Microsoft announced a series of new Azure services and developer technologies that put advanced capabilities spanning AI, mixed reality, IoT and blockchain in the hands of developers. The company will share these and additional advancements in hybrid cloud and edge computing at its Microsoft Build conference.
“It’s an incredible time to be a developer. From building AI and mixed reality into apps to leveraging blockchain for solving commercial business problems, developers’ skillsets and impact are growing rapidly,“ said Scott Guthrie, executive vice president, Microsoft Cloud and AI Group. “Today we’re delivering innovative Azure services for developers to build the next generation of apps. With 95% of Fortune 500 customers running on Azure, these innovations can have far-reaching impact.“
Microsoft announced a new set of Azure AI technology aimed to help developers and data scientists apply AI to any solution. The company is launching a new Cognitive Services category, called “Decision,“ that delivers users a specific recommendation for more informed and efficient decision-making, and a new service called Personalizer, which uses reinforcement learning to provide users with a specific recommendation to enable quick and informed decision-making. Microsoft is bringing AI to Azure Search with the general availability of the cognitive search capability. New innovations in Azure Machine Learning simplify the process of building, training and deploying machine learning models.
The company introduced several new products and solutions that continue to address the existing and emerging needs of hybrid cloud and edge computing. Azure SQL Database Edge will support the spectrum of edge compute needs. IoT Plug and Play is a new open modeling language to seamlessly connect IoT devices to the cloud, enabling developers to navigate one of the biggest challenges they face deploying IoT solutions at scale. For mixed-reality development, Microsoft is making it easier to create for HoloLens 2 with the HoloLens 2 Development Edition, which provides the community of mixed-reality developers with access to solutions to help them build and run mixed-reality experiences across a range of devices. Unreal Engine 4 support for streaming and native platform integration for HoloLens 2 will be available for developers by the end of May.
More than 6,000 developers and content creators will join Microsoft in Seattle this week for the conference to learn about the latest advancements in cloud and developer technologies, as well as get hands-on experience with them. Announcements give developers of all kinds new cutting-edge tools to create the next generation of applications for intelligent cloud and intelligent edge. There will be even more showcased this week at Build.
AgentOS is Infobip’s response to a phase in which agents are becoming an important tool for process automation and customer communication. Krešo Žmak says the market is still at an early stage, but clients are moving away from AI for the sake of innovation and towards measurable results. The next challenge will be controlling costs, user experience, and the nondeterministic nature of agentic systems.
Telecom operators approach AI from two directions: as providers of infrastructure for the digital transformation of other industries and as organisations embedding AI into their own processes. A1 Hrvatska has moved from prototypes to concrete products, from customer support to sovereign European cloud services. Daniel Šimić says workforce profiles are also changing, with fast learning, customer understanding and adaptability becoming more important.
Burra was created as a platform for consolidating IT services companies in Southeast Europe, with a commercial focus on Western Europe and the United States. Its first members, Devōt, Tacta and CoreLine, continue to run their existing businesses while integration is planned gradually, primarily through new projects. Sven Marušić says the aim is not to turn founders into corporate employees, but to build a larger organisation in which they remain shareholders and drivers of growth.
