverless and Spark pools to a new level and making SQL queries natively run to Delta in an unmet performance

Fabric seems to be a perfect service for a solid Modern Data Platform!

Bart goes deeper into Microsoft Fabric in his blog post that you can find here.

 

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Developer Tools and App Platform Updates.

Microsoft announced updates to its developer tools and app platform portfolio. These updates aim to enhance productivity, security, and efficiency for developers and their teams.

  • Microsoft Dev Box helps developers focus on writing code by streamlining access to all the resources and tools they need for the project at hand.
  • GitHub Advanced Security for Azure DevOps: you will be able to integrate automated security checks into your workflow such as code scanning, secret scanning & prevention of sensitive information.
  • Azure Deployment Environments (ADE): It offers self-service templates that can be deployed directly from development tools, code repositories, or customized developer portals. This approach maximizes security through centralized permissions and policy governance, access controls, and complete management of cloud resource configurations.
  • Another welcome announcement one for the Kubernetes power users is the long-term support for Kubernetes in Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).

 

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Integration of Copilot in Windows and innovating how we work.

Copilot seems to be aiming to become the heart of Windows usage. Microsoft opens up opportunities for developers and independent software vendors to integrate their apps and services using plugins like ChatGPT and Bing plugins, Teams message extensions, and Power Platform connectors. Furthermore, Microsoft Teams will feature collaborative multi-user experiences while avatars and immersive spaces enhance meeting interactions.

We're incredibly excited about the possibilities these innovations bring to the AI and application development world. Join us on this transformative journey as we build the future together! To learn more about these advancements, don't forget to check out Jessica Hawk's blog post.

Stay tuned for more news popping up in the coming days!