At Microsoft Build 2023, we presented the most powerful AI platform available for developers to build upon today and in the future, and also unveiled ongoing enhancements to its developer tools and services — all with a strong focus on responsible and secure AI implementation. Microsoft is empowering developers with an unprecedented range of capabilities, harnessing the power of copilots to enhance their productivity and effectiveness. With our latest offerings, developers now have an extensive suite of tools and resources at their disposal, enabling them to accomplish more than ever before. This presents partners with an unparalleled opportunity to assist customers in their AI transformation, whether it involves application development, solution provision, services, or support. By leveraging the industry's most powerful and secure AI platform, partners can actively contribute to helping customers achieve their goals.
Some of this year’s key Microsoft Build announcements are highlighted below:
Build next-gen, AI-powered applications
Microsoft believes AI is the next massive shift in computing. That's why we are making substantial investments in AI and its deployment tools, so developers and organizations can do more. Developers can create unique experiences using the latest Azure AI, Machine Learning innovations, and app platform portfolio such as:
- Azure AI Studio: Capabilities to harness generative AI and ground OpenAI models on your data.
- Azure AI prompt flow: Efficient experience for prompting, evaluating, tuning, and operationalizing large language models.
- Azure OpenAI Plugins: Streamline the process of building and consuming APIs that extend the capabilities of GPT-4, including plugins for Azure Cognitive Search, Azure SQL, Azure Cosmos DB, Microsoft Translator, and Bing Search.
- Foundation models in Azure Machine Learning: Select foundation models from Azure OpenAI Service, open-source collections, and deploy using Azure Machine Learning components and pipelines.
- Vector search capability in Azure Cognitive Search: For storing, indexing, and searching datasets based on vector representations of data for semantic similarity searches.
- Provisioned Throughput Model for Azure OpenAI Service: Offer dedicated capacity for improved performance.
- Azure AI Content Safety service: Detect and assign severity scores to unsafe content in images and text for model assessment and content moderation.
- Microsoft Dev Box: Azure service providing secure and centrally managed ready-to-code dev boxes for hybrid dev teams.
- GitHub Advanced Security for Azure DevOps: Integration of GitHub Advanced Security features into Azure DevOps platform for automated security checks.
- Azure Deployment Environments (ADE): For quickly setting up app infrastructure with project-based templates, maximizing security, compliance, and cost efficiency.
- Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS): Long-term support for Kubernetes.
To learn more, read this blog.
Bring your data into the era of AI with Microsoft Fabric
Microsoft Fabric is an end-to-end analytics solution that empowers organizations to manage their data in one place with a suite of analytics experiences that work together seamlessly, helping teams create intelligence faster than ever. It integrates various Microsoft tools and services, including Data Factory, Power BI, Synapse, OneLake, Azure OpenAI Service, and Microsoft 365 apps, to streamline data management, analytics, AI capabilities, and resource management.
To learn more, read this blog.
Modernize and protect your infrastructure with Microsoft Azure
The Azure Infrastructure team announced two new capabilities, including confidential VMs with Intel TDX, which helps you move more workloads to Azure, and Azure Container Storage, which manages persistent storage volumes for stateful container applications in a cost-effective way.
To learn more, read blog posts here and here.
Shaping the future of work with AI
Microsoft is offering new AI innovations to inspire developers and ISVs on the opportunity of the Microsoft 365 Copilot:
- Plugins for Microsoft 365 Copilot enable integration of apps and services into Copilot, including ChatGPT, Bing, Teams message extensions, and Power Platform connectors. Developers can easily build new Microsoft 365 plugins using the Microsoft Teams Toolkit for Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio.
- Teams Live Share SDK creates collaborative multi-user experiences within Teams apps without writing dedicated back-end code.
- Avatars for Microsoft Teams offer customizable avatars and reactions for video meetings.
- Microsoft Mesh enables building custom, immersive experiences for the workplace, fostering collaboration.
To learn more, read this blog.
Making it easier to build on and for Windows
We revealed exciting updates for Windows developers:
- Windows Copilot: Centralized AI assistance for developers on Windows.
- Dev Home: Productivity companion offering setup and workflow monitoring.
- Microsoft Store updates: AI Hub, AI-generated review summaries and keywords, expanded Microsoft Store Ads, backup and restore app capability.
- Hybrid Loop for AI: Easier creation of AI experiences with ONNX Runtime (ORT) and Olive toolchain.
- Cross-platform support: ORT and Olive extend Windows AI investments to all app platforms.
- Azure EP: Connect to models deployed in Azure for flexibility and control.
To learn more, read this blog.
The future of app development with the Power Platform
Developers need to deliver high-quality apps faster than ever before and Power Platform helps by supercharging productivity and changing development with next-generation AI. Developers can combine the world’s most comprehensive and intelligent tool “Power Platform” with Azure, Visual Studio, and GitHub to accelerate app development, automation, or build chatbots. Microsoft revealed some advancements in low-code tools and generative AI such as Managed Environments, Developer Hub, Copilot in Power Pages, Custom Actions SDK in Power Automate, and the unified authoring canvas in Power Virtual Agents.
To learn more, read this blog.
Protect and customize access with the preview of Microsoft Entra External ID
Microsoft unveiled a range of DevSecOps advancements, highlighted by the launch of Microsoft Entra External ID, which enables users to obtain secure access to external identities, govern identity lifecycles, design user-friendly experiences, and expedite secure application development.
To learn more, read this blog.
Our focus is on constantly enhancing our platform to offer a diverse set of advanced capabilities, enabling you to effortlessly generate and introduce state-of-the-art solutions. Our dedication to innovation remains steadfast as we aim to foster creative development and shape the future wave of applications. By leveraging the potential of our platform, we strive to provide impactful solutions that cater to the specific needs of our valued customers. Collaboratively, we can responsibly and securely utilize the world's most advanced AI models through the Microsoft Cloud, instilling confidence in meeting business imperatives.
We look forward to sharing more about AI transformation opportunities later this year at Microsoft Inspire.