Actioning agentic AI: 5 ways to build with news from Microsoft Ignite 2025

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Energy astatine Microsoft Ignite was electric. Over 20,000 attendees gathered successful San Francisco, with 200,000 integer participants joining america to research the aboriginal of unreality and AI.

Energy astatine Microsoft Ignite was electric. Over 20,000 attendees gathered successful San Francisco, with 200,000 digitally joining america to explore the aboriginal of unreality and AI. What continues to animate maine astir are the responses online and the conversations happening successful our method communities. It’s however rapidly you’re turning these announcements into enactment and gathering solutions for billions of people, which volition yet signifier our future.

As idiosyncratic who lives and breathes method assemblage selling crossed Microsoft Azure, Foundry, Fabric, databases, and developer tools. Our Azure level announcements resonated due to the fact that they assistance lick existent problems—and now, the enactment begins.

So, what is everyone saying astir the apical news? And wherever bash we spell from here? Let’s bespeak connected the apical 5 unreality and AI stories from Microsoft Ignite crossed the web close present and past unpack however these innovations tin beryllium enactment into practice across Microsoft AI Dev Days, Microsoft AI Tour and more.

1. Claude comes to Microsoft Foundry: Choice for builders

The method assemblage lit up astir what Claude models successful Microsoft Foundry unlock. I truly similar however this eWeek article describes the value arsenic a “partnership [that] removes 1 of the biggest humanities blockers to adopting caller AI tools: vendor complexity.”

Developers told america they wanted access to Claude Sonnet and Claude Opus alongside OpenAI’s GPT models. They wanted the quality to prime the close models for their usage cases, and the tools to measure for tone, safety, performance, and more. Now Azure is the lone cloud supporting access to some Claude and GPT frontier models for its customers.

Response from the assemblage is clear: exemplary diverseness matters. When you’re gathering AI apps and agents, having options means you tin optimize for what matters astir to your users. Microsoft Foundry gives you flexibility portion maintaining enterprise-grade security, compliance, and governance.

My favourite watches and reads:

Two speakers connected signifier astatine Microsoft Ignite 2025.

2. IQ Revolution: Semantic knowing that works

The caller portfolio of Microsoft IQ offerings has data engineers and architects buzzing. One blogger captured it perfectly: “This is Microsoft rewiring the connective insubstantial betwixt productivity apps, analytics platforms, and AI improvement environments to make thing that’s been missing from the endeavor AI conversation.” Knowledge is however the displacement to agentic AI becomes applicable alternatively than theoretical.

Foundry IQ streamlines cognition retrieval from aggregate sources including SharePoint, Fabric, and the web. Powered by Azure AI Search, it delivers policy-aware retrieval without having to physique analyzable customized RAG pipelines. Developers get pre-configured cognition bases and agentic retrieval successful a azygous API that “just works,” portion besides respecting idiosyncratic permissions, which is what I heard resonating connected the ground.

Designed with Foundry IQ integration, Fabric IQ creates a semantic quality furniture that unifies analytics, time-series, and operational information astir shared concern concepts, letting you physique and deploy agents that crushed consistently crossed domains portion cutting down the schema-mapping, information wrangling, and punctual engineering that usually devour the astir time.

More must-reads:

3. Azure HorizonDB: PostgreSQL power

PostgreSQL developers are celebrating the preview of Azure HorizonDB, which you can sign up for here. This afloat managed, Postgres-compatible database work is designed from the crushed up for modern cloud-native and AI workloads.

The method assemblage embraced it wholeheartedly, seeing their priorities reflected. Azure HorizonDB delivers up to 3x much throughput than open-source Postgres for transactional workloads, with auto-scaling retention up to 128TB and scale-out compute supporting up to 3,072 vCores. Sub-millisecond multi-zone perpetrate latencies support apps that are some accelerated and resilient.

What truly got developers excited was built-in vector indexing with precocious filtering utilizing DiskANN, which brings AI quality straight to wherever your information lives. This helps developers physique semantic hunt and RAG patterns without the complexity and latency of managing abstracted vector stores oregon moving information crossed systems. Integration with Microsoft Foundry besides streamlines setup and AI app development.

And for those migrating from Oracle, GitHub Copilot-powered migration tools successful the PostgreSQL Extension for VS Code marque the modulation smoother than ever. The assemblage has spoken: they privation PostgreSQL flexibility combined with Azure endeavor capabilities, and Azure HorizonDB delivers.

Be definite to cheque these out:

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4. Azure Copilot: Agents change the game

The announcement of the new Azure Copilot gives IT professionals a caller crushed to travel to the cloud. Now supporting the afloat unreality operations lifecycle, Azure Copilot features a postulation of specialized agents for migration, deployment, observability, optimization, resiliency, and troubleshooting. A prima wrong this caller acquisition for IT pros is the migration agent, helping crook weeks of manual find into accelerated acceleration by scanning environments, identifying bequest workloads, and auto-generating infrastructure-as-code templates truthful migrations are accelerated and clean.

With Azure Copilot, migrating and modernizing go acold much manageable, surfacing cost improvements, right sizing environments, and diagnosing issues crossed containers, virtual machines, and databases, while honoring role-based entree power (RBAC) policies and compliance guardrails. Available astatine nary other outgo successful the Azure Portal, CLI, and the caller Operations Center, this caller agentic interface in Azure transforms modernization and gives IT teams the quality to beryllium much proactive arsenic they physique connected the Azure foundation.

Smart takes connected the news:

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5. Azure hardware: Limitless powerfulness and security

Performance is everything erstwhile you’re grooming ample models oregon moving inference astatine standard and that’s wherefore the latest hardware depository down our ‘Frontier Street’ activation astatine Ignite captured the community’s imagination.

When you stood in beforehand of a blade from our Azure AI infrastructure server, with NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra GPUs presented like a depository piece, your excitement made it consciousness adjacent much similar stepping into an creation gallery—with a spotlight connected Cobalt, Maia, and Microsoft’s unsocial NVIDIA partnership.

And it didn’t halt there. Microsoft’s customized Azure silicon present includes the Azure Boost DPU, the archetypal in-house information processing unit, and Azure Integrated HSM for top-notch security. We can’t hold to support bringing these innovations straight to you.

See what others are saying:

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Your keyboard, your impact

Here’s what makes this infinitesimal special: announcements astatine Ignite aren’t endpoints; they’re starting points. You’re the adjacent gen creators who volition instrumentality these tools and physique caller agentic experiences we can’t yet imagine. Your implementations aboveground insights that shape how Azure evolves. Your real-world patterns are what thrust product decisions. The relationship between announcement and innovation is simply a partnership, and the method assemblage drives that process forward.

Create the aboriginal with us:

Tune into Microsoft AI Dev Days: December 10-11. Starting today, we’re hosting 2 days of live-streamed method contented connected the Reactor, broadcast crossed each dev channels. These sessions are designed for developers who privation to spell heavy connected gathering with the technologies announced astatine Ignite. Mark your calendars and articulation the assemblage for hands-on workshops and method heavy dives that volition bringing you to the cutting borderline of AI innovation.
Join america astatine a Microsoft AI Tour determination adjacent you. We’re coming to your city with hands-on method workshops. These one-day, escaped events absorption connected getting you keyboard time with the technologies announced astatine Ignite. We’re continuing to hit the roadworthy successful 2026 to 30 much locations.
Catch up with your tech community. Ignite delivered unthinkable method contented crossed hundreds of sessions. What makes the pursuing 3 sessions peculiar is however heavy they spell into the tech with accusation astir however to commencement implementing successful your ain environments.
Take your learning to the adjacent level with curated skilling plans. Whether you’re caller to these technologies oregon looking to deepen your expertise, Microsoft skilling plans tin accelerate your vocation from fundamentals to precocious implementation.

What are you gathering with the latest technologies announced astatine Ignite? Join the speech successful Azure’s method community.

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