In 2010, we launched into a journey to construct a cloud platform that might empower organizations globally. In February, we celebrated 15 years of bringing Azure innovation to the world, and right now, we have fun Microsoft once more being acknowledged as a pacesetter in Forrester’s not too long ago printed report, The Forrester Wave™: Public Cloud Platforms, This fall 2024. We
In 2010, we launched into a journey to construct a cloud platform that might empower organizations globally. In February, we celebrated 15 years of bringing Azure innovation to the world, and right now, we have fun Microsoft once more being acknowledged as a pacesetter in Forrester’s not too long ago printed report, The Forrester Wave™: Public Cloud Platforms, This fall 2024. We imagine the popularity is a testomony to the dedication of numerous engineers, builders, and companions who’ve labored relentlessly to evolve Azure into the platform it’s right now—one that’s trusted by enterprises to drive innovation, scale with confidence, and meet the challenges of an AI-driven world.
Acknowledged for imaginative and prescient
Forrester’s analysis assesses public cloud improvement and infrastructure platforms primarily based on the energy of their present choices and technique. The This fall 2024 report underscores the strategic investments we’ve made to make sure Azure is not only a cloud supplier however a complete platform enabling actual enterprise affect. And right now, meaning serving to organizations around the globe steadiness migration, modernization, and the speedy development of AI—all on the similar time.
The reported cited key differentiators together with Microsoft’s genAI technique and Azure AI capabilities similar to Azure OpenAI Service, Azure AI Studio, GitHub Copilot Enterprise and Microsoft Material, and famous that “Azure is an efficient match for organizations in search of fast uptake of AI innovation in addition to core cloud choices for longstanding Microsoft environments.”
Forrester’s acknowledgment reinforces our dedication to steady innovation and buyer success throughout all layers of the cloud—let’s take a better take a look at why we imagine Forrester acknowledged Microsoft as a pacesetter.
AI on the Core: Powering innovation from cloud to edge
Cloud computing has advanced from an answer for scaling infrastructure right into a core enabler of intelligence and innovation. Equally, AI has turn into a vital enterprise instrument to modernize, innovate, and stay aggressive. Each app is being reinvented with AI, and completely new purposes are rising that have been by no means doable earlier than. Merely put—AI is redefining how we work and the way organizations function.
We deeply perceive the challenges prospects face as they navigate the steadiness between managing right now’s calls for and innovating for the longer term, which is why we’ve made AI a core a part of our cloud technique. By embedding AI throughout developer instruments, platforms, knowledge, and infrastructure, we’re constructing a seamless basis for the following technology of clever purposes at scale. A key a part of this method is offering prospects with alternative and adaptability. For instance, we provide one of the complete collections of open-source and basis fashions, with greater than 1,800 fashions obtainable on Azure AI Foundry. In simply the previous two months, we’ve expanded our mannequin catalog with greater than 30 new fashions from main companions and continued to advance our personal Phi household of fashions.
Throughout the AI area, our work spans a number of domains
AI-powered app improvement
We proceed to spend money on AI infrastructure, enterprise-grade AI providers, and developer instruments that drive actual enterprise affect, similar to Azure AI Foundry and GitHub Copilot Enterprise, to rework how organizations construct and deploy AI-powered options.
Clients are seeing worth in AI-infused software improvement, clever automation, and superior analytics, with Azure offering the scalable infrastructure wanted to combine AI seamlessly throughout workloads—from modernizing enterprise processes to accelerating software program improvement. For instance, by way of our strategic OpenAI partnership, we’re delivering their newest fashions as they launch in close to actual time, and with AOAI, accountable AI safety and capabilities are turned on by default.
Azure AI Foundry
Launched at Ignite in 2024, Azure AI Foundry is a unified platform that allows builders, IT directors, knowledge scientists, and others concerned in AI improvement to design, customise, and handle AI purposes and brokers at scale. It seamlessly integrates with current workbenches like GitHub, Visible Studio, and Copilot Studio, offering a wealthy set of AI capabilities and instruments inside acquainted environments. With a easy portal for discovery and administration, a unified SDK (software program improvement equipment) for agent toolchain entry, and sturdy APIs (software programming interface), Azure AI Foundry streamlines AI improvement. It additionally presents safe knowledge integration, mannequin customization, and enterprise-grade governance to speed up the trail to manufacturing, and right now, greater than 60K prospects are leveraging these options for his or her AI transformation.
Enterprise-grade AI infrastructure
Azure serves because the infrastructure that empowers AI—not just for right now’s options however because the platform for tomorrow’s transformative AI purposes. Our technique is full-stack funding—from developer instruments to AI platforms, knowledge, and infrastructure. This complete method lays the muse for the following technology of clever purposes at scale. As an illustration, we’ve expanded our GPU capability to help large-scale deep studying fashions, serving to to make sure enterprise-grade reliability for AI workloads. Moreover, we’re constructing the most important scale-up and scale-out infrastructure to help AI coaching and inferencing, leveraging new architectures like Grace Blackwell and high-throughput interconnects like NVLink and InfiniBand. With these new state-of-the-art applied sciences, prospects get excessive throughput, decreased latency connectivity to Azure, and extremely obtainable specialised infrastructure that helps guarantee their AI workloads run easily.
Adaptive cloud method allows flexibility throughout environments
As Forrester highlights of their report, hybrid and multicloud capabilities have gotten the norm. Organizations function in more and more advanced environments, requiring seamless integration throughout public cloud, hybrid, and edge infrastructure to optimize efficiency, improve safety, and drive innovation. Azure’s adaptive cloud technique stays a key differentiator, enabling enterprises to unify their cloud operations whereas leveraging AI, purposes, knowledge, and infrastructure in a cohesive, scalable method:
- Seamless hybrid and multicloud operations: Azure Arc extends Azure’s safety, governance, and AI capabilities throughout on-premises, multicloud, and edge environments, offering companies with a constant platform for managing sources no matter their location.
- AI-driven knowledge and analytics: Microsoft Material integrates knowledge, analytics, and AI-driven insights right into a single answer, empowering organizations to make real-time, clever selections throughout their total knowledge property.
- Scalability throughout the clever edge: Azure’s AI-optimized infrastructure helps guarantee organizations can deploy and run AI inferencing workloads on the edge with the identical reliability, safety, and efficiency as within the cloud.
With this method, we assist empower organizations to innovate and scale with agility by means of a cohesive platform that eliminates silos, accelerates innovation, and permits companies to scale AI and purposes seamlessly—regardless of the place they function.
Wanting forward with Azure AI
This recognition from Forrester affirms our imaginative and prescient and continued funding in AI, app improvement, and enterprise-grade infrastructure. For the previous 15 years, we’ve been devoted to constructing and operating the cloud platform that empowers companies to innovate with confidence, and we’re grateful that Azure has turn into a trusted platform for all cloud workloads, evolving by means of steady innovation and deep collaboration with prospects and the Microsoft associate ecosystem.
As we transfer ahead, we stay dedicated to serving to prospects scale AI purposes with Azure AI Foundry and Azure OpenAI Service, streamline improvement with GitHub Copilot and Azure Developer Providers, and energy their knowledge and analytics methods with instruments like Microsoft Material.
Our ever-expanding AI infrastructure, together with elevated GPU capability, will proceed to help superior workloads, and companies can proceed to customise their cloud journey by means of our hybrid and multicloud options like Azure Arc, guaranteeing seamless operations throughout environments.
To learn extra about Forrester’s analysis, go to the full report right here. To be taught extra about our newest improvements in AI and cloud and the way Azure can remodel what you are promoting, go to our Azure web page or discover our hybrid cloud options.