At Microsoft Ignite 2024, held last week, the company not only focused on Copilots and AI agents but also made the effort to provide developers with an environment to build AI applications.
On the first day of the conference, the tech giant introduced the Azure AI Foundry, formerly known as Azure AI Studio, a first-class app server for the AI age where developers can design, customise, and manage AI apps and agents.
“Every application is an AI application, and every new generation of apps has brought a changing set of needs,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said during his keynote.
AI is the new input for every company to expand their output, and the rapid adoption of this technology and the intensity of its everyday use are the most important ways companies can get ahead today. Here are highlights from my keynote at #MSIgnite. pic.twitter.com/7FvZTAbElR
— Satya Nadella (@satyanadella) November 19, 2024
The idea of Azure AI Foundry is that everyone within an organisation—not just developers and AI engineers, but also professionals and regular workers—will be able to access Microsoft’s latest AI developments. Besides, business leaders and IT pros will have access to tools that provide insights into the impact of AI on their business, the company said.
Azure AI Foundry is a leading app server for designing and managing AI apps and agents.
Going Beyond Microsoft’s Azure AI Foundry
Microsoft is not alone in this race. Amazon Bedrock provides access to a wide range of foundational models from various third-party providers, including Anthropic, Stability AI, and Hugging Face, in addition to Amazon’s own models like Titan.
Users can customise and fine-tune them to suit specific use cases, making them highly adaptable for diverse applications. The integration with AWS services further improves its functionality.
Bedrock has been noted to offer significant cost savings compared to Azure OpenAI in certain scenarios, with reported savings of up to 556%.
Azure AI Foundry mainly uses OpenAI’s models, including the GPT series, allowing for strong natural language processing capabilities. It emphasises user-friendly integration with Microsoft services and other external applications through an API ecosystem.
Azure offers improved security measures, including private networking options that cater to enterprise needs.
However, Bedrock tends to offer more flexibility regarding deployment options and model customisation, which can be beneficial for complex workflows. Azure AI Foundry, while also scalable, is particularly strong in environments that require integration with existing Microsoft tools and services, making it a preferred choice for organisations to stay rooted in the Microsoft space.
Both platforms operate on a pay-as-you-go pricing model.
But, Bedrock generally provides more competitive pricing across various scenarios, especially when using its extensive model offerings and serverless capabilities. Azure AI Foundry, while potentially more expensive depending on usage patterns, offers robust features that justify its costs for enterprises focused on security and integration with Microsoft products.
More AI Models
Access to the most powerful AI models will be needed to build AI agents, and Microsoft is ensuring this by capitalising on its partnership with OpenAI. Microsoft incorporated models like GPT-4 and Codex into the Azure OpenAI Service. These offer a comprehensive suite of AI tools seamlessly integrated with Azure’s cloud platform.
Azure OpenAI Service provides access to OpenAI’s models including the GPT-4, GPT-4o mini, GPT-4, GPT-4 Turbo with Vision, DALLE-3, and Whisper. It also opens up model series with data residency, scalability, safety, security, and the enterprise capabilities of Azure, which can now be accessed via the Azure OpenAI Service API.
Vertex AI, a friendly nemesis was made to build, deploy, and scale machine learning models faster and easier. Whereas, Azure AI is a similar cloud-based service platform offering similar features. But what’s the difference between the two?
Vertex AI’s advantages is its support for MLOps practices. Additionally, it optimises infrastructure, reducing training time and costs. The platform offers comprehensive ML tooling, including APIs, foundation models, and open-source models through the Model Garden.
On the other hand, Azure is a key component in providing developers with tools to construct, train, and implement machine learning models. It supports popular programming languages like Python and R, enabling efficient model building and deployment. Vertex AI also underlines the integration of data and AI, adding popular tools like BigQuery, Dataproc, and Spark.
On the engineering side, Azure Databricks allows effective processing and analysis of large datasets.
Why Azure AI Foundry Rocks
One of the key highlights from the event and a standout feature is that Azure AI has now been integrated with GitHub and Copilot Studio, with AI directly embedded into developers’ workflows. This powerful combination gives developers end-to-end experience to build, scale, and deploy secure software to the cloud.
Discover the power of AzureAI Foundry, the future of app platforms with the best developer tools like GitHub CoPilot. #AzureAI #AI #GitHubCoPilot #devtools #developer #multimodal #SethandSatya #gamechanger #inlineediting #workspaces #techinnovation https://t.co/Vx8kSs64L7 pic.twitter.com/ym2ppl38Tv
— CUBE365 Clips (@clipper_video) November 19, 2024
With over 1,800 AI models available for experimentation, the platform increases prototyping and innovation by providing a controlled environment for exploring and applying AI solutions. It also simplifies AI integrations for developers, eliminating the need to piece together disparate tools and models.
“With features like bring your own storage and private networking, it will ensure data privacy and compliance to help organisations protect their sensitive data,” said the company.
AzureAI Foundry simplifies and scales AI workloads, enabling design, customization, and integration with popular developer tools for efficiency. #AzureAI #AI #AzureFoundry #Azure #developer #GitHub #VisualStudio #apps #scale #SatyaNadella #appserver https://t.co/PE6zjaBoj2 pic.twitter.com/iCFqTy5ZrS
— CUBE365 Clips (@clipper_video) November 19, 2024
The Azure AI Foundry SDK provides a simplified coding experience that enables developers to merge components together to build AI applications, wherever they build, whether it’s GitHub, Visual Studio, or Copilot Studio. It supports the development journey from idea to code to cloud.
Today, it is also available in Python and C, with a JavaScript version coming soon. In this initial release, the SDK includes Azure OpenAI, AI model inferencing, Azure AI Search, Azure AI Agent Service, Evaluation, Tracing, and AI app templates.
The quickest way to get started with AI is to play with the models. GitHub models allow any developer to start for free. One can dive right in from Visual Studio by installing the AI Toolkit for VS Code.
Source: Microsoft
Jessica Hawk, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of data, AI, and digital applications, wrote in a blog post that Azure AI Foundry is designed to help companies overcome barriers to AI adoption. Citing Deloitte Touche Ltd, she noted that 70% of organisations have moved 30% or less of their GenAI experiments into production due to implementation challenges.
To tackle these obstacles, Azure AI Foundry provides Azure Essentials, a unified portal that combines Microsoft’s best practices, product insights, reference architectures, and resources. This portal offers businesses a standardised approach to adopting and scaling AI solutions.
“As AI transforms industries and unveils new opportunities, we’re committed to providing practical solutions and powerful innovation to empower you to thrive in this evolving landscape,” said Hawk.
“Everything we’re delivering today reflects our dedication to meeting the real-world needs of both developers and business leaders, ensuring every person and every organisation can harness the transformative power of AI.”
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