Latest News in the category AI
A news aggregator from various RSS feeds, like technology, gaming, development and general news sites.
Tencent Open-Sources TencentDB Agent Memory: A 4-Tier Local Memory Pipeline for AI Agents
Tencent has open-sourced TencentDB Agent Memory, a fully local memory system for AI agents released under the MIT license. The project pairs symbolic short-term memory, which offloads verbose tool logs into a compact Mermaid task canvas, with a 4-tier long-term memory pyramid (L0 Conversation → L1 Atom → L2 Scenario → L3 Persona). It ships as an OpenClaw plugin and a Hermes Docker image, runs on local SQLite + sqlite-vec by default, and uses hybrid BM25 + vector retrieval with RRF fusion. Ten...
23/05/2026
Build a SuperClaude Framework Workflow with Commands, Agents, Modes, and Session Memory
In this tutorial, we build an advanced workflow using the SuperClaude Framework as a structured layer on top of the Anthropic API. The post Build a SuperClaude Framework Workflow with Commands, Agents, Modes, and Session Memory appeared first on MarkTechPost.
23/05/2026
Nous Research Releases Contrastive Neuron Attribution (CNA): Sparse MLP Circuit Steering Without SAE Training or Weight Modification
Nous Research releases Contrastive Neuron Attribution (CNA), a method that identifies and ablates sparse MLP neuron circuits to steer LLM behavior — no sparse autoencoder training, no weight modification, and no degradation of general capability benchmarks.The post Nous Research Releases Contrastive Neuron Attribution (CNA): Sparse MLP Circuit Steering Without SAE Training or Weight Modification appeared first on MarkTechPost.
23/05/2026
Perplexity Open-Sources Bumblebee: A Read-Only Supply-Chain Scanner for Developer Endpoints
Perplexity has open-sourced Bumblebee, an internal security tool it uses to protect the developer systems behind its search product, Comet, and Computer. Bumblebee is a read-only inventory collector for macOS and Linux developer endpoints. It scans npm, PyPI, Go modules, MCP configs, editor extensions, and browser extensions — without invoking any package manager or running any code. The post
23/05/2026
Title Plan Update - May 22, 2026
📁May 22, 2026 - Title Plan Now Available Access the latest Instructor-Led Training (ILT) updates anytime at
22/05/2026
May update: What’s New in Azure for Partners
Guiding customers through their AI transformation is not just about delivering technology but shepherding them into a new era of AI-powered productivity. From migrations and modernization to innovation at scale, partners have a profound opportunity to help their customers usher in Frontier Transformation while creating long-term business by building and deploying intelligent apps and agents.
22/05/2026
Redefining Security for an AI Driven World
Vendors are being challenged to help customers address these challenges not as a point-solution vendor but as an end-to-end security and AI platform partner. By integrating identity, data governance, threat protection, and AI services into a unified ecosystem, Microsoft can deliver coordinated defenses, continuous compliance monitoring, and operational efficiency gains that fragmented toolsets cannot match. The sections that follow examine each chall...
22/05/2026
Striking the Right Balance: ECN and PFC Thresholds for AI Clusters
Introduction In large-scale AI training clusters, congestion control is critical to maintaining high GPU utilization and low job completion times. Two key mechanisms in RoCEv2 (RDMA over Converged Ethernet) fabrics are Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) and Priority Flow Control (PFC). Overly aggressive tuning of ECN marking and PFC pause thresholds – tightening them too much – often backfires. Instead of reducing jitter and tail latency, it can cause instability: pause ...
22/05/2026
Regex support for LOB types in T-SQL—available in Azure SQL & SQL Server 2025
At a glance — Native regular expression (regex) functions in T-SQL now accept varchar(max) and nvarchar(max) inputs of up to 2 MB across all seven regex functions, including the two table-valued functions (REGEXP_MATCHES and REGEXP_SPLIT_TO_TABLE). This capability ships in
22/05/2026
A Step-by-Step Coding Tutorial to Implement GBrain: The Self-Wiring Memory Layer Built by Y Combinator’s Garry Tan for AI Agents
AI agents start every session from zero — no memory of meetings, notes, or decisions.GBrain, the open-source memory layer Y Combinator's Garry Tan built to power his own OpenClaw and Hermes deployments, fixes that with a markdown-first knowledge graph that wires itself through regex inference, not LLM calls.This step-by-step coding tutorial walks through installing GBrain v0.38.2.0, building a brain repo, running hybrid search, and connecting it to Claude Code via MCP — about 20 minutes, all terminal output captured live.
22/05/2026
Learn how to host your agents on Microsoft Foundry
We just concluded Host your agents on Foundry, a three-part livestream series where we explored how to deploy and host Python AI agents on Microsoft Foundry: Deploying Python agents to Foundry Hosted agents using the Azure Developer CLI Building hosted agents with Microsoft Agent Framework, including Foundry IQ integration and multi-agent workflows Building hosted agents with LangChain + LangGraph
22/05/2026
Monitoring & Observability in Microsoft Foundry
Production AI is a moving target. Once you deploy an AI-powered agent, its behavior can shift without a single line of code being changed. As Microsoft's Foundry team states: "The hard part isn't getting the agent to work it's keeping it working". Microsoft addressed this challenge by making Evaluations, Monitoring, and Tracing in Microsoft Foundry generally available through Foundry Control Plane, deeply integrated with Azure Monitor so A...
22/05/2026
Announcing mssql-django 1.7.2
We're pleased to announce the release of mssql-django 1.7.2, a patch release that ships three targeted bug fixes for the Django backend for Microsoft SQL Server and Azure SQL. This release focuses on correctness: timezone-aware datetimes, QuerySet.explain() on Django 4.0+, and exception handling in a test utility. Install or upgrade from PyPI: pip install --upgrade mssql-django
22/05/2026
Building Community-First Events: Lessons from M365 Community Days DC
I’ve helped organize a number of community events over the years, but this one stood out. Not because everything went perfectly—it didn’t—but because of how consistently the community showed up, stepped in, and made the experience better than anything we could have planned. That’s when it really clicked: the goal isn’t just to run a great event. It’s to build something people feel ownership in. 300 attendees · 50 speakers · 44 sessions · 20 MVPs · 15 MCTs · 14 ...
22/05/2026
From Scale to Breakthrough: Azure NetApp Files Sets a New Cloud Benchmark for EDA Performance
Table of Contents Introduction New benchmark proof with large volume breakthrough mode What is Azure NetApp Files large volume breakthrough mode?
22/05/2026
Foundry IQ as a Shared Knowledge Brain for Multiple AI Agents
When we build AI agents today, the hardest part is often not reasoning or generation — it’s giving agents access to the right knowledge. In many projects, each agent ends up with its own retrieval logic, its own indexed data, or its own RAG pipeline. This quickly becomes hard to manage and inconsistent. This is where Foundry IQ in Microsoft Foundry introduces a useful shift:it acts as a shared knowledge brain that multiple AI a...
22/05/2026
Custom KEDA Scale Rules for Azure Functions on Azure Container Apps
Announcing Custom KEDA Scale Rules for Azure Functions on Container Apps We're excited to announce a new capability for Azure Functions on Container Apps: custom KEDA scale rule overrides. You can now bypass the platform's auto-generated scaling rules and define your own KEDA configuration - giving you full control over how your function apps scale. Why We Built This Azure Functions on Container Apps automatically generates KEDA scale rules from your function triggers...
22/05/2026
AI Infrastructure Preflight at User space: Validating Multi Node, Multi GPU Slurm Clusters
Every team that operates GPU clusters for AI has seen this pattern. The cluster boots, GPUs are visible, and scheduling works at a basic level. Then the first distributed training run stalls in NCCL initialization, fails during rank rendezvous, or silently maps ranks to the wrong devices. The issue is often not in training code. It is in infrastructure consistency across scheduler, runtime, drivers, networking, and process topology. The goal of ai-infra-validator is straightforward:
22/05/2026
CI/CD for AI Agents on Microsoft Foundry
Introduction Building an AI agent is the straightforward part. Shipping it reliably to production with version control, evaluation-driven quality gates, multi-environment promotion, and enterprise governance is where most teams run into friction. Microsoft Foundry changes this. It is Microsoft's AI app and agent factory: a fully managed platform for building, deploying, and governing AI agents at scale. It provides a first-class agent runtime with built-in lif...
22/05/2026
Microsoft Releases Fara1.5: A Family of Browser Computer-Use Agents (4B/9B/27B) That Outperform OpenAI Operator and Gemini 2.5 Computer Use on Online-Mind2Web
Microsoft Research released Fara1.5, a family of browser computer-use agents in 4B, 9B, and 27B sizes. Fara1.5-27B scores 72% on Online-Mind2Web, outperforming OpenAI Operator, Gemini 2.5 Computer Use, and Yutori Navigator n1. The release also includes FaraGen1.5, a synthetic data pipeline that trains agents on gated The post
22/05/2026
Build Recurrent-Depth Transformers with OpenMythos for MLA, GQA, Sparse MoE, and Loop-Scaled Reasoning
In this tutorial, we explore OpenMythos by building an advanced recurrent-depth transformer workflow that runs end-to-end in Google Colab. We create both MLA and GQA model variants, compare their parameter counts, and check the stability of the recurrent injection matrix through its spectral radius. The post Build Recurrent-Depth Transfo...
22/05/2026
When RAG Hits the Wall: Designing Systems That Scale from 1,000 to 1 million Documents
Introduction Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) has quickly become the default architecture for grounding Large Language Models (LLMs) in enterprise data. And at small scale, it works exceptionally well. 100 documents → Excellent accuracy 1,000 documents → Still predictable With around 100 documents, RAG systems tend to produce highly accurate responses. Even at 1,000 documents, behavior r...
22/05/2026
Meet Dileepa Bandara
This is the next segment of our blog series highlighting Microsoft Student Ambassadors who achieved the Gold milestone, the highest level attainable, and have recently graduated from university. Each blog in the series features a different student and highlights their accomplishments, their experience with the Student Ambassador community, and what they are up to now. How has being part of the Microsoft Student Ambassadors community helped you connect wi...
22/05/2026
Meet Azmat Ullah
This is the next segment of our blog series highlighting Microsoft Student Ambassadors who achieved the Gold milestone, the highest level attainable, and have recently graduated from university. Each blog in the series features a different student and highlights their accomplishments, their experience with the Student Ambassador community, and what they are up to now. How has being part of the Microsoft Student Ambassadors community helped you connect wit...
22/05/2026
How CopilotKit Is Redefining the Agentic AI Stack in 2026
An inside look at CopilotKit’s 2026 shipping cycle. Learn how the new AG-UI protocol, AIMock testing suite, and Pathfinder server are providing the production architecture developers need for agentic AI. The post How CopilotKit Is Redefining the Agentic AI Stack in 2026 appeared first on MarkTechPost.
21/05/2026
Cloud Native Platforms: Build
For a system already in production and already in pain, the SRE community's hierarchy of reliability needs gives the most defensible starting order: monitoring and observability first (you cannot fix what you cannot see), then incident response (close the bleeding cleanly), then resilience patterns (idempotency, retries, decoupling) so the bleeding has fewer reasons to start, then flexibility and delivery so safe change can travel at speed.For a system being built fresh, the order in this post (flexibility, resilience, observability, delivery, cost) reflects the Azure Well-Architected Framework's emphasis on designing for change, failure, and visibility before scaling teams or workloads.Drop a comment with patterns you have seen in your environment.
21/05/2026
Cloud Native Platforms: Run
Audience: SREs (Site Reliability Engineers), platform engineers, engineering managers running production systemsPart 3 of this series argues that the same discipline applies again, in a different domain: the practices that make platforms operable are the practices that make AI useful in delivery.Drop a comment with patterns you have seen in your environment.
21/05/2026
Cloud Native Platforms: Evolve
Planning, design, development, testing, release, and operations are all being augmented at once.The disciplines that make platforms scale are the same disciplines that make AI useful.Drop a comment with patterns you have seen in your environment.
21/05/2026
Qwen Introduces Qwen3.7-Max: A Reasoning Agent Model With a 1M-Token Context Window
Alibaba's Qwen team introduced Qwen3.7-Max at the 2026 Alibaba Cloud Summit, describing it as its most advanced and comprehensive agent model to date.The model features a 1M-token context window, extended-thinking mode, and is designed for long-horizon tasks including coding, debugging, and multi-step workflow automation.It scored 56.6 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, ranking fifth overall among proprietary models.
21/05/2026
Capturing clinical conversations across dozens of languages with Dragon Copilot
Language can shape trust, understanding, and the patient experience Patient care doesn’t happen in just one language. To better reflect the diversity of patients and communities’ physicians’ serve, Dragon Copilot now supports dozens of languages, enabling clinicians to capture clinical conversations naturally without changing how they document care. This expanded capability helps physicians engage more confidently with diverse patient populations, transition smoothly from one appoint...
21/05/2026
Cohere Releases Command A+: A 218B Sparse MoE Model for Agentic Workflows That Runs on as Few as Two H100 GPUs
Cohere releases Command A+, an open-source 218B Sparse Mixture-of-Experts model consolidating four prior Command A variants into one. It runs on as few as two H100 GPUs at W4A4 quantization, supports 48 languages, and is Cohere's first multimodal reasoning model. The post Cohere Releases Command A+: A 218B Sparse MoE Model for A...
21/05/2026
When AI Should Ask for Help: Human-in-the-Loop Patterns in Microsoft Foundry
As AI agents become increasingly capable, modern applications are shifting from deterministic workflows to systems that can reason, adapt, and act. Platforms like Microsoft Foundry enable this transition by making it easier to orchestrate models, tools, and data into cohesive experiences. But greater autonomy introduces a new design challenge: Where should control remain with the system - and where should it return to ...
21/05/2026
Drive AI adoption with AI Skills Fest—build real skills, fast
AI Skills Fest (June 8–12) is a global week of practical AI skill-building designed for every audience—from business leaders to developers. Powered by AI Skills Navigator, it combines live shows, curated learning playlists, and hands-on experiences to help learners build confidence and apply AI in real-world scenarios. In addition, Training Services Partners (TSPs) are participating globally by delivering localized, language-specific events, making the experience acces...
21/05/2026
Teaching AI to Remember: Exploring Memory Store in Microsoft Foundry
Imagine interacting with an AI assistant that remembers your preferences - the tools you use, the projects you're working on, or even how you like your coffee. In many AI systems today, maintaining this kind of long-term memory isn’t straightforward. While models can understand context within a single conversation, remembering important information across multiple interactions requires additional infrastructure. That’s exactly the problem Memory Store in...
21/05/2026
WAR, Azure Advisor, and Us (Azure Arch Diagram Builder): Three Ways to Score an Azure Architecture
Author: Arturo Quiroga, Azure AI services Engineer - Senior Partner Solutions Architect — Microsoft A few days ago I published From Prompt to Production: Building Azure Architecture Diagrams with AI, introducing the open-source Azure Architecture Diagram Builder. One feature got more follow-...
21/05/2026
Shaping Copilot across Word, Excel, and PowerPoint
We’ve been working to make Microsoft 365 feel more connected and integrated with Copilot, available as a helpful thought partner, when you need it. We recently updated Word, Excel and PowerPoint with a consolidated, more visible entry point (Dynamic Action Button) at the bottom right of the apps that suggests actions from Copilot based on your document. You may have noticed similar entry points in other apps across Microsoft 365, all with a...
21/05/2026
MVP Mentoring Rings: Where Community Becomes a Catalyst
What if mentoring did not start with matching one expert to one learner, but with bringing a small circle of community leaders together to learn out loud? That is the idea behind MVP Mentoring Rings: small, community-led groups where Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) share experience, ask honest questions, and help one another grow. Unlike traditional one-to-one mentoring, Mentoring Rings are built around collective learning. The result is a model that feels both practical and deep...
21/05/2026
What's New in Microsoft Foundry Labs – May 2026
Four new releases this month — a new benchmark for how agents interact, an experimental end-to-end agentic stack, a faster image model, and a first-party geospatial model. Last month we kicked off this series with a roundup of new Foundry Labs releases across speech, vision, and multimodal AI. This month, we're back with another update — read on to see learn what's new! SocialReasoning-Bench: measuring whether AI agents ...
21/05/2026
You Can Build a Framework-Agnostic AI Gateway on Azure App Service — Here's How
The agent infrastructure conversation moved this year. In October 2025, AWS shipped Amazon Bedrock AgentCore — a managed agent runtime with per-session microVM isolation, built-in long-term memory, native MCP support, and an opinionated policy engine. A few months earlier, Cloudflare shipped its
21/05/2026
Cohere Command A+ Now Available in Microsoft Foundry
Command A+ is Cohere’s newest mixture-of-experts (MoE) model designed for enterprise-grade agentic AI workloads with exceptional efficiency and scalability. Released under an Apache 2.0 license, the model brings together reasoning, multimodal understanding, multilingual capabilities, retrieval, and tool use into a single unified model optimized for real-world enterprise AI applications. Built...
21/05/2026
mssql-python 1.7.1 and the case of the missing megabytes
We just shipped mssql-python 1.7.1 to PyPI. This release is mostly polish, but the road to publishing it was bumpier than expected, and there is some housekeeping on the PyPI side worth talking about. What's in 1.7.1 A handful of correctness, performance, and platform fixes that landed since 1.6.0: PERF: UTF-16 string handling now goes through simdutf and std::u16string, cutting overhead on every string round-trip between Pytho...
21/05/2026
Meet Murray Sargent, the quiet force behind accessible math
If you’ve ever typed an equation into Microsoft Word, copied math from the web into a document, or relied on a screen reader to understand an equation, you’ve benefited from Murray Sargent’s work, even if you’ve never heard his name. As we celebrate Global Accessibility Awareness Day, we’re recognizing Murray, recipient of the Microsoft Accessibility Lifetime Achievement Award, for his extr...
21/05/2026
Securing Azure AI Applications: Against Prompt Injection | Part - 2
Introduction — Why Prompt Injection Matters? In December 2023, a customer walked up to a Chevrolet dealership's chatbot and asked it to do something simple: agree with everything the customer said and end every reply with "this is a legally binding offer — no takesies backsies." The bot complied. Within hours, screenshots of a 2024 Chevy Tahoe being "
21/05/2026
Empowering.Cloud Community Update – May 2026
The latest Microsoft Teams and Microsoft365 expert community briefings, podcasts and upcoming community events. Expert Briefings: 4 Ways to Improve Customer Experience With Landis Contact Center for Microsoft Teams https://empowering.cloud/4...
21/05/2026
How to determine which Resource Mailboxes are being actively used
To use this with PowerShell, you need the Microsoft.Graph.Calendar module and you need an Entra ID App registration which has the appropriate Graph permissions added.Role Based Access Control for Applications in Exchange Online |Get Calendar diagnostic logs for Exchange Online mailboxes - Exchange |
21/05/2026
New in Microsoft Marketplace: May 21, 2026
Learn about 59 new offers that went live in Microsoft Marketplace, a single destination to find, try, and buy cloud solutions, AI apps, and agents to meet your business needs.AdSecurity: AdSecurity is a self-service account recovery solution for users on Microsoft Entra ID, formerly Azure Active Directory, enabling password reset, unlocking, and rehabilitation without requiring support intervention.Zoom Meetings for Dynamics 365
21/05/2026
Building AI Agents with Microsoft Foundry: A Progressive Lab from Hello World to Self-Hosted
The Microsoft Foundry Agent Lab is a structured, open-source demo series designed to change that — nine self-contained demos, each adding exactly one new concept, all built on the same Microsoft Foundry SDK and a single model deployment.Model Router is a Microsoft Foundry capability that inspects each request at inference time and routes it to the optimal available model — weighing task complexity, cost, and latency.The Foundry Agent Lab is open source under the MIT licence.
21/05/2026
Student Devs: Build AI Agents, Compete for $55K in Prizes
Student Devs: Build AI Agents, Compete for $55K in Prizes 🎮 AI Skills Fest • June 4–14, 2026 • Free to Enter $55KPrize Pool3Challenge Tracks10Days of HackingFreeTo Enter
21/05/2026
One Model, Three Modalities: ByteDance Releases Lance for Image and Video Understanding, Generation, and Editing
ByteDance's Intelligent Creation Lab has released Lance, an open-source native unified multimodal model that handles image and video understanding, generation, and editing — all within a single framework, using only 3B activated parameters. The post One Model, Three Modalities: ByteDance Releases Lance for Image and Video Unders...
21/05/2026
AI Under Attack: A Defender's Guide to Memory Poisoning, Jailbreaks, and Evasion Techniques
Introduction AI-powered applications are transforming how enterprises operate - from autonomous agents that manage workflows to copilots that accelerate developer productivity. But as AI systems grow more capable, so do the adversaries targeting them. The rise of agentic AI, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and persistent memory in LLM-based systems has introduced a new class of security threats that traditional applicati...
21/05/2026
OIDC vs SPN: Securing Azure Deployments with GitHub Actions & Terraform
From Secrets to Trust: Modernizing CI/CD Authentication When building infrastructure pipelines on Microsoft Azure using GitHub Actions and Terraform, one design choice quietly determines your entire security posture: How does your pipeline authenticate to Azure? For years, the answer was simple:
21/05/2026
Clean up idle and always-failing Azure Logic App Consumption
The Logic Apps Management REST API is queried with OData — $top, $filter, the usual:The bucket is “ran in the window, but not a single Succeeded run in the window” — not “all runs are Failed”.api-version=2019-05-01 with properties.state = 'Disabled'), a cross-subscription mode that iterates az account list with a confirmation per sub, and a companion API-connection GC script that uses Resource Graph to join connections against workflow definitions in one query.
21/05/2026
What is a Forward Deployed Engineer: The AI Role OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google Are Hiring in 2026
OpenAI launched a $4B+ Deployment Company and Anthropic closed a $1.5B joint venture with Blackstone and Goldman Sachs — both built around the Forward Deployed Engineer model Palantir pioneered.The post What is a Forward Deployed Engineer: The AI Role OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google Are Hiring in 2026 appeared first on MarkTechPost.
21/05/2026
Announcing Public Preview of Argo CD extension in AKS Azure Portal Experience
We are excited to announce the public preview of Argo CD in the Azure Portal for Azure Kubernetes Service.With Argo CD now available directly in the Portal, teams can enable and manage GitOps without the complexity of manual setup.Enable Argo CD directly from the AKS cluster
20/05/2026
Ansible + Azure Arc: Manage Arc Extensions with New Ansible Modules
We’re excited to announce new modules in Ansible Galaxy that make it easier to manage Azure Arc machine extensions at scale.With the latest updates to the azure.azcollection on Ansible Galaxy, you can now deploy and manage Azure Arc extensions using familiar, declarative Ansible workflows.Azure Arc machine extensions power critical scenarios such as security, monitoring, update management, configuration and compliance.
20/05/2026
Meet Turbovec: A Rust Vector Index with Python Bindings, and Built on Google’s TurboQuant Algorithm
turbovec brings Google Research's TurboQuant algorithm to vector search, offering 16x compression and zero codebook training for RAG pipelines. The post Meet Turbovec: A Rust Vector Index with Python Bindings, and Built on Google’s TurboQuant Algorithm appeared first on MarkTechPost.
20/05/2026
Driving Engagement in Nonprofits with Viva Engage
Microsoft Viva Engage, part of the Microsoft Viva suite, provides a cloud-based, enterprise social layer within Microsoft 365 that enables nonprofits to build community, share knowledge, and foster engagement across geographic and organizational boundaries.Campaigns enable nonprofits to run coordinated, measurable engagement initiatives using hashtags and centralized tracking.Use Power Automate with the Viva Engage connector to enable event-driven automation and cross-system integration:
20/05/2026
Cumulative Update #5 for SQL Server 2025 RTM
The 5th cumulative update release for SQL Server 2025 RTM is now available for download at the Microsoft Downloads site. Please note that registration is no longer required to download Cumulative updates.To learn more about the release or servicing model, please visit: CU5 KB Article: https://learn.microsoft.com/troubleshoot/sql/releases/sqlserver-2025/cumulativeupdate5 Starting with SQL Server 2017, we adopted a new modern s...
20/05/2026
Cumulative Update #25 for SQL Server 2022 RTM
The 25th cumulative update release for SQL Server 2022 RTM is now available for download at the Microsoft Downloads site. Please note that registration is no longer required to download Cumulative updates. To learn more about the release or servicing model, please visit: CU25 KB Article: https://learn.microsoft.com/troubleshoot/sql/releases/sqlserver-2022/cumula...
20/05/2026
Summarized Gateway Prefixes for Route Advertisement in Azure Virtual Networks
Background Many Azure deployments follow a hub-and-spoke topology: one VNet is designated as the hub and holds the connection to on-premises (via ExpressRoute Gateway, VPN Gateway, or both), and workload VNets — the spokes — peer to the hub to reach on-premises and shared services. This centralizes gateway connectivity so many workloads can share a single ExpressRoute or VPN Gateway. However, in large hub-and-sp...
20/05/2026
From Coding Agents to Cloud Automation: AI-Assisted Customer Related Incidents in Azure Functions
On the Azure Functions team, we have been exploring how AI can help with investigating customer-reported incidents, root-cause analysis, and incident mitigation. This post shares our journey from early RCA agents to coding-agent-assisted investigations and cloud-hosted automation, and the lessons we learned along the way. Micr...
20/05/2026
How to Build Knowledge Graph Generation Pipelines From Text With kg-gen, NetworkX Analytics, and Interactive Visualizations
In this tutorial, we will generate knowledge graphs from plain text, conversations, and multiple source documents using kg-gen. We start by setting up the required dependencies and configuring an LLM through LiteLLM, then we extract entities, predicates, and relationships from simple text. As we move forward, we work with longer passages using chunking and clustering, […] The post
20/05/2026
Partner Blog | Registration is open for MCAPS Start for Partners
Partners best positioned for success in FY27 are those with a differentiated capability to operationalize AI with trust and intelligence as the foundation. MCAPS Start for Partners is designed to create clarity on Microsoft’s priorities, innovation, and investments for FY27, so you can convert this into practice growth, co-sell, and customer wins. It’s the annual moment to align early with Microsoft investments and go-to-market motions so your teams can focus, prioritize, and execute against what will shape customer conversations throughout the year. Bring the leaders who will turn priorities into outcomes across your sales, presales, delivery, and marketing teams.
20/05/2026
Partner Blog | Scaling partner-led growth in Europe: Multiparty private offers expand to new markets
Building on this momentum, starting May 27, 2026, multiparty private offers in Microsoft Marketplace will be available across 30 countries in Europe.This expansion makes it easy for partners to collaborate on deals, simplify transactions, and scale across borders. We are also continuing to expand beyond Europe, with multiparty private offers becoming available in Australia, Japan, and South Africa starting July 15, 2026.
20/05/2026
AI agents on Microsoft Fabric for faster retail merchandising decisions
For our latest in the Partner Spotlight series, we’re highlighting a partner building business-ready AI agents on Microsoft Fabric, so organizations can turn governed enterprise data into faster decisions and automated workflows.Our platform, Lucid Agents Hub, enables organizations to move beyond reporting and into automated, insight-driven workflows without moving data outside their existing security boundaries.[VA] Lucid Agents Hub is designed for teams who need to make frequent, high-impact decisions from large volumes of operational data especially merchandising teams, buyers, and store operations leaders in retail.
20/05/2026
Real-World Success Stories with PostgreSQL on Azure
Across healthcare, financial services, and AI startups, companies are navigating this journey on Azure Database for PostgreSQL: a fully managed, enterprise-ready PostgreSQL environment with 58% lower total cost of ownership (TCO) compared to on-premises deployments.This post walks through real customer stories that span the full arc, from lift-and-shift migration to production-grade AI agent development, illustrating how Azure Database for PostgreSQL supports scalability, performance, security, and AI-readiness at every stage.The result: scaling from roughly 500,000 users to 3.5 million+ users worldwide, with zero downtime during the cutover, completed in just three months.
20/05/2026
Agents League: The Esports-Inspired Hackathon Where AI Agents Battle for Glory
Agents League is here, a dynamic, esports-inspired developer challenge that brings the thrill of live competition to the world of agentic AI.Agents League is a week-long hackathon running as part of AI Skills Fest (June 4–14, 2026).Unlike traditional hackathons, Agents League combines live AI coding battles, asynchronous project submissions, and a thriving Discord community all competing for a total prize pool of $55,000 USD.
20/05/2026
Agentic Programming: A Roadmap
Here is the number that defines the current state of things:
20/05/2026
Native Database/Query Monitoring with Azure Database for PostgreSQL
Monitoring PostgreSQL Database Engine The PostgreSQL database engine provides multiple administrative views, which can be leveraged to capture metrics of activities inside of the database engine including, but not limited to, database activities, query activities, execution time, database resource locks etc for initial and deep analysis on database & query performance. Database Administrators should use these views and their corresponding metrics to perform initial level analysis...
20/05/2026
Fivetran, RedMane Technology, and WeAreDots deliver transactable offers in Microsoft Marketplace
Microsoft partners like Fivetran, RedMane Technology, and WeAreDots deliver transact-capable offers, which allow you to purchase directly from Microsoft Marketplace.Ervy: Ervy by WeAreDots is an AI-powered learning platform that delivers bite-size lessons in Microsoft Teams, with no separate login required.It helps human resources and learning and development teams turn SOPs, PDFs, and policies into interactive training;
20/05/2026
TLS Certificate Pinning and Best Practices in Azure Database for MySQL
Transport Layer Security (TLS) encrypts data in transit between client applications and the server and authenticates the service endpoint in client-server authentication. The server has no visibility into whether pinning is configured on the client. From the server’s perspective, the client either completes the TLS handshake or aborts it.While certificate pinning was historically used to reduce the risk of man-in-the-middle attacks, it introduces significant operational fragility in cloud environments, particularly during certificate rotations.
20/05/2026
NVIDIA AI Releases Nemotron-Labs-Diffusion: A Tri-Mode Language Model with 6× Tokens Per Forward Over Qwen3-8B
NVIDIA researchers have released Nemotron-Labs-Diffusion, a language model family that unifies three decoding modes in one architecture.The model supports autoregressive (AR) decoding, diffusion-based parallel decoding, and self-speculation decoding.It is available in 3B, 8B, and 14B parameter sizes.
20/05/2026
Bulk-configure diagnostic settings on Azure Logic Apps Consumptions
Bulk-configure diagnostic settings on Azure Logic Apps — without clicking through the PortalLA-BulkDiag is a small, single-file PowerShell script that does the whole job in one guided run.It enumerates every Consumption Logic App in a resource group, shows you which ones already have settings, lets you pick a scope (every bare LA / every LA / a hand-picked subset), and creates the diagnostic setting on each.
20/05/2026
Alibaba Qwen Team Introduces Qwen3.5-LiveTranslate-Flash: Real-Time Multimodal Interpretation Across 60 Languages at 2.8-Second Latency
Alibaba's Qwen team has released Qwen3.5-LiveTranslate-Flash, a real-time multimodal translation model that processes audio and video simultaneously.The model covers 60 input languages and produces speech output in 29 languages at 2.8 seconds of latency.Key additions over the previous Qwen3 version include real-time speaker voice cloning, vision-enhanced comprehension via lip movements and on-screen text, and dynamic keyword configuration for domain-specific terminology.
20/05/2026
Google Introduces Gemini 3.5 Flash at I/O 2026: A Faster and Cheaper Model for AI Agents and Coding
Google's Gemini 3.5 Flash beats its own flagship on coding and agentic benchmarks while running four times faster and at half the cost. The post Google Introduces Gemini 3.5 Flash at I/O 2026: A Faster and Cheaper Model for AI Agents and Coding appeared first on MarkTechPost.
20/05/2026
Signing in to Microsoft Foundry from OpenClaw using Azure AD: a smoother way to bring your models in
Signing in to Microsoft Foundry from OpenClaw via Azure ADAfter registration, every model call OpenClaw makes against Foundry reuses the same Azure-CLI-managed token cache: tokens refresh transparently, and access is gated by the Foundry resource's RBAC assignments rather than a static API key.Once you are signed in, OpenClaw will ask you to pick the Azure subscription that your Microsoft Foundry resource lives in.
20/05/2026
How to Visualize Your Azure AI Workloads Usage for Observability
This article assumes you already have an Azure Foundry project and resource deployed in Microsoft Foundry.Microsoft Foundry has a built in Monitor tab to view your model/agent usage.There's a pre-built AI Foundry dashboard ready to import.
20/05/2026
Golden Image Refresh for Virtual Machines and VM Scale Sets: Driving Consistency at Scale
Virtual Machine Scale Set (VMSS) deployments use a custom image that is baked on top of a Golden Image.The Golden Image version is pinned in the environment-specific Packer variables (pkrvariables) files.Refreshing a VMSS Golden Image involves baking a new custom image using an updated Golden Image version and deploying it via the VMSS pipelines.Use the operational pipeline to deploy the newly created custom image to the VMSS.After updating above code in provider.tf as part of manual upgrade then update the terraform code for new golden image.
20/05/2026
Applying Site Reliability Engineering to Autonomous AI Agents
If you practice SRE, you already have a mental model for running reliable production systems. You define SLOs. You track error budgets. You use circuit breakers to stop cascading failures. You run chaos experiments to find weaknesses before customers do. You treat every operational decision as a tradeoff between reliability and velocity. That mental model transfers directly to AI agents. It just needs four new ideas. In the
19/05/2026
Deploy with Confidence: Using Rule Impact Analyzer in Azure Virtual Network Manager
Introduction In a previous blog post, we described how Azure Virtual Network Manager (AVNM) enables central teams to enforce security admin rules across hundreds of virtual networks—bring consistency and governance to complex enterprise environments. But enforcement at scale introduces a new challenge: ...
19/05/2026
Upstash for Redis vs Supabase vs Neon: Which One Fits Vibe Coding Workflows in 2026?
Not all database platforms are built for the same job.Not all database platforms are built for the same job. Here is how Upstash, Supabase, and Neon actually differ — and which one fits your vibe coding workflow in 2026. The post Upstash for Redis vs Supabase vs Neon: Which One Fits Vibe Coding Workflows in 2026? appeared first on
19/05/2026
Zoom in or out of forms, tables, and queries when in Form View or Datasheet View
Access now lets you zoom in and out when you’re working with forms, tables, and queries in Form View or Datasheet View. Zoom in for a closer look at your data or zoom out to see more on screen at once. You can adjust the zoom level using the Zoom button on the ribbon, the zoom slider on the status bar, or keyboard shortcuts. Zoom is also available in Print Preview for reports. Zoom isn’t supporte...
19/05/2026
Public preview: Expanded coverage and unified management for SQL VA Express Configuration
SQL Vulnerability Assessment (SQL VA) is a core capability in Defender for SQL that helps customers identify possible misconfigurations, excessive permissions, and other deviations from security best practices through continuous scanning of their databases. Traditionally, enabling SQL VA on SQL PaaS resources required customers to provision and maintain a dedicated Azure Storage account to hold scan results and baselines. In addition, managing SQL VA across resource types required different A...
19/05/2026
Azure API Center portal is now generally available
What Is the API Center Portal? The API Center portal is a hosted, provisioned and managed by Azure, where developers across your organization can discover, explore, and consume APIs. The API Center portal provides a multi-gateway, organization-wide view of every API and AI asset (e.g. plugins, MCP servers, skills etc) Key Capabilities Search and filter your full API inventory. Developers can find APIs and AI assets by name or use AI-assisted sem...
19/05/2026
Google Launches Antigravity 2.0 at I/O 2026: A Standalone Agent-First Platform with CLI, SDK, Managed Execution, and Enterprise Support
Google used its I/O 2026 developer keynote to ship a meaningful architectural shift in how it packages AI-assisted development. The company announced Google Antigravity 2.0 — a standalone desktop application built entirely around agent orchestration alongside an Antigravity CLI, an Antigravity SDK, Managed Agents in the Gemini API, and enterprise support through the Gemini Enterprise […] The post
19/05/2026
Updated Secure Boot status report in Windows Autopatch
Do more with the improved Secure boot status report in Windows Autopatch. Now, you can gain better device-level visibility into certificate status, trust configuration, and readiness for Secure Boot certificate updates. New interactive certificate-level details fit directly into your certificate rollout workflow: Identify devices that aren't up to date. Use trust configurat...
19/05/2026
Agent Builder, Copilot Studio, or Azure AI Foundry: How We Decide for Every Client
Every client conversation starts the same way. Someone has seen a demo, attended an Ignite session, or read a press release. They want to build an agent. Then comes the question that derails more projects than any technical challenge: "Which tool should we use?" After deploying agents for clients across industries - insurance, professional services, manufacturing, public sector - we have developed a repeatable framework for answering that question. It is not bas...
19/05/2026
FabCon and SQLCon: MVP voices on community, connection, and showing up
FabCon and SQLCon bring together technical learning, product insight, and something just as important: community. Microsoft MVPs describe what stayed with them most - from hallway conversations and first-time introductions to practical sessions and friendships that keep growing long after the event ends. Their reflections show why t...
19/05/2026
Azure Arc Server April 2026 Forum
Please find the recording for the monthly Azure Arc Server Forum on YouTube! During the April 2026 Azure Arc Server Forum, we discussed: Public Preview of Essential Machine Management, learn more at aka.ms/EMM-blog and sign up at
19/05/2026
Agentic AI for Linux Operations on Azure: The Prompts
Try This Yourself: Agentic AI for Linux Operations on Azure At Red Hat Summit 2026, I handed GitHub Copilot CLI a terminal and asked it to deploy a full-stack application to RHEL 10 on Azure. Live. From a single prompt. No scripts, no runbooks, no pre-baked automation. The audience watched every command happen in real time and then played the app on their phones. This post gives you the prompts so you can try it yourself. Copy them, paste them into Copilot CLI, and watch what ...
19/05/2026
Securing AI Agents End‑to‑End: Connecting Purview DSPM, Agent 365, and the AI Security Dashboard
The Challenge:Organizations deploying Microsoft Copilot and custom AI agents face a critical gap: security visibility is fragmented across data protection, identity governance, and threat detection tools. While Microsoft provides powerful capabilities through Purview Data Security Posture Management (DSPM), Agent 365, and the AI Security Dashboard, practitioners often struggle to understand how these components work together to deliver ...
19/05/2026
Study and Learn Agent: your study coach, built for learning
It's 11 pm. A student is at the kitchen table with a chemistry problem they can't crack, an essay due tomorrow, and a quiz in the morning. They open their laptop, open an AI chatbot, and in thirty seconds, they have an answer, an essay, and a study guide. The thinking didn't happen. The grade might still come. That moment is why so many educators and IT leaders feel a knot in their stomach about AI in the classroom. The concerns are real, and we built with them firmly in view.
19/05/2026
Know before you go: Azure Managed Redis at Microsoft Build 2026
Microsoft Build 2026 is almost here, and this year’s event boasts a new format, as well as a deeper technical focus across key themes such as AI agents, cloud-native applications, data platforms, developer tooling, and intelligent infrastructure. The updates showcased at Build signal where Microsoft is investing next—and how customers can start preparing now. Whether you’re joining in person or online, this is y...
19/05/2026
From Prompt to Production: Building Azure Architecture Diagrams with AI
Author: Arturo Quiroga, Senior Partner Solutions Architect — Microsoft Cloud architects spend significant time translating ideas into architecture diagrams. They toggle between Visio, draw.io, pricing calculators, and documentation. According to the 2024 Stack Overflow Developer Survey, 61% of ...
19/05/2026
Admin Insights for Windows 365: Stay on top of what needs attention — now in public preview
With this in mind, we’re excited to announce Admin Insights for Windows 365, now in public preview, designed to help IT administrators quickly understand what’s happening in their environment and where to focus.IT administrators managing Windows 365 Cloud PCs rely on a range of signals—including reports, alerts, and device views—across the Microsoft Intune admin center to understand the health of their environment.Admin Insights surfaces dynamic insight cards in the Windows 365 management portal in Intune, based on changes and patterns across your Cloud PC environment:
19/05/2026
Choose how OneNote opens Microsoft 365 file links
I’m excited to share with you a new capability in OneNote for Windows and Mac that gives you more flexibility in how Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote file links open.Get more control over how links open in OneNoteYou now have a choice: links can open either in your browser or in the desktop app.
19/05/2026
Simplified access to Hotpatching enabled by Azure Arc for Windows Server 2025
With Windows Server 2025, we introduced hotpatch enabled by Azure Arc, delivering security updates to Windows Server across hybrid and multicloud environments – minimizing downtime (no reboot), accelerating protection, and unifying patch management.We are now taking it one step further to reduce the friction to deploying these critical updates: hotpatch enabled by Azure Arc is now available at no additional cost for Windows Server 2025.Yes, as of 15th May 2026 all billing for hotpatch has been stopped for all existing machines enrolled in hotpatch.
19/05/2026
Replacing IIS SMTP virtual server with Exchange Edge Transport
This blog post aims to present practical options to help you retire IIS SMTP and replace it with supported Microsoft solutions (because IIS SMTP virtual server is long unsupported).Assuming you have decided to decommission IIS SMTP and use the Exchange Edge Transport role for email relay, the next key decision is whether the Edge Transport server should be deployed on a domain-joined machine.If you have Exchange Online tenant, you can use your standalone Edge Transport to relay emails through Exchange Online by configuring your tenant MX as a smarthost in the Edge’s Send connector.
19/05/2026
Debugging Python apps on App Service with the new SSH helper aliases
You shipped a Python app to App Service. It worked in the demo. It works locally. In production, /chat is returning 502s — but /health is green, the deployment succeeded, the logs are quiet, and your laptop can't reproduce it. What you actually need is a shell on the running container so you can poke at DNS, env vars, installed packages, the listening port, and the AI endpoint your app is calling. The platform has had SSH for a while, but the playbook...
19/05/2026
Inside the new Intel‑powered Surface portfolio: A deep dive
Today’s work happens across locations, roles, and environments. Employees need to shift among focus, collaboration, and communication, often on the move. AI adds new opportunities to support new workflows, while modern threats raise the bar for security. Microsoft builds Surface devices to meet these complex conditions, engineering and validating hardware, firmware, and Windows as one. Building on these principles and our longstanding collaboration with Intel, we’re excited to announce...
19/05/2026
Sycor and Warrior Centric Health offer transactable partner solutions in Microsoft Marketplace
Microsoft partners like Sycor and Warrior Centric Health deliver transact-capable offers, which allow you to purchase directly from Microsoft Marketplace. Learn about these offers below:
19/05/2026
Security Review for Microsoft Edge version 148
We have reviewed the new settings in Microsoft Edge version 148 and determined that there are no additional security settings that require enforcement. The Microsoft Edge version 139 security baseline continues to be our recommended configuration which can be downloaded from the Microsoft Security Compliance Toolkit. Microsoft Edge version 148 introduced 16 new Computer a...
19/05/2026
Prompt Engineering for Agentic AI
You have probably spent time learning how to prompt AI well.
19/05/2026
Turn up the volume for AI Skills Fest— no wristband required
A week of live shows, community moments, flexible learning, and fun festival vibes, all to help you build skills that stick. AI is moving fast, which means a lot of us are trying to keep up in real time. I keep hearing the same questions: Where do I even start? How do I know what to focus on? Am I too late? If you’ve been thinking, I should probably work on my AI skills, you’re in the right place.
19/05/2026
Building AI Guardian Extension: AI Detection and Enterprise AI Security
Introduction Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot, and Google Gemini are rapidly becoming part of everyday enterprise workflows. Teams use them for code generation, documentation, analysis, support automation, and productivity enhancement. However, this accelerated adoption has also created a significant governance and security challenge: Shadow AI. Shadow AI refers to the unauthorized, unmanaged,...
19/05/2026
Rundeck – AWS Enterprise Rundeck Integration with Azure Runner
Architecture Overview Rundeck Server (AWS) → https://dev.rundeck.xyz.com Rundeck Runner (Azure Linux VM) Secure Communication over HTTPS (Port 4432) Optional Proxy for enterprise networks 1.Ensure that network connectivity is established between the Rundeck endpoint (dev.rundeck.xyz.com) and the Azure subnet over port 443. 2.Request the customer to create a Runner within a new or ...
19/05/2026
Best Enterprise Level Agentic AI Platforms for 2026
Enterprise agentic AI has moved from pilots to production in 2026. This guide ranks the top 10 platforms — Salesforce Agentforce, Microsoft Copilot Studio, ServiceNow, LangGraph, and more — with verified pricing, real adoption data, and honest constraints to help enterprise teams make the right platform decision. The post Best Enterprise Level Agentic AI Platforms for 2026 appeare...
19/05/2026
Confidence-Aware RAG: Teaching Your AI Pipeline to Acknowledge Uncertainty
Introduction Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) has become the standard architecture for grounding Large Language Models (LLMs) with enterprise data. By retrieving relevant documents before generating a response, RAG helps reduce hallucinations compared to relying on model knowledge alone. However, an important limitation r...
19/05/2026
Building a Terraform Drift Validator for Azure with Live Portal Verification
Architecture: This blog describes how to build a practical Terraform Drift Validator for Azure that compares three sources of truth: Excel sheet or design document containing expected Azure configuration Terraform state file representing IaC-managed deployed intent Live Azure configuration, verified both programmatically and through ...
19/05/2026
How to Build an Advanced Agentic AI System with Planning, Tool Calling, Memory, and Self-Critique Using OpenAI API
In this tutorial, we build an advanced agentic AI system using the OpenAI API and a hidden terminal prompt for the API key. We design the agent as a small pipeline of specialized roles: planner, tool-using executor, and critic, so that we can separate strategy, action, and quality control. We also integrate structured tools (calculator, […] The post
19/05/2026
Publishing readiness for AI apps and agents on Microsoft Marketplace
Your AI solution readiness for Microsoft Marketplace is based on how your system operates at runtime, how change is controlled over time, and how customers experience adoption, billing, and ongoing use.This post is part of a series on building and publishing well-architected AI apps and agents in Microsoft Marketplace. The series focuses on AI apps and agents that are architected, hosted, and operated on Azure, with guidance aligned to building and selling solutions through Microsoft Marketplace.You enroll in the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program and the Marketplace program and operate under a publisher identity and Seller ID.
18/05/2026
Meet MemPrivacy: An Edge-Cloud Framework that Uses Local Reversible Pseudonymization to Protect User Data Without Breaking Memory Utility
As LLM-powered agents move from research to production, one design tension is becoming harder to ignore: the more useful cloud-hosted memory becomes, the more private user data it exposes.Researchers from MemTensor (Shanghai), HONOR Device and Tongji University have introduced MemPrivacy, a framework that attempts to resolve this tension without sacrificing the utility that makes […]The post Meet MemPrivacy: An Edge-Cloud Framework that Uses Local Reversible Pseudonymization to Protect User Data Without Breaking Memory Utility appeared first on MarkTechPost.
18/05/2026
Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD’s) Frequency Bias and How Adam Fixes It
Modern language models are trained on data with extremely uneven token distributions.A small number of words appear in almost every sentence, while many rare but meaningful tokens occur only occasionally.The post Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD’s) Frequency Bias and How Adam Fixes It appeared first on MarkTechPost.
18/05/2026
Introducing Code Interpreters for Logic Apps
We have recently introduced support for Code interpreters inside of Azure Logic Apps.To solve this problem, we will build an agentic business process in Logic Apps that includes our new JavaScript code interpreter.In order to allow customer isolation, customers need to have an integration account attached to their consumption workflow.
18/05/2026
Safe Rollouts Start with Signals: Introducing Scorecards in Azure App Configuration
Today, we’re introducing Scorecards in Azure App Configuration in public preview.Scorecards are a new capability in the Feature Management that helps teams quickly identify which metrics were impacted by a feature rollout and use those signals to decide what to do next.Scorecards help teams view telemetry through the context of a rollout.
18/05/2026
Three Tiers, One Platform: Building Agents Together with the Build-Along Series
The Agentic Opportunity Agentic Platforms in Microsoft 365, Power Platform and Azure Every partner has agent ambition, but a single workshop format cannot serve every builder. Business makers want a fast win without writing code. Citizen developers want to orchestrate real processes across enterprise systems. Pro developers want a code-first surface with evaluat...
18/05/2026
How to Configure Temporary Access Pass (TAP) to Prevent Lockouts
As organizations move toward passwordless authentication and stronger identity protection, having a reliable fallback mechanism becomes essential. That’s where Temporary Access Pass (TAP) comes in. TAP provides a time-limited passcode that users can use to register passwordless methods—such as Passkeys (FIDO2), Microsoft Authenticator, or certificate-based authentication—without requiring their existing password or MFA methods.
18/05/2026
Spec-Driven Development for AI-Enabled Enterprise Systems
Spec-Driven Development for AI-Enabled Enterprise Systems How to make specs the single source of truth for your React frontends, backend services, data, and AI agents. If you are building an enterprise system with a React frontend, backend APIs and services, a database layer, and shared libraries, moving to Spec-Driven Development (SDD) can feel like a big cultural shift. For AI developers and engineers, though, it is a gift: stru...
18/05/2026
Turn Your App Service Web App Into a Self-Healing Agent: LLMOps Best Practices for Production
A user submits a prompt. The agent burns through 50,000 tokens looping on a malformed tool response. Another user trips a model rate limit and the agent silently fails. A bad prompt update goes out at 4 PM Friday and degrades success rate to 60%. Your APM dashboard shows green the entire time because none of that is a 500. This post walks through the LLMOps stack we built into a working reference sample on Azure App Service: the SLIs that matter for agents, a budget circuit breaker, pr...
18/05/2026
Partner Blog | Time to market wins: Building the Frontier partner practice
Customers are clear about what they want from AI now. They want to move from ideas to outcomes faster, and at enterprise scale. The experimentation phase is giving way to production expectations, and time to market is becoming a competitive advantage in how organizations transform. That shift creates opportunity for AI practice leaders in services partner organizations. Partners who can repeatedly take agentic solutions f...
18/05/2026
Launched: Microsoft 365 Adoption Hub Redesign
Driving successful adoption of Microsoft 365 Copilot is both art and science. This community is dedicated to taking your feedback and continuing to provide tools that support you in that role. Today we've done just that with the first release of our updated Microsoft 365 Copilot adoption hub that simplifies the experience and provides content for AI business users, AI Champions and AI Leaders.
18/05/2026
EVENT | Drive Frontier Transformation: Attend the engineer summit and work toward your badge
Accelerate your capabilities delivering Frontier Transformation with two exciting opportunities: the Frontier Transformation Engineer badge and the Frontier Transformation Engineer Summit. ...
18/05/2026
Say goodbye to planning bottlenecks with Microsoft Azure Migrate
Every migration starts with the same questions: what do we have, and where should it go? Getting from those question to a clear, execution-ready answer has historically taken weeks. From exporting spreadsheets and manually classifying workloads to running assessments, conducting cost analyses, and stitching everything together into a deck that feels outdated by the time it's presented, the&nb...
18/05/2026
Launched: Microsoft 365 Copilot Adoption Hub Redesign
One of the biggest barriers to Copilot adoption is people don’t always know where to start. Today, we released the first version of our redesigned Microsoft 365 Copilot business user hub. Take a look. We set out to simplify adoption by making the experience more practical and focused on key roles: AI Business User, AI Champion and AI Leader. Microsoft 365 Copilot adoption hub W...
18/05/2026
Don’t Start Your Application Upgrade by Changing Code
The first step of a .NET upgrade isn't code, it's assessment! That sounds obvious, but it isn't. When somebody tells you to upgrade an app, the instinct is to open the repo, bump the TargetFramework, update a few NuGet packages, and start chasing build errors, that feels like progress, but you're working without knowing what you signed up for. As we wrote at our previous posts, the Copilot modernization agent runs in three steps: assess, plan, execute. At each st...
18/05/2026
Easy Auth Configuration for Logic App Standard through CI/CD
Problem Statement When Easy Auth (Azure App Service’s built-in authentication and authorization) is enabled on a Logic App Standard, users frequently report that they cannot open the run history. Specifically, the inputs and outputs of the trigger and actions fail to load on the run details page, even though the workflow itself runs and the user has access to the resource. Backgrou...
18/05/2026
State Explosion Security Problem in AI-Era Software Supply Chains
Introduction To see why this problem scales so quickly, start with the smallest possible change: a single line of code. In modern software, even a tiny edit is rarely just a local modification. It can change execution flow, introduce a new dependency, expose sensitive data, or quietly shift the purpose of the package itself. What looks trivial in a diff can create a ma...
18/05/2026
Agent 365 connector: Monitor, hunt, and investigate AI agent activity in Microsoft Sentinel
As enterprises scale the use of AI agents, SOC teams need visibility into AI agent behavior. The Agent 365 connector, now in public preview, streams rich agent telemetry from Agent 365 into Microsoft Sentinel data lake. Agent activity, such as agent data exposure or access drift, is surfaced alongside other security data, giving SOC teams a unified view across digital environments. AI Agent actions are correlated with agent identity, endpoint, and cloud signals, enabling anal...
18/05/2026
Now in Foundry: Tongyi-MAI Z-Image-Turbo, with FLUX.1-schnell and SDXL base 1.0
This week's Model Mondays edition pairs three models available through the Hugging Face collection in Microsoft Foundry: Tongyi-MAI's Z-Image-Turbo, a new designed for lower latency on a single GPU and native bilingual text rendering; Black Forest Labs' FLUX.1-schnell, a 12B rec...
18/05/2026
Navigate changing hosting economics with the Microsoft Datacenter Optimization initiative
Hosting and hybrid cloud business models are under pressure as infrastructure economics change.The Microsoft Datacenter Optimization (DCO) initiative empowers you to move beyond legacy Services Provider License Agreement (SPLA)‑based operations and build a stronger, more resilient business—modernizing customer environments while unlocking new recurring revenue opportunities across Azure, hybrid, and AI‑ready services.This shift is about more than licensing alignment—it is about building a more resilient, differentiated, service-led business for the future.
18/05/2026
Now available: Close deals faster and transact at scale with auto activation for SaaS subscriptions
Auto activation for the SaaS products you sell in Microsoft Marketplace is now generally available.By default, the private offer will use the auto activation setting of the public offer.If you create a new SaaS plan with a unique plan ID for your private offer, you can explicitly turn auto activation ON or OFF.
18/05/2026
Help Shape the Future of Microsoft Teams for Small and Medium Businesses
Microsoft is inviting Small and Medium Business (SMB) partners to join the Teams SMB Partner Advisory Council (PAC) — a simple, low-effort way to share real-world feedback with the product team and help shape the Teams roadmap for SMB customers.Our Teams SMB Partner Advisory Council (PAC) brings together a Microsoft partners who:👉 Express your interest to join the Teams SMB Advisory Board
18/05/2026
You Can Scale MCP Servers Behind a Load Balancer on App Service — Here's How
The 2025-06-18 revision formalizes stateless HTTP transport (and the current 2025-11-25 revision keeps it), which means a single request carries everything the server needs to answer.That tiny protocol change unlocks something big: you can stick an MCP server behind App Service's built-in load balancer and scale it like any other web API.One azd up and you have a stateless FastAPI MCP server running on three App Service instances behind the platform load balancer, with a staging slot, Application Insights, and a k6 script that visualizes load distribution from the client side.
18/05/2026
"Not Available in Your Region" Isn't a Dead End: A Security Assessment of Global Deployments
Microsoft typically releases new and preview models on Global first, then expands into specific regions over time as capacity is built out.Global Standard is a secure, enterprise-grade deployment type backed by the same Azure controls you already rely on, with explicit contractual commitments on how your data is used.The data protection guarantees don't change because the model is newer or because regional capacity hasn't caught up — they're the same on day one of a new model on Global as they are on a model that's been deployed regionally for a year.
18/05/2026
Platform SSO during automated device enrollment is now generally available for macOS
Today, we’re excited to announce that Platform SSO (PSSO) during Automated Device Enrollment (ADE) on macOS is now generally available.This capability simplifies onboarding by enabling device registration and Platform SSO setup to occur automatically during enrollment, eliminating extra steps for both IT administrators and end users.Configure Automated Device Enrollment for macOS in your MDM solution.
18/05/2026
Building Vector Similarity Search in PostgreSQL with pgvector
Search works well when users know exactly what they are looking for, but it breaks down when intent is described in natural language.
18/05/2026
Microsoft Teams Recording goes “Missing”
Why recordings disappear The first thing to know is recordings are not stored inside of Teams. They are actually stored in OneDrive for regular meetings and in SharePoint for channel meetings. Reviewing Recordings and transcripts automatically expire, OneDrive and SharePoint monitor the expiration setti...
18/05/2026
Building a Controllable Inference Platform on Kubernetes with AI Runway
When enterprises move generative AI from demos to real business workloads, the hardest question is usually not whether a model can answer a prompt. The harder question is whether the whole system can run reliably, predictably, securely, and economically over time. This becomes especially important as major model providers continue to adjust token pricing, context-window pricing, batching discounts, and model tiering. That is where AI Runway becomes valuable....
18/05/2026
NVIDIA Introduces a 4-Bit Pretraining Methodology Using NVFP4, Validated on a 12B Hybrid Mamba-Transformer at 10T Token Horizon
NVIDIA introduces a 4-bit pretraining methodology built around the NVFP4 microscaling format — combining selective BF16 layers, 16×16 Random Hadamard Transforms on Wgrad inputs, 2D weight scaling, and stochastic rounding on gradients — validated on a 12B hybrid Mamba-Transformer trained on 10 trillion tokens, the longest publicly documented 4-bit pretraining run, with downstream accuracy closely tracking the FP8 baseline (62.58% vs 62.62% on MMLU-Pro). The post
18/05/2026
Getting Started with OpenSearch on AKS with AKS AVM and Helm
Co-authored by Chetan Vaja (Senior Cloud Solution Architect @ Microsoft), Ninad Kapse (Senior Cloud Solution Architect @ Microsoft), Vikas Gautam (Senior Cloud Solution Architect @ Microsoft), and Prafulla Wani (Principal Cloud Solution Architect @ Microsoft). Summary OpenSearch is a community-driven, open-source search and analytics suite used by developers to ingest, search, visualize, and analyze data. OpenSearch consists of a data store and search engine (OpenSear...
18/05/2026
Ultimate Guide to POSETTE: An Event for Postgres, 2026 edition
POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2026 is back for its 5th year: free, virtual, and unapologetically all about Postgres. No travel budget required and no jet lag involved. Just your laptop, a decent internet connection, and curiosity. This year the POSETTE 2026 sche...
18/05/2026
Understanding and building an Azure Hybrid Meshed Hub-Spoke Topology
A meshed hybrid hub-spoke topology Azure offers two main approaches to build network architectures. This article focuses on traditional networking (using VNets, peering, route tables, etc.), rather than Azure Virtual WAN. Why a hub-spoke topology? A hub‑spoke topology is the only way to control traffic flows while maintaining scalability, because it enforces a central point of connectivity and policy enforcement: ...
18/05/2026
Integrating Azure DevOps with VS Code Agent using MCP (Model Context Protocol)
🧠 What is MCP (Model Context Protocol)? MCP is a standard interface that allows AI agents to securely interact with external systems such as Azure DevOps/ With MCP: Azure DevOps capabilities are exposed as tools GitHub Copilot can discover, reason, and execute actions All actions happen with user consent and authenticatio...
18/05/2026
Build a Local Microsoft Sentinel Triage Agent in VS Code (Copilot + MCP)
Modern SOC work is not limited by data—it’s limited by the friction of collecting it. This post shows a local-first workflow that lets you investigate Microsoft Sentinel incidents from inside VS Code using GitHub Copilot Chat for reasoning and a small, deterministic MCP toolset for evidence retrieval and (optionally) approval-gated writeback. What you’ll take away: How to structure a Copilot + MCP triage loop that stays grounded in Azure evidence ...
18/05/2026
A Coding Implementation to Compress and Benchmark Instruction-Tuned LLMs with FP8, GPTQ, and SmoothQuant Quantization using llmcompressor
In this tutorial, we explore how to apply post-training quantization to an instruction-tuned language model using llmcompressor. We start with an FP16 baseline and then compare multiple compression strategies, including FP8 dynamic quantization, GPTQ W4A16, and SmoothQuant with GPTQ W8A8. Along the way, we benchmark each model variant for disk size, generation latency, throughput, perplexity, […] The post
17/05/2026
Vercel Labs Introduces Zero, a Systems Programming Language Designed So AI Agents Can Read, Repair, and Ship Native Programs
Vercel Labs has released Zero, an experimental systems programming language designed so AI agents can read, repair, and ship native programs without requiring human interpretation of compiler output.The language emits JSON diagnostics with stable codes and typed repair metadata, enforces capability-based I/O at compile time, and compiles to sub-10 KiB native binaries.
17/05/2026
A Coding Guide Implementing SHAP Explainability Workflows with Explainer Comparisons, Maskers, Interactions, Drift, and Black-Box Models
In this tutorial, we implement SHAP workflows as a practical framework for interpreting machine learning models beyond basic feature-importance plots.We start by training tree-based models and then compare different SHAP explainers, including Tree, Exact, Permutation, and Kernel methods, to understand how accuracy and runtime change across model-aware and model-agnostic approaches.We also examine how […]
17/05/2026
Nous Research Proposes Lighthouse Attention: A Training-Only Selection-Based Hierarchical Attention That Delivers 1.4–1.7× Pretraining Speedup at Long Context
Nous Research has published Lighthouse Attention, a selection-based hierarchical attention mechanism that wraps around standard scaled dot-product attention during pretraining and is removed afterward.Unlike prior methods such as NSA and HISA that pool only keys and values, Lighthouse pools Q, K, and V symmetrically across a multi-resolution pyramid, reducing the attention call from O(N·Tested on a 530M Llama-3-style model at 98K context, it achieves a 1.40–1.69× end-to-end wall-clock speedup against a cuDNN SDPA baseline with matching or lower final training loss.
16/05/2026
Meet LiteLLM Agent Platform: A Kubernetes-Based, Self-Hosted Infrastructure Layer for Isolated Agent Sandboxes and Persistent Session Management in Production
Running AI agents in a local script is straightforward.BerriAI, the company behind the LiteLLM AI Gateway, is now open-sourcing a purpose-built answer to that problem: the LiteLLM Agent Platform.The platform is described as a […]
16/05/2026
NVIDIA Introduces SANA-WM: A 2.6B-Parameter Open-Source World Model That Generates Minute-Scale 720p Video on a Single GPU
Researchers from NVIDIA introduce SANA-WM, an open-source camera-controlled world model that generates 60-second, 720p videos with precise 6-DoF camera control — trained on 64 H100 GPUs and deployable on a single RTX 5090.The post NVIDIA Introduces SANA-WM: A 2.6B-Parameter Open-Source World Model That Generates Minute-Scale 720p Video on a Single GPU appeared first on MarkTechPost.
16/05/2026
How to Build Repository-Level Code Intelligence with Repowise Using Graph Analysis, Dead-Code Detection, Decisions, and AI Context
In this tutorial, we explore how to use Repowise to build repository-level intelligence for the itsdangerous Python project in a practical and reproducible way.We start with an already cloned repository, configure Repowise using the available LLM credentials, and initialize its indexing pipeline.We then inspect the generated .repowise artifacts, analyze the repository graph with […]
16/05/2026
How to Build an MCP Style Routed AI Agent System with Dynamic Tool Exposure Planning, Execution, and Context Injection
In this tutorial, we build a fully functional MCP-style routed agent system from scratch, combining tool discovery, intelligent routing, structured planning, and execution into a single cohesive workflow.We start by setting up a modular tool server that exposes capabilities such as web search, local retrieval, dataset loading, and Python execution, all defined through structured […]The post How to Build an MCP Style Routed AI Agent System with Dynamic Tool Exposure Planning, Execution, and Context Injection appeared first on MarkTechPost.
15/05/2026
Zyphra Releases ZAYA1-8B-Diffusion-Preview: The First MoE Diffusion Model Converted From an Autoregressive LLM With Up to 7.7x Speedup
Zyphra's latest release shows that an autoregressive MoE model can be converted into a discrete diffusion model with no systematic loss in evaluation performance.ZAYA1-8B-Diffusion-Preview achieves up to 7.7x inference speedup over autoregression by shifting decoding from memory-bandwidth bound to compute-bound — a key advantage as modern GPUs continue scaling FLOPs faster than memory bandwidth.The post Zyphra Releases ZAYA1-8B-Diffusion-Preview: The First MoE Diffusion Model Converted From an Autoregressive LLM With Up to 7.7x Speedup appeared first on MarkTechPost.
15/05/2026
From Copilots to Coworkers: How AI Agents Are Transforming Azure Networking Operations
Azure operates one of the largest physical networks on the planet.Instead of adding more scripts or expanding brittle automation, we redesigned how coordination work gets done by making AI agents first-class participants in day-to-day operations.Several changes follow when agents become the default coordination layer across incidents, repairs, and workflows:
15/05/2026
Writeback for Cloud-Managed Remote Mailboxes: Now in Public Preview
Writeback for Cloud-Managed Remote Mailboxes is now in Public Preview.For customers with no remaining dependency on their last Exchange Server, a guide for decommissioning your last Exchange Server is now published on Microsoft Learn.With writeback enabled, changes made in Exchange Online to designated Exchange attributes are automatically pushed back to on-premises Active Directory through Microsoft Entra Cloud Sync.
15/05/2026
Title Plan Update - May 15, 2026
📁May 15, 2026 - Title Plan Now AvailableAccess the latest Instructor-Led Training (ILT) updates anytime at http://aka.ms/Courseware_Title_Plan to ensure you're always working from the most current version.📌 Reminder: To help you stay informed more quickly and consistently, we’ve moved to a weekly publishing cadence for the title plan.
15/05/2026
Designing AI-Driven Observability for Trustworthy Agentic AI Systems
They are agentic AI systems (autonomous, multi-step agents that can plan, reason, invoke tools, and adapt in real time), which fundamentally changes what must be observed.Traditional observability built for servers and microservices cannot tell you whether an AI agent's output is correct, safe, or cost-efficient.Microsoft Foundry is described as "the AI app and agent factory" - a unified, interoperable platform for building, optimizing, and governing AI apps and agents.
15/05/2026
New Microsoft Certified: Cloud and AI Security Engineer Associate Certification
Exam SC‑500 (beta) helps you demonstrate your skills across identity, data, compute, and threat defense.Introducing the Microsoft Certified: Cloud and AI Security Engineer Associate certification.This new certification validates your ability to design and implement end-to-end security controls across cloud environments using modern, enterprise-ready security patterns.
15/05/2026
Test Automation at Scale: Lessons Learned from Enterprise projects
In large enterprise programs, test automation succeeds not by writing more scripts, but by engineering automation as a scalable quality system.In this blog, I have shared practical lessons from automation at scale, covering risk-based coverage, flakiness, observability, QA judgment, and how AI is now helping teams improve test design, coverage intelligence, failure triage, and maintenance.The future of enterprise test automation is not simply about building larger suites.
15/05/2026
New SSH helper aliases for Python apps on Azure App Service for Linux
To make that experience simpler for Python apps on Azure App Service for Linux, we have added new SSH helper aliases for common app, log, networking, and Azure AI Foundry diagnostics.View available SSH helpers with apphelpWe have also added helpers for Azure AI Foundry scenarios.
15/05/2026
Simplifying FastAPI Deployments on Azure App Service for Linux
Deploying FastAPI apps to Azure App Service for Linux is now simpler.When a FastAPI app is detected, App Service automatically starts the application using Gunicorn with the Uvicorn worker class:When you deploy a FastAPI app to Azure App Service for Linux, you no longer need to configure a custom startup command in the supported runtime flow.
15/05/2026
Best AI Agents for Software Development Ranked: A Benchmark-Driven Look at the Current Field
The AI coding agent field in 2026 is more capable, more fragmented, and harder to benchmark than it looks.Claude Code leads on code quality at 87.6% SWE-bench Verified.But the benchmark OpenAI itself declared contaminated in February 2026 is still being used to rank these tools — including by the labs publishing their own scores.
15/05/2026
Microsoft 365 E7 & Agent365: From Where You Are to Enterprise AI at Scale
Microsoft’s response to this shift is Microsoft 365 E7, introduced on May 1, 2026.Microsoft Agent 365Agent 365 is not a standalone security solution, it is a control plane for AI agents.
15/05/2026
Supertone Releases Supertonic v3: On-Device Text-to-Speech Model with 31-Language Support, Fewer Reading Failures, and Expression Tags
The Seoul-based speech AI company ships its third generation of its on-device TTS engine, adding expressive tags, improved reading stability, and a 6× increase in language coverage — all while keeping the inference contract unchanged for existing integrations.The post Supertone Releases Supertonic v3: On-Device Text-to-Speech Model with 31-Language Support, Fewer Reading Failures, and Expression Tags appeared first on MarkTechPost.
15/05/2026
Privacy proxy in Agents with Microsoft Agent Framework Middleware
In the first part - Introducing PII Shield: A Privacy Proxy for Every LLM Call - we introduced PII-Shield as a privacy proxy that detects sensitive data, applies configurable anonymization strategies per entity, and reverses that anonymization once the LLM has completed its task.Together, these form a generalized implementation of the “Anonymize → LLM → De-anonymize” pattern introduced in the first post - now systematically applied to every LLM interaction and every tool call within an agent’s execution loop.Our findings show that PiiShieldChatMiddleware introduces a median latency overhead of approximately 70 ms per interaction, with a 99th percentile overhead of approximately 200 ms.
15/05/2026
Six Coding Agents, One Production System: A Field Guide to AgenticOps with AKS-Lab-GitHubCopilot
The new reality is agentic delivery: a team of named, scoped AI agents owns slices of your repository, each with its own tools, skills, and refusal rules.The microsoft/AKS-Lab-GitHubCopilot's five labs you ship ZavaShop — a multi-agent retail supply-chain control plane running on AKS + Azure Container Apps — and along the way you internalize an operating model you can carry to any project.There are two flavors of "coding agent" in the GitHub Copilot ecosystem, and this lab uses both.
15/05/2026
How to Build a Django-Unfold Admin Dashboard with Custom Models, Filters, Actions, and KPIs
In this tutorial, we build an advanced Django-Unfold admin dashboard.We start by installing Django, Django-Unfold, and the required dependencies, then we create a fresh Django project with a shop application.We configure Unfold with a modern admin theme, custom sidebar navigation, dashboard callbacks, product badges, tabs, filters, actions, and a custom admin homepage.
15/05/2026
Agent365: The Identity-First Control Plane for Scalable AI Agents
Microsoft Agent365 addresses this challenge by introducing a control plane for AI agents, built on Microsoft Entra, that enables organizations to manage agents using the same identity-driven approach applied to users and applications.One of the core innovations of Agent365 is the introduction of Entra Agent ID, which treats agents as managed identities within the directory. The transition to agentic AI introduces a new category of identity within the enterprise.
15/05/2026
Poetiq’s Meta-System Automatically Builds a Model-Agnostic Harness That Improved Every LLM Tested on LiveCodeBench Pro Without Fine-Tuning
Poetiq's Meta-System automatically constructed and optimized an inference harness for LiveCodeBench Pro using only Gemini 3.1 Pro — no fine-tuning, no model internals.The same harness, applied without modification to GPT 5.5 High, Kimi K2.6, Gemini 3.0 Flash, and four other models, improved every one of them.The post Poetiq’s Meta-System Automatically Builds a Model-Agnostic Harness That Improved Every LLM Tested on LiveCodeBench Pro Without Fine-Tuning appeared first on MarkTechPost.
15/05/2026
A Coding Implementation to Master GPU Computing with CuPy, Custom CUDA Kernels, Streams, Sparse Matrices, and Profiling
In this tutorial, we delve into CuPy as a powerful GPU-accelerated alternative to NumPy for high-performance numerical computing in Python.We start by inspecting the available CUDA device, checking the CuPy version, runtime details, GPU memory, and compute capability so that we understand the hardware environment before running heavy computations.Then, we compare NumPy and […]
14/05/2026
Cline Releases Cline SDK: An Open-Source Agent Runtime Now Powering Its CLI and Kanban, With IDE Extensions Being Migrated
Cline has extracted its internal agent harness into an open-source TypeScript SDK called @cline/sdk, the same runtime now powering its CLI and Kanban, with VS Code and JetBrains extensions being migrated.The SDK is structured as a four-layer stack — @cline/shared, @cline/llms, @cline/agents, and @cline/core — with native support for plugins, subagents, CRON scheduling, checkpointing, and MCP connectors.On Terminal Benchmark 2.0, Cline CLI scored 74.2% on claude-opus-4.7, compared to Anthropic's published 69.4% for Claude Code on the same model.
14/05/2026
After the Agent Acts: Proving What Happened and Who Authorized It
This post covers what post-hoc accountability means for autonomous agents, what the Agent Governance Toolkit has to help address it, and three value propositions that are real but not yet visible in how governance tooling is typically described.Add evidence generation to your CI/CD release gate:Open an issue at aka.ms/agent-governance-toolkit or join the conversation in the comments below.
14/05/2026
Leadership communication in the flow of work
This research (and our internal experience) consistently show that visible, two-way leadership communication is a key driver of trust, engagement, and successful change.Engage is designed to help leaders communicate once, in the right place, and stay visible in the flow of work without adding meetings or increasing email.Read about Microsoft executive Ravi Vedula’s Viva Engage adoption journey, and chart your own course.
14/05/2026
Building an AI-Powered Contract Price Adjustment Agent with Docusign MCP and Microsoft Foundry
The Model Context Protocol (MCP)—an emerging standard that fundamentally changes how AI systems interact with enterprise services.This entire system—from the first line of Flask boilerplate to a running Azure App Service—was built and deployed using GitHub Copilot in VS Code powered by Claude Opus 4.6.Just with one request to Github Copilot, it was able to take the base source code, built by Docusign Partner Solution Architects, to run locally, and deploy it all to Azure, from the App Service to the Foundry agents.
14/05/2026
Azure Monitor Health Model - API Refresh
Signals Enhancement for Azure resourcesAlert rules can be imported as signalsImport health reports and data annotations
14/05/2026
New Platform SSO with registration during Automated Device Enrollment on macOS
A new setting ‘Enable Registration During Setup’ for Platform single sign-on (PSSO) during Automated Device Enrollment (ADE) is now generally available for macOS devices in Microsoft Intune.Add Intune Company Portal as a macOS LOB app.Signing in multiple times during enrollment isn't the ideal experience, and we're actively working to streamline it with a new enrollment setting that enables users to complete both Intune enrollment and Platform SSO device registration with a single sign-in.
14/05/2026
From Idea to Production — Building Microsoft Security Store Advisor with an Agentic SDLC
Microsoft Security Store Advisor is a new AI assistant inside Microsoft Security Store that helps customers find security solutions and agents in natural language.The team behind it builds it with an Agentic SDLC.This is how that idea became a product — the engineering choices that gave AI an accountable role at every stage, and the lessons that shaped the system. We'll cover what an Agentic SDLC is, the five stages we ran Advisor through, what broke at each stage, and what we changed to ship.
14/05/2026
Modernizing TCP Applications with Azure Application Gateway Layer 4 TCP/TLS Proxy
The Layer 4 proxy capability in Azure Application Gateway helps organizations standardize ingress management for both HTTP and non-HTTP workloads using Azure-native services.Organizations migrating traditional applications to Azure may need TCP ingress without redesigning application communication protocols.Enterprises integrating on-premises applications with Azure workloads may also benefit from centralized TCP traffic management.
14/05/2026
Upcoming May 2026 Microsoft 365 Champion Community Call
Join our next community call on May 26, 2026, to explore the new Copilot Hub experience and learn more about Agent 365.The join link will be sent to you in email with your webinar registration confirmation.While our calls are open to everyone, you must be a member of the Microsoft 365 Champion Program in order to access the presentation materials - the access link is in the initial welcome email and the monthly newsletter emails sent the week before the community calls.
14/05/2026
Addressing Exchange Server May 2026 vulnerability CVE-2026-42897
Option 1 (recommended): Exchange Emergency Mitigation (EM) ServiceApply the mitigation on a per server base or on all servers at once by running the script via an elevated Exchange Management Shell (EMS):Microsoft is working on and will release and announce a security update for impacted versions of Exchange Server in the future.
14/05/2026
Event Guide - Microsoft at TechCon Chicago 2026
Building connections at TechCon 365 Chicago is at the heart of the experience, bringing together a dynamic community of professionals passionate about Microsoft 365 and the future of work.The Microsoft Community Booth at TechCon 365 Chicago is a space to connect directly with Microsoft product teams and Microsoft MVPs. Pick up some laptop stickers and giveaway.Mark your calendar for June 15 to 19, 2026 and come make Chicago part of your tech story.
14/05/2026
Microsoft Identity Manager 2016 SP3 now available: Enhanced stability for hybrid identity
Microsoft Identity Manager (MIM) 2016 Service Pack 3 (SP3) is now generally available.It also adds a new deployment option for the Synchronization Service: Azure SQL Database, with authentication through system-assigned and user-assigned managed identities to help reduce operational risk in hybrid identity environments.MIM 2016 SP2 will remain supported for 12 months (through May 2027), in line with the service pack support lifecycle policy.
14/05/2026
Partner Blog | Turn infrastructure disruption into a growth opportunity for your hosting business
Hosting and hybrid cloud partners are at one of the most meaningful inflection points the market has seen in years.Changes in virtualization licensing, rising infrastructure costs, and rapidly evolving customer expectations are reshaping traditional hosting economics.Market impact is expected to accelerate, and shifting data residency, sovereignty, and compliance requirements are driving customers to reassess where and how workloads run.
14/05/2026
How Microsoft Defender used predictive shielding to proactively disrupt a ransomware attack
Modern ransomware attacks are increasingly designed to blend in with normal IT operations, using trusted administrative tools to quietly weaken defenses and distribute malicious payloads at scale.In a recent real‑world incident, a human‑operated ransomware actor attempted to do exactly that by abusing Group Policy Objects (GPOs) to target hundreds of devices, but Microsoft Defender detected the attack and proactively hardened those devices before GPOs were deployed.Roughly 97% of devices the attacker attempted to encrypt were fully protected by Defender.
14/05/2026
OneDrive Office Hours | May 2026
Get ready for May’s OneDrive Customer Office Hours!Special Topic: What’s New in OneDrive Sync with Jack Nichols, Kayla Ngan, and Jonathan LeungFirst, 1 million item sync is in public preview on Windows.
14/05/2026
Open Model Inference at Scale on Foundry: What’s New with Fireworks AI
We launched the public preview of Fireworks AI on Microsoft Foundry two months ago, bringing best-in-class open model inference directly into Azure. The traction has been real and high. Fireworks AI's inference layer is purpose-built for low-latency, high-throughput production workloads, natively within Azure. If you're building on Azure and want the best open models without standing up your own inference infrastructure, this is built for you.Since launch, Fireworks AI on Foundry is seeing strong customer momentum, with customer count growing week-over-week and deepening enterprise penetration globally. Teams across industries have moved quickly from experimentation to production.We’re expanding provisioned throughput unit (PTU) support to the US Data Zone, giving US-based customers a path to predictable, steady-state performance with their data staying within US Azure regions.
14/05/2026
Easily identify Windows protected print mode compatible devices
As organizations work to modernize their print environments and reduce reliance on legacy drivers, Windows protected print (WPP) mode helps improve system security by enforcing the use of the Windows modern print stack and introducing additional security features.Printer with compatibility icon indicating support for Windows protected print mode.This update helps IT administrators quickly evaluate printer readiness for Windows protected print mode before enabling it across managed devices.
14/05/2026
Automatic Connectivity Tests for Azure SQL Managed Instance
To further enhance connectivity monitoring and improve service reliability, we’re introducing automatic internal connectivity tests for all Azure SQL Managed Instances.Automatic tests diagnose issues in internal service and network availability.You can read more about the automated connectivity tests at Automatic internal connectivity tests for Azure SQL Managed Instance.
14/05/2026
Goodbye Together mode, hello simplified meeting layouts in Microsoft Teams
Today, I’d like to share an important update: Beginning June 30th, the Together mode experience will no longer be available.As part of that ongoing effort, we’re retiring Together mode in Microsoft Teams.The Together mode toggle will be removed from the meeting View menu.
14/05/2026
April 2026 Recap: Azure Database for PostgreSQL
Before we dive deeper into the feature updates, POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2026 is just around the corner, PostgreSQL’s free, virtual conference bringing together the global community.New enhancements in the PostgreSQL VS Code ExtensionThe latest release (v1.21) of the PostgreSQL VS Code extension delivers enhancements to query authoring and analysis workflows, improved cross-extension interoperability, reliability improvements across Object Explorer and connection management, and a set of targeted bug fixes.
14/05/2026
Decoupling Memory from Startup Time in AKS Sandbox Pods
Before recent improvements in AKS Pod Sandboxing, large-memory pods could take over a minute longer to start than smaller ones.AKS Pod Sandboxing provides strong workload isolation by running pods inside lightweight virtual machines.With recent updates to the Azure Linux kernel used by AKS on Microsoft Hypervisor (MSHV), AKS has significantly improved startup time for large-memory sandboxed pods.
14/05/2026
Unexpected PITR Charges from restorableDroppedDatabases After BC → Hyperscale Migration
When migrating an Azure SQL Database from Business Critical (BC) to Hyperscale using a manual cutover, some customers notice unexpected Point-in-Time Restore (PITR) backup storage charges appearing under the following resource:After a BC → Hyperscale manual cutover, customers may see PITR charges tied to:Despite the database being active and available in Hyperscale, these charges start appearing immediately after the migration cutover and gradually decrease over time.
14/05/2026
Strategies to Share & Scale What You Learn at Flagship Microsoft Events to Bring Back Real ROI
Attending Microsoft Ignite or Build is a real investment - ticket, travel, time away from work and family, and mental bandwidth.That’s the core message I’d like to share: attending the conference isn’t the ROI - activation is.The ROI of attending a flagship tech conference is not purely financial - it shows up across multiple dimensions: knowledge, capability, network, strategy, and culture.
14/05/2026
New in Microsoft Marketplace: May 14, 2026
Learn about 66 new offers that went live in Microsoft Marketplace, a single destination to find, try, and buy cloud solutions, AI apps, and agents to meet your business needs.Codex Heatmap Matrix from Nexus Codex helps you spot patterns across rows and columns.VOSS Security Management for Microsoft Defender
14/05/2026
Work IQ | Data, Context, Skills & Tools for Copilot and Your Agents
Work IQ delivers data, context, skills & tools as the built-in knowledge layer behind Microsoft 365 Copilot and agents.Today, I’ll explain what Work IQ is, how it works, and show you what it can do.So, Work IQ is the brain behind Microsoft 365 Copilot and agents.
14/05/2026
Platform Improvements for Python AI Apps on Azure App Service
Azure App Service (Linux) is a fully managed PaaS offering that supports a broad range of languages, including Python, Node.js, .NET, PHP, and Java.The performance and reliability of the Python deployment pipeline directly shape the developer's experience on the platform, so we looked across the deployment path for opportunities to reduce latency and improve reliability.The first set of changes has reduced Python deployment latency on Azure App Service Linux by approximately 30%.
14/05/2026
Public Preview Update: Azure Copilot Observability Agent
The Observability agent is designed to be your monitoring companion across the full observability lifecycle, enabling you to interact via chat to better understand your observability data.The Observability agent is optimized for real‑world, full‑stack investigations in distributed systems - including environments built on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and Virtual Machines (VMs).To discover the root cause, the agent applies deep reasoning, using an innovative array of Machine Learning (ML) and Large Language Models (LLM) to discover and correlate anomalies across huge volume of signals across application, infrastructure, and Azure platform layers to converge on likely root‑cause candidates across scenarios such as:
14/05/2026
Genie in a Bot: Databricks AI/BI Meets Microsoft Teams
Your business users live in Microsoft Teams.We will explore how to connect Microsoft Teams to a Databricks Genie Space via an Azure AI Foundry agent.Users ask natural-language questions about campaign data — spend, clicks, conversions, ROI, audience segments — and the system translates these into SQL queries executed against a Databricks SQL warehouse.
14/05/2026
Nous Research Releases Token Superposition Training to Speed Up LLM Pre-Training by Up to 2.5x Across 270M to 10B Parameter Models
Nous Research releases Token Superposition Training (TST), a two-phase pre-training method that cuts wall-clock training time by up to 2.5x at matched FLOPs by averaging contiguous token embeddings into bags during Phase 1 and reverting to standard next-token prediction in Phase 2 — without changing the model architecture, tokenizer, optimizer, or inference-time behavior.Validated at 270M, 600M, 3B dense, and 10B-A1B MoE scales.The post Nous Research Releases Token Superposition Training to Speed Up LLM Pre-Training by Up to 2.5x Across 270M to 10B Parameter Models appeared first on MarkTechPost.
14/05/2026
Control runtime patch updates with Platform Release Channel on Azure App Service for Linux
Azure App Service for Linux is introducing Platform Release Channel, a new setting that gives you more control over when runtime patch updates are applied to your app.With this feature, you can choose how quickly your app moves to newly rolled-out runtime patches.Platform Release Channel gives you a simple way to control the pace at which runtime patch updates are applied to your Linux apps on Azure App Service.
14/05/2026
How to Build a Dynamic Zero-Trust Network Simulation with Graph-Based Micro-Segmentation, Adaptive Policy Engine, and Insider Threat Detection
In this tutorial, we build a realistic Zero-Trust network simulation by modeling a micro-segmented environment as a directed graph and forcing every request to earn access through continuous verification.We implement a dynamic policy engine that blends ABAC-style permissions with device posture, MFA, path reachability, zone sensitivity, and live risk signals such as anomaly and […]The post How to Build a Dynamic Zero-Trust Network Simulation with Graph-Based Micro-Segmentation, Adaptive Policy Engine, and Insider Threat Detection appeared first on MarkTechPost.
14/05/2026
TLS Certificate Pinning and Best Practices in Azure Open-Source Relational Databases
Transport Layer Security (TLS) encrypts data in transit between client applications and the server and authenticates the service endpoint in client-server authentication.When pinning is used, the client will only connect if the presented certificate chain matches exactly what it expects. However, the server has no visibility into whether pinning is configured on the client, and any certificate change (even a valid one) can cause connection failures.While certificate pinning was historically used to reduce the risk of man-in-the-middle attacks, it introduces significant operational fragility in cloud environments, particularly during certificate rotations.
14/05/2026
What's new in FinOps toolkit 14 – April 2026
FinOps toolkit 14 connects AI to your FinOps hub data with a Copilot Studio agent template, ingests recommendations from Azure Advisor and your own Resource Graph queries, simplifies hub deployment, and previews a new commitment discount eligibility dataset.This release is focused on three themes: connecting AI to your FinOps data with a Copilot Studio agent template, adding optimization recommendations to FinOps hubs from Azure Advisor and custom Resource Graph queries, and previewing commitment discount eligibility data for reservation and savings plan planning.The FinOps toolkit is an open-source collection of tools and resources helping organizations learn, adopt, and implement FinOps in the Microsoft Cloud.
13/05/2026
Enterprise AI Governance in 2026: Why the Tools Employees Use Are Ahead of the Policies That Cover Them
63% of organizations have no AI governance policy. Shadow AI is already running inside your stack — here is the data. The post Enterprise AI Governance in 2026: Why the Tools Employees Use Are Ahead of the Policies That Cover Them appeared first on MarkTechPost.
13/05/2026
Azure Policy: Modern Governance with Practical Recommendations
Azure Policy is one of Microsoft Azure’s most effective governance tools.It helps organizations enforce standards automatically, detect configuration issues early, and keep cloud environments aligned with internal policies and external regulatory requirements.This guide explains why Azure Policy matters, how it works, and recommended best practices for using it effectively, with a practical example and step‑by‑step guidance.
13/05/2026
Fastino Labs Open-Sources GLiGuard: A 300M Parameter Safety Moderation Model That Matches or Exceeds Accuracy of Models 23–90x Its Size
Fastino Labs has released GLiGuard, a 300M parameter open-source safety moderation model that evaluates four safety tasks — prompt safety, jailbreak strategy detection, harm category classification, and refusal detection — in a single forward pass. Built on an encoder architecture rather than the decoder-only design used by most guardrail models, GLiGuard achieves up to 16x higher throughput and 16.6x lower latency than current state-of-the-art models, while matching or exceeding the accuracy of models 23 to 90 times its size across nine safety benchmarks.Model weights are available under the Apache 2.0 license on Hugging Face.The post Fastino Labs Open-Sources GLiGuard: A 300M Parameter Safety Moderation Model That Matches or Exceeds Accuracy of Models 23–90x Its Size appeared first on MarkTechPost.
13/05/2026
From Pipelines to Agents: Self-Healing CI/CD Workflow
When an Azure DevOps pipeline fails, a webhook sends the telemetry and build logs to an Azure Function.Microsoft AI Foundry provides a standardized way to call Azure OpenAI.Microsoft AI Foundry provides the secure sandbox we need to let these agents work safely.
13/05/2026
You Asked—We Answered: Inside the Agent 365 AMA
If you missed our live Agent 365 demo and 'Ask Microsoft Anything' AMA—or want to revisit the discussion—this replay is worth your time.During the session, we walked through how Agent 365 brings visibility, security, and governance to the rapidly expanding world of AI agents—across both Microsoft and third-party ecosystems.But what made the session especially valuable was the live Q&A: a candid conversation with our experts tackling the real questions organizations are facing right now.
13/05/2026
NVIDIA Dynamo on AKS - Autoscaling LLM Inference
Large Language Models (LLMs) are rapidly moving from experimentation to production.In this post, we’ll walk through how Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) combined with NVIDIA Dynamo enables scalable, production‑ready LLM inference, and how to think about autoscaling GPUs effectively for modern AI workloads.Step by step notebooks available here:maljazaery/Dynamo_on_AKS: End-to-end tutorials for running NVIDIA Dynamo on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
13/05/2026
Computer-using agents in Microsoft Copilot Studio are now generally available
The gap is now closing. Computer use in Microsoft Copilot Studio is now generally available, and we're expanding availability to all commercial geographies in Microsoft Power Platform.Customer spotlight: Graebel automates global service order processing end to endWorking with GET AI and Microsoft, Graebel built and deployed the Graebel Service Order Agent, equipped with computer use, in Microsoft Copilot Studio.
13/05/2026
Announcing the general availability of Azure Integrated Hardware Security Module
Today we are excited to release general availability for Azure Integrated HSM for AMD v7 Virtual Machines.This feature is available in select AMD D and E series v7 sizes for Trusted Launch VMs.Azure Integrated HSM eliminates network roundtrips for key operations and avoids the need to release keys into the workload environment.
13/05/2026
New GitHub Certified: Agentic AI Developer
Be among the first to prove your skills in building intelligent AI-powered workflows with the new Exam GH-600 (beta).We’re looking for members of the GitHub community who are already exploring how AI agents fit into modern development workflows to help us test a new beta exam.GitHub Certified: Agentic AI Developer, is a new, role-based certification focused on how developers and teams operate, supervise, and integrate AI agents across the software development lifecycle (SDLC).
13/05/2026
Introducing Grok 4.3 on Microsoft Foundry: Latest Generation Agentic Capabilities
Customers building advanced AI systems increasingly need models that can reason deeply, act autonomously, and integrate reliably into real‑world workflows—all without compromising on governance or cost efficiency. Grok 4.3, xAI’s latest flagship model, is now available in Microsoft Foundry, giving developers and enterprises access to latest agentic intelligence within a production‑ready environment designed for scale.Grok 4.3 is xAI’s latest flagship model, designed to support agent-based and productivity-focused workflows across a wide range of professional scenarios. Based on information provided by xAI and independent research conducted by Artificial Analysis, Grok 4.3 demonstrates strong performance across multiple benchmarks, reflecting a favorable balance between model capability and reported benchmark cost.Grok 4.3 is purpose‑built for agentic systems, improving in tool calling, instruction following, and lower hallucination, as reported by xAI. Grok 4.3 also enables policy‑aware support agents with reliable tool use and consistent behavior across extended conversations. On Microsoft Foundry, Grok 4.3 supports up to a 200k token context window, enabling extended multi‑turn reasoning and agent workflows.
13/05/2026
Zero downtime migration from Oracle to Azure DB for PostgreSQL
Striim’s log-based Change Data Capture (CDC) continuously streams every Oracle transaction into Azure Database for PostgreSQL in real time to deliver zero-data-loss migration, continuous validation, and minimal impact on live applications.This tutorial walks through the architecture, deployment steps, and best practices for Oracle to Azure Database for PostgreSQL migrations using Striim.The strategic partnership between Microsoft and Striim enables continuous data replication from existing databases into Azure in real time, enabling online migrations with zero downtime.
13/05/2026
Azure Arc | On-prem + Multi-cloud Management
In this video, we explore how Azure Arc simplifies hybrid and multi-cloud operations by providing a single, consistent control plane for managing your entire infrastructure across Linux and Windows, on-prem, in Azure, or in any cloud.Satya Vel, Azure Arc Principal Group PDM Manager, shares how to make Azure your operational standard for every workload, anywhere it runs.And to explore how Azure Arc works in real hybrid environments, I’m joined by our resident management expert, Satya Vel. Welcome.
13/05/2026
News to Know – Volume 3, Edition 5, May 2026
Viva Glint admins will be able to configure a data retention policy for their Glint instance, defining how long Glint data is retained before it is deleted in accordance with organizational and compliance requirements. This feature enables admins to align Viva Glint data retention with company policies and compliance standards without relying on manual or backend-only processes.If you are already part of the Employee Experience Customer Connection (EECC) program, request to join our Workplace Patterns & Continuous Listening EECC Teams subchannel through the main Glint EECC Teams channel so you can iterate on the future of continuous engagement with the product team in monthly calls.This Research Drop maps which EX conditions are stable, which are rising, and which fluctuate with context, pointing to what organizations need to build, not just deploy, to sustain real AI value.
13/05/2026
Operator Connect for resellers: simplify Teams Phone growth with AudioCodes in Microsoft Marketplace
In this guest blog post, Benny Matityahu, Vice President of UCC at AudioCodes, explores how resellers and service providers can translate the surging demand for Microsoft Teams Phone into lucrative new revenue streams by offering Operator Connect the easy way, along with easy procurement and implementation through Microsoft Marketplace.For resellers and service providers enabling Teams Phone for their customers, taking advantage of this trend means supporting one of the PSTN connectivity options for Teams, primarily Direct Routing or Operator Connect.Operator Connect significantly simplifies Teams Phone PSTN connectivity by utilizing a Microsoft managed framework.
13/05/2026
How Workday and Microsoft are redefining the agentic workplace
Moving from "systems of record" to "systems of action"The Workday agent brings a high-functioning HR and Finance partner directly into Microsoft 365 Copilot.The Workday agent is a blueprint for the future of enterprise software: invisible, intelligent, and indispensable.
13/05/2026
Introducing Azure Container Apps Express!
Today, we're launching Azure Container Apps Express in Public Preview — the fastest, simplest way to go from a container image to an internet-reachable app on Azure, ready for many production-style workloads.ACA Express removes the infrastructure decisions.Express is in Public Preview starting today.
13/05/2026
Proven intranet framework - Involv Intranet - SharePoint Partner Showcase
We are excited to share a new episode on our partner showcase series focused on SharePoint in Microsoft 365.It provides a fully branded, mobile-ready intranet experience with more than 50 configurable components out of the box.The platform supports a wide range of scenarios, from internal communications and knowledge sharing to employee engagement across distributed teams.
13/05/2026
Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab Introduces Interaction Models: A Native Multimodal Architecture for Real-Time Human-AI Collaboration
Thinking Machines Lab has introduced a research preview of TML-Interaction-Small, a 276B parameter Mixture-of-Experts model with 12B active parameters, built around a multi-stream, time-aligned micro-turn architecture that processes 200ms chunks of audio, video, and text simultaneously — eliminating the need for external voice-activity detection harnesses.The post Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab Introduces Interaction Models: A Native Multimodal Architecture for Real-Time Human-AI Collaboration appeared first on MarkTechPost.
13/05/2026
Google DeepMind Introduces an AI-Enabled Mouse Pointer Powered by Gemini That Captures Visual and Semantic Context Around the Cursor
Google DeepMind researchers have outlined four interaction principles and released experimental demos of an AI-enabled mouse pointer powered by Gemini — one that captures the visual and semantic context around the cursor so users can point, speak in natural shorthand, and get things done without switching to a separate AI window.The post Google DeepMind Introduces an AI-Enabled Mouse Pointer Powered by Gemini That Captures Visual and Semantic Context Around the Cursor appeared first on MarkTechPost.
13/05/2026
Building the Solution Teams Need to Secure AI Against Prompt Injection
This disconnect is creating a significant gap between the development and security assurance of AI applications.To address this gap, we developed a unified Prompt Injection Testing Platform and knowledge base, powered by Microsoft Foundry, designed to make LLM security testing accessible, structured, and understandable for developers.In addition to testing and learning, our platform integrates a prompt enhancer, designed to help users actively improve the security of their system prompts.
13/05/2026
How to Test AI Agents with LangSmith: A Complete Guide
LangSmith provides powerful tools for creating datasets, running evaluations, and using LLM-as-judge techniques.This guide walks through the complete workflow using a practical example.Does the answer contain any claims or information that are not supported by the question or reference answer?
13/05/2026
Agent 365 | Your Security & Compliance Controls
Block agent access to labeled files at runtime, stop sensitive data from leaving in agent-drafted emails, and catch agents that cross conduct lines using the same Microsoft Purview controls you already run for users.Shilpa Ranganathan, Microsoft Purview Partner Group Squad Leader, shares how IT and data security teams can govern agent behavior on a single Agent 365 control plane built into the Microsoft tools that you're already using today. -That said, as agents are used inside of your organization, Microsoft Purview, as part of the Agent 365 control plane, provides more granular controls with deeper visibility over data security.
13/05/2026
Stop Hallucinating, Start Evaluating — A Tour of AgentEval
AgentEval is the .NET evaluation toolkit for AI agents.Today it ships with over 30 runnable samples, 192 red-team probes covering 6 of the 10 OWASP LLM Top 10 categories, 5 memory metrics (more on that later — it's the "one more thing" of this post), and exports to JSON, JUnit XML, Markdown, SARIF and PDF.Today AgentEval is open source, MIT-licensed, and built with love for the .NET AI community.
13/05/2026
Give Your AI Agent Eyes: Browser-Harness Meets Playwright Workspaces Remote Browsers
What happens when you hand a coding agent a real browser — not a mock, not an API wrapper, but a full Chromium instance running in the cloud?A browser that renders CSS, executes JavaScript, handles cookies, and lets the agent see what a human would see.Browser-harness is an open-source tool that gives AI agents direct control over a Chrome browser via the Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP).
13/05/2026
Announcing the General Availability of the Next Generation of Azure Boost
Starting May 7th, 2026, the new Esv7, Dsv7, and Dlsv7 virtual machines are generally available — and underneath them is a fundamentally new generation of Azure Boost.A platform that took over five years to build, with custom ASIC-hardened logic, a new network adapter, redesigned storage offload, and a security architecture that makes Azure Boost a Trusted Execution Environment in its own right.Confidential VMs running on Azure Boost infrastructure are generally available today on Intel platforms, deployed on dedicated clusters.
13/05/2026
Check This Out! (CTO!) Guide (April 2026)
Summary: The article outlines best practices for running diffusion models at scale on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).Summary: Azure Web Application Firewall (WAF) now supports Default Rule Set (DRS) 2.2 for Azure Front Door and Application Gateway, offering enhanced security based on OWASP CRS 3.3.4 and Microsoft Threat Intelligence.Summary: Azure Virtual Network Terminal Access Point (VTAP), in public preview as of April 2026, enables agentless, out-of-band copying of full network traffic (including payloads) from designated Azure VMs to traffic analytics tools or collectors, using VXLAN encapsulation.
13/05/2026
Security Update for SQL Server 2025 RTM CU4
The Security Update for SQL Server 2025 RTM CU4 is now available for download at the Microsoft Download Center and Microsoft Update Catalog sites.This package cumulatively includes all previous security fixes for SQL Server 2025 RTM CUs, plus it includes the new security fixes detailed in the KB Article.Microsoft Update Catalog: https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=5089899
13/05/2026
Security Update for SQL Server 2025 RTM
The Security Update for SQL Server 2025 RTM GDR is now available for download at the Microsoft Download Center and Microsoft Update Catalog sites.This package cumulatively includes all previous security fixes for SQL Server 2025 RTM, plus it includes the new security fixes detailed in the KB Article.Latest Updates for Microsoft SQL Server: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/sql/releases/download-and-install-latest-updates
13/05/2026
Security Update for SQL Server 2022 RTM CU24
The Security Update for SQL Server 2022 RTM CU24 is now available for download at the Microsoft Download Center and Microsoft Update Catalog sites.This package cumulatively includes all previous security fixes for SQL Server 2022 RTM CUs, plus it includes the new security fixes detailed in the KB Article.Microsoft Update Catalog: https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=5089900
13/05/2026
Security Update for SQL Server 2022 RTM
The Security Update for SQL Server 2022 RTM GDR is now available for download at the Microsoft Download Center and Microsoft Update Catalog sites.This package cumulatively includes all previous security fixes for SQL Server 2022 RTM, plus it includes the new security fixes detailed in the KB Article.Latest Updates for Microsoft SQL Server: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/sql/releases/download-and-install-latest-updates
13/05/2026
Security Update for SQL Server 2019 RTM CU32
The Security Update for SQL Server 2019 RTM CU32 is now available for download at the Microsoft Download Center and Microsoft Update Catalog sites.This package cumulatively includes all previous security fixes for SQL Server 2019 RTM CUs, plus it includes the new security fixes detailed in the KB Article.Latest Updates for Microsoft SQL Server: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/sql/releases/download-and-install-latest-updates
13/05/2026
Security Update for SQL Server 2019 RTM
The Security Update for SQL Server 2019 RTM GDR is now available for download at the Microsoft Download Center and Microsoft Update Catalog sites.This package cumulatively includes all previous security fixes for SQL Server 2019 RTM, plus it includes the new security fixes detailed in the KB Article.Microsoft Update Catalog: https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=5090408
13/05/2026
Security Update for SQL Server 2017 RTM CU31
The Security Update for SQL Server 2017 RTM CU31 is now available for download at the Microsoft Download Center and Microsoft Update Catalog sites.This package cumulatively includes all previous security fixes for SQL Server 2017 RTM CUs, plus it includes the new security fixes detailed in the KB Article.Latest Updates for Microsoft SQL Server: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/sql/releases/download-and-install-latest-updates
13/05/2026
Security Update for SQL Server 2017 RTM
The Security Update for SQL Server 2017 RTM GDR is now available for download at the Microsoft Download Center and Microsoft Update Catalog sites.This package cumulatively includes all previous security fixes for SQL Server 2017 RTM, plus it includes the new security fixes detailed in the KB Article.Microsoft Update Catalog: https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=5090347
13/05/2026
Security Update for SQL Server 2016 SP3 Azure Connect Feature Pack
The Security Update for SQL Server 2016 SP3 Azure Connect Feature Pack is now available for download at the Microsoft Download Center and Microsoft Update Catalog sites.This package cumulatively includes all previous security fixes for SQL Server 2016 SP3 Azure Connect Feature Pack, plus it includes the new security fixes detailed in the KB Article.Latest Updates for Microsoft SQL Server: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/sql/releases/download-and-install-latest-updates
13/05/2026
Security Update for SQL Server 2016 SP3
The Security Update for SQL Server 2016 SP3 GDR is now available for download at the Microsoft Download Center and Microsoft Update Catalog sites.This package cumulatively includes all previous security fixes for SQL Server 2016 SP3, plus it includes the new security fixes detailed in the KB Article.Microsoft Update Catalog: https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=5089271
13/05/2026
Publishing Blocklist Enforcement During Driver Signing
As part of Microsoft's commitment to improving Windows reliability through higher-quality driver content, we are extending the Driver Shiproom Publishing Blocklist to the signing stage of the driver submission process.Files that are already blocked from publishing to Windows Update due to known reliability issues will now also be rejected at the time of signing.If your build pipeline automates driver signing submissions, update your error handling to account for the new rejection reason.
13/05/2026
HLK May Refresh Release for Windows 11, Version 25H2 and Windows Server 2025
Microsoft is pleased to announce that a refreshed Hardware Lab Kit (HLK) for Windows 11, version 25H2 is available starting May 12, 2026.Our new GRFX Adapter Unreleased Features Block Test will prevent graphics drivers from showing full support for unreleased features. Once a feature has been released, we will check that the system passes the corresponding HLK tests associated with the feature and remove it from the unreleased feature list. This HLK supports certifying drivers for Windows 11, version 25H2 and Windows Server 2025.
13/05/2026
Relevance is the new reach: modern leadership communications in Viva Engage
By enabling Leaders, and their Delegates, to define audiences directly at publish time using existing organizational attributes like reporting chain, department, or role, Storyline announcements make it easier to confidently notify the right audience without relying on static distribution lists or organization‑wide alerts. This allows leadership teams to move from volume‑based communication to relevance‑based reach — ensuring that the most important updates are delivered with precision, not noise.Featured conversations and storyline announcements are separate capabilities in Viva Engage, but they reflect the same principle: giving communicators more control over how broadly a message is amplified.Now, the Frequent contributors leaderboard view in network analytics can help communicators understand which leaders’ posts are catching employee attention and compare engagement trends across leaders and top creators.
12/05/2026
Private Networking and Inference in Microsoft Foundry: Architecture Impact on Enterprise AI
This post explains how network isolation changes the behavior of the machine learning system itself, and how to reason about Foundry networking from an ML engineering and enterprise operations standpoint.Instead, connectivity patterns such as ExpressRoute, VPN, and VNet peering determine how applications, users, and on-prem systems reliably reach private Foundry endpoints.Connect with the Community - Share your private networking patterns in the comments below - Join the Microsoft Foundry Tech Community for ongoing discussions
12/05/2026
Build a Hybrid-Memory Autonomous Agent with Modular Architecture and Tool Dispatch Using OpenAI
In this tutorial, we begin by exploring the architecture behind a hybrid-memory autonomous agent.This system combines semantic vector search, keyword-based retrieval, and a modular tool-dispatching loop to create an agent capable of reasoning, remembering, and acting autonomously.We walk through each layer of the design from the ground up, starting with abstract interfaces that […]
12/05/2026
Announcing SQL Server Management Studio 22.6.0
Today we shipped SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 22.6.0, and it's a really nice mix of work: continued investment in Database DevOps (preview), a security-related update to how we authenticate against Azure Storage, a handful of quality-of-life improvements in the editor and tools, and a solid roundup of bug fixes (many of which came directly from items filed on the feedback site!).This release also introduces the ability to create a SQL project directly from an existing database.In 22.6, Transact-SQL IntelliSense and Keyboard Query Shortcuts are now available in Unified Settings.
12/05/2026
Build Smarter, Simpler IoT Messaging with Azure Event Grid MQTT Broker
In this post, we focus on four capabilities that make the experience even more powerful and easier to adopt: MQTT Retain support, Shared Subscriptions, HTTP Publish of MQTT messages, and Subscription Identifiers.Azure Event Grid supports publishing MQTT messages over HTTP, which makes it easier for server-side applications to send messages into MQTT-based solutions.Azure Event Grid MQTT Broker enables scalable smart manufacturing with retained state visibility, shared telemetry processing, HTTP-based command control, and intelligent subscription routing.
12/05/2026
Introducing Cloud-Initiated Driver Recovery for Windows Update
As part of Microsoft's ongoing commitment to improving Windows quality and reliability, we are introducing Cloud-Initiated Driver Recovery — a new capability that proactively rolls back problematic drivers delivered through Windows Update.When a driver is identified as having quality issues during our shiproom evaluation process, Microsoft can now initiate a recovery action from the cloud, replacing the problematic driver on affected devices without requiring manual intervention from the user or the hardware partner.Today, when a driver published through Windows Update is identified after distribution to have quality issues, the remediation path relies on the hardware partner to submit an updated driver — or on end users to manually uninstall the problematic driver themselves.
12/05/2026
Updated Graphics Driver Publishing Policy: From 4-Part to 2-Part HWID + CHID Targeting
Today, we are announcing a policy change to how display drivers are published through Windows Update — allowing 2-Part HWID + Computer Hardware ID (CHID) targeting for new devices.Today, display drivers published to Windows Update use 4-Part Hardware IDs for targeting.With this policy change, display drivers for new devices can be published using 2-Part HWIDs combined with Computer Hardware IDs (CHIDs) where appropriate.
12/05/2026
Meet AntAngelMed: A 103B-Parameter Open-Source Medical Language Model Built on a 1/32 Activation-Ratio MoE Architecture
MedAIBase has released AntAngelMed, a 103B-parameter open-source medical language model that uses a 1/32 activation-ratio Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) architecture to activate only 6.1B parameters at inference time, matching the performance of roughly 40B dense models while exceeding 200 tokens per second on H20 hardware.Built on Ling-flash-2.0 and trained through a three-stage pipeline of continual pre-training, supervised fine-tuning, and GRPO-based reinforcement learning, the model ranks first among open-source models on OpenAI's HealthBench and tops both MedAIBench and MedBench leaderboards.The post Meet AntAngelMed: A 103B-Parameter Open-Source Medical Language Model Built on a 1/32 Activation-Ratio MoE Architecture appeared first on MarkTechPost.
12/05/2026
How Sharon Weaver and Christian Buckley Help Future MVPs Find Their Path
For many technologists, the Microsoft MVP Award feels inspiring - but also a little mysterious.MVP Sharon Weaver and MVP Christian Buckley- MVP Sharon Weaver
12/05/2026
Partner Case Study | CTERA
Headquartered in Israel and New York, with global offices worldwide, CTERA Networks Ltd strives to help organizations create a connected fabric of data to unlock its full potential.CTERA powers some of the world’s largest Fortune 500 enterprises and government agencies.CTERA has partnered with Microsoft since the early introduction of Microsoft Azure and today supports more than 60 customers running CTERA on Azure compute and storage infrastructure.
12/05/2026
From Prompt to Production: Open in VS Code for Terraform in Azure Copilot
We’re excited to introduce a new step in the Terraform on Azure experience: Open in VS Code, now available directly from Azure Copilot in the Azure Portal.With Azure Copilot, you can describe your infrastructure in natural language and generate Terraform configurations in seconds.The Open in VS Code experience for Terraform is now public preview in Azure Portal Copilot.
12/05/2026
Pitch Maker Agent: Turn Copilot Chat Signals into Microsoft 365 Copilot Deals
The Pitch Maker Agent (BETA) helps partners convert Partner Center Copilot growth opportunity signals into customer-ready narratives—reducing pitch preparation from days to minutes and improving consistency across stakeholders (replace with your measured baseline).The Agent follows a simple, repeatable flow to generate an executive-ready pitch narrative from Partner Center Copilot growth opportunity signals.The Pitch Maker Agent (BETA) supports a repeatable value motion: identify opportunity, align stakeholders, and move customers from experimentation to governed Microsoft 365 Copilot adoption.
12/05/2026
Get ready for the 2026 Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards: Nominations open June 1
If your organization has delivered transformative solutions on Microsoft platforms over the past year, now’s the time to begin shaping your strongest submission. The nomination window for the 2026 Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards opens June 1, 2026, and closes July 7, 2026.Winners will be announced in November 2026, timed to celebrate with the global partner ecosystem at Microsoft Ignite. Review the 2026 Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards guidelines and resources now to begin shaping your strongest submission ahead of the nomination window opening on June 1.
12/05/2026
No Exchange Server Security Updates for May 2026
We wanted to let the Exchange Server community know that there are no security releases for any version of Exchange Server in May 2026, for customers with Exchange SE, or Exchange 2016 or 2019 ESU.Please keep upgrading your organizations to Exchange SE.The Exchange Team
12/05/2026
4 ways to build a curated Agent Store and scale agent adoption
The agent adoption gap is realThe 2026 Work Trend Index shows 58% of employees are now producing work they couldn’t do a year ago, and AI is increasingly used for analysis, reasoning, and decision-making—not just tasks.Agent Store is a curated hub in Microsoft 365 Copilot where users can discover, install, and use agents directly in the flow of work.
12/05/2026
No Skype for Business Server Security Updates for May 2026
We have therefore decided that until the end of this Skype for Business 2015 and 2019 ESU Period 2 (October 2026) we will make an explicit update related announcement even if we DO NOT release anything for that particular month. There are no security releases for any version of Skype for Business Server in May 2026, for customers with SfB 2015/SfB 2019 ESU, or SfB SE.The Skype for Business Team
12/05/2026
Scaling Seller Impact with ASPX Insights: From Data Access to AI-Driven Execution
ASPX Insights in Partner CenterTo drive consistent, data-led growth across Security and AI Business Solutions, partners should connect to ASPX Insights within Partner Center.The M365 Partner API – AI Business Solutions & Security Insights allows partners to ground an agent in real, actionable data rather than static pipeline assumptions.
12/05/2026
Azure Cache for Redis to Azure Managed Redis: A Practical Guide with AI-Assisted Migration Planning
Today we’re introducing two capabilities for migrating from Azure Cache for Redis (ACR) to Azure Managed Redis (AMR): an AI-assisted planning skill and a native migration workflow in the Azure portal.With a clear migration plan from Phase 1, you are ready to create your Azure Managed Redis target instance.After you confirm the migrated Azure Managed Redis instance is running as expected, update your applications to use the Azure Managed Redis connection string instead of the old Azure Cache for Redis connection string.
12/05/2026
Bringing Transparency to Copilot Edits in Excel
I'm excited to share that changes made with Copilot are now visible within the Show Changes pane, available now in Excel for the web.This feature is currently available to all Excel for Web users.Unclear how the Show Changes pane works in Excel?
12/05/2026
Driving Efficiency in Modern System Engineering with AI Agents
This shift is being accelerated by platforms like Microsoft Foundry, which provide the foundational capabilities needed to build, deploy, and scale AI agents across complex engineering environments.Instead of treating bug analysis, test planning, and validation as disconnected tasks, AI-driven agents act as intelligent assistants embedded directly within engineering processes.To address these challenges in our engineering workflows, we developed and internally deployed a set of AI-driven agents designed specifically for system validation and platform engineering.
12/05/2026
Research Drop: The Human Conditions Behind AI Value at Work
Perceived value, not just adoption rate, is a metric that will determine whether AI investments hold for the long-term.In our April Research Drop, we found a consistent climb in how employees perceive the realized value of AI in their work – a metric we call RIVA (Realized Individual Value of AI).Specifically, we examine how seven employee experience factors relate to RIVA across our three survey snapshots, and how the strength of those relationships has shifted as AI has become more embedded in everyday work.
12/05/2026
Esker and Source Technologies offer transactable partner solutions in Microsoft Marketplace
Microsoft partners like Esker and Source Technologies deliver transact-capable offers, which allow you to purchase directly from Microsoft Marketplace.Esker Customer Service Suite: Esker equips B2B customer service teams with AI-driven automation that improves customer experience across inquiries, orders, and claims while reducing routine manual work.Robotic Payments Automator: Source Technologies’ Robotic Payments Automator (RPA) helps organizations modernize vendor payments in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, transforming accounts payable from a bottleneck to a profit center.
12/05/2026
LLM Observability Tools for Reliable AI Applications
Large language models (LLMs) now power everything from customer service bots to autonomous coding agents.
12/05/2026
Giving the Copilot SDK Agent a "hardware-level helmet" using Kata microVM on AKS
I was recently building an Agent service with the GitHub Copilot SDK.Sticking with the building analogy — if the problem is a shared roof, the fix is obvious: give every apartment its own roof.Three shell scripts to set up infrastructure, six YAML files to deploy the service.
12/05/2026
Tilde Research Introduces Aurora: A Leverage-Aware Optimizer That Fixes a Hidden Neuron Death Problem in Muon
Researchers at Tilde Research have released Aurora, a new optimizer for training neural networks that addresses a structural flaw in the widely-used Muon optimizer.The flaw quietly kills off a significant fraction of MLP neurons during training and keeps them permanently dead.Aurora comes with a 1.1B parameter pretraining experiment, a new state-of-the-art result on […]
12/05/2026
A Coding Implementation to Portfolio Optimization with skfolio for Building Testing, Tuning, and Comparing Modern Investment Strategies
In this tutorial, we explore skfolio, a scikit-learn compatible portfolio optimization library that helps us build, compare, and evaluate different investment strategies in a structured Python workflow.We start by loading S&P 500 price data, converting it into returns, and creating a time-based train-test split suitable for financial analysis.The post A Coding Implementation to Portfolio Optimization with skfolio for Building Testing, Tuning, and Comparing Modern Investment Strategies appeared first on MarkTechPost.
12/05/2026
Introducing PII Shield: A Privacy Proxy for Every LLM Call
"PII Shield" is an intelligent anonymization layer that sits between your AI application and the LLM.We call it a sandwich pattern because two thin layers of PII Shield wrap around the LLM call: a) the top slice (anonymise) replaces every detected entity with a stable, opaque placeholder before the prompt ever leaves your trust boundary, b) the bottom slice (de-anonymise) puts the original values back when the response returns.The next post will show how to plug PII Shield in as a middleware in Microsoft Agent Framework — automatically anonymising every prompt going out to a model and de-anonymising every response coming back, transparently to the agent author.
12/05/2026
OpenAI Introduces Daybreak: A Cybersecurity Initiative That Puts Codex Security at the Center of Vulnerability Detection and Patch Validation
OpenAI on just launched Daybreak, a cybersecurity initiative that combines the company’s frontier AI models with Codex Security, its coding-focused agentic system, and a broad network of security partners.The program is aimed at developers, enterprise security teams, researchers, and government-linked defenders who need to find, validate, and patch software vulnerabilities earlier in the development […]The post OpenAI Introduces Daybreak: A Cybersecurity Initiative That Puts Codex Security at the Center of Vulnerability Detection and Patch Validation appeared first on MarkTechPost.
12/05/2026
Running Foundry Agent Service on Azure Container Apps
Solution: Building Foundry Agent Service on a resilient agent runtime foundationFoundry Agent Service is Microsoft’s fully managed platform for building, deploying, and scaling AI agents as production services.Azure Container Apps has been pressure‑tested at Microsoft scale, proving to be a powerful, serverless foundation for running AI workloads and aligns naturally with the needs of agent runtime.
12/05/2026
Azure Arc AKS Explained: Run Kubernetes Beyond Azure Cloud
#Install Azure Arc agent on Linux machine.#Deploy Kubernetes cluster on Arc infrastructure.Azure Arc extends Azure management capabilities beyond Azure cloud boundaries, while AKS Arc enables Kubernetes clusters to run consistently across edge, on-premises, and hybrid environments.Tags:
12/05/2026
Strengthening Cybersecurity for Education‑Focused Nonprofits and Education Institutions
Cybersecurity is one of the most urgent priorities facing education‑focused nonprofits and education institutions today.The Microsoft Elevate Education team is bringing you two powerful Signature Series webinars this spring to help education‑focused nonprofits and education institutions strengthen their cybersecurity posture from the inside out.Pick the topic and time that fits your day — or register for both.
12/05/2026
May update: What’s new in Security for partners
Publish a Copilot agent or analytics solution in the Microsoft Security Store: Expand your reach within the Microsoft Security platform and unlock new revenue opportunities by publishing a compliant Copilot agent or analytics solution to the Security Store. This gives identity, data protection, and compliance teams a unified way to discover, evaluate, and deploy partner solutions directly inside the workflows they already use. Learn more about how to structure your offer and prepare to list it today.Microsoft Sentinel adds unified RBAC with row-level access: Microsoft Sentinel now supports unified role-based access control (RBAC) with row-level scoping, bringing centralized permission management and granular data access into the Microsoft Defender portal.Hear directly from Microsoft executives on FY27 priorities, learn how to build your strategy around Frontier Transformation, and gain insight into the market trends and investments shaping FY27 growth. Save the date for MCAPS Start for Partners on July 22, followed by the Security Partner GTM Kickoff on July 28, to align to Microsoft’s security strategy across enterprise, Cloud Solution Provider (CSP), and small and medium business (SMB) segments, and prioritize the right solutions. Walk away with practical guidance, ready-to-use enablement, and the skilling resources needed to build and scale your security practice.
12/05/2026
May update: What’s new for partners in AI Business Solutions
Exciting updates on Microsoft Business Central: Three new updates are live, including a new Forrester Total Economic Impact™ study that projects strong ROI for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central,* a refreshed Business Central Immersion Briefing, and the new Expense Agent for Business Central that simplifies receipt capture, expense categorization, and approvals. View the Business Central Expense Agent demo, explore the pitch deck, and read the IT Pro blog for more info. Microsoft Office LTSC 2021 and Visio LTSC 2021 nearing end of support: Support for Microsoft Office LTSC 2021, Project LTSC 2021, and Visio LTSC 2021 ends on October 13, 2026.Get ready for the Partner of the Year Awards: It's almost that time of year again: the Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards are quickly approaching.
12/05/2026
How to Secure Azure Databricks without Public Exposure using WAF + Private Endpoints
This is where organizations has to design a solution which follows CAF Principles and is fully secured with Azure Application Gateway with Web Application Firewall (WAF) combined with Private Endpoints (Azure Private Link) becomes critical to enforce Zero Trust Architecture.Why Zero Trust for Azure Databricks?Azure Private Link enables organizations to:
11/05/2026
GitHub Copilot Dev Days Online
After a series of in-person events, GitHub Copilot Dev Days is now going online, bringing developers from around the world together to explore modern AI-assisted software development in practice.Through live sessions focused on agentic development, modern workflows, and hands-on learning in VS Code, attendees will learn how to use GitHub Copilot beyond autocomplete and apply it across real development scenarios.A hands-on session for Spanish-speaking developers across Latin America focused on building modern applications with GitHub Copilot, TypeScript, React, and Tailwind.
11/05/2026
Action required: Kerberos RC4 hardening may affect Azure Files Active Directory Domain Services
A Windows security hardening change beginning in April 2026 updates default Kerberos encryption behavior and may impact customers using Azure Files with Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) authentication over SMB.If you created Azure Files shares prior to 2023, or chose RC4 encryption for your file shares, you will need to reconfigure to use AES-256 to avoid disruption to file share access.Azure Files uses Kerberos authentication for identity-based access when integrated with on-premises Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS).
11/05/2026
Understanding LLM Distillation Techniques
Modern large language models are no longer trained only on raw internet text.Increasingly, companies are using powerful “teacher” models to help train smaller or more efficient “student” models.This process, broadly known as LLM distillation or model-to-model training, has become a key technique for building high-performing models at lower computational cost.
11/05/2026
Azure CLI on macOS: Upcoming Installation Changes
From Homebrew Core to a new installation model for macOSStarting with Azure CLI 2.86.0, we are beginning an important evolution of the macOS experience by introducing new installation options, initially available as Preview:Homebrew Cask is designed to distribute prebuilt, signed software on macOS.
11/05/2026
Announcing the AI Dev Days Hackathon winners
Quipu: AI Early Warning for Peruvian Municipalities (Peru)Quipu helps Peruvian municipalities spot early signals of natural disasters and get alerts out faster.Winning teams represent developers from North America, Latin America, Europe, and Asia‑Pacific, reinforcing the global reach and impact of the AI Dev Days Hackathon and the broader Microsoft developer ecosystem.Winning teams have been awarded cash prizes and exclusive in-person attendee tickets to Microsoft Build 2026 in recognition of their innovation and real-world impact.
11/05/2026
How to Build Technical Analysis and Backtesting Workflow with pandas-ta-classic, Strategy Signals, and Performance Metrics
In this tutorial, we implement how to use pandas-ta-classic to build a complete technical analysis and trading strategy workflow.We start by installing the required libraries, downloading historical OHLCV stock data with yfinance, cleaning the returned data structure, and inspecting the available indicator categories inside the library.We then calculate popular indicators such as SMA, […]
11/05/2026
Securing AI agents at scale: Identity, governance, and zero trust
AI agents are reshaping enterprise operations.They reason over data, call APIs, trigger workflows, and act on behalf of users — often without human intervention.IDC projects 1.3 billion AI agents in production by 2028, and Capgemini research shows four out of five organizations plan to integrate agents within the next three years.
11/05/2026
NEW UPDATES: Administering and Governing Agents whitepaper v3.2
Downloaded more than 65,000 times by IT practitioners worldwide, it has now been updated to Version 3.2.Today you’ll find new and updated guidance that includes security and observability of your agents with Microsoft Agent 365, as well as discoverability of agents with the Microsoft 365 Agent Store.The Administering and Governing Agents whitepaper is designed specifically for IT practitioners and IT decision-makers in SMBs and large enterprises.
11/05/2026
Secure the moments attackers target: onboarding, access requests, and account recovery
Microsoft tracks over 600 million identity attacks every day, with more than 7,000 password attacks blocked per second across Microsoft Entra environments.Microsoft reports that more than 99% of identity attacks still target passwords, often combined with phishing or adversary-in-the-middle techniques designed to bypass traditional authentication controls.Face Check is a privacy‑respecting facial matching capability built into Microsoft Entra Verified ID.
11/05/2026
Make your mark on the Microsoft AI Tour—learn more about sponsorship
A preview of sponsorship opportunities for the 2026–2027 Microsoft AI Tour is now available. This one‑day event series is traveling to 30+ cities in priority markets around the globe. Sponsors can accelerate pipeline through high-impact, in-person experiences that help customers make confident, informed technology solution decisions. Sponsorship packages start at USD5,000.MCAPS Start for Partners, an event taking place on July 22, presents another exciting opportunity for your business. You'll get insights from Microsoft leaders on where we’re investing, our shared priorities, and how to activate AI-led opportunities to drive growth this year.Preview Microsoft AI Tour sponsorship opportunities
11/05/2026
Announcing general availability of confidential computing for Azure Service Bus Premium
Today we are excited to announce the general availability of confidential computing for Azure Service Bus Premium.With this capability, your Service Bus namespace processes messages inside hardware-based trusted execution environments (TEEs), preventing unauthorized access to data while it is being processed.You can enable confidential computing on a new Service Bus Premium namespace from the Azure portal:
11/05/2026
Meta and Stanford Researchers Propose Fast Byte Latent Transformer That Reduces Inference Memory Bandwidth by Over 50% Without Tokenization
Researchers from Meta FAIR and Stanford propose three inference methods for the Byte Latent Transformer that reduce memory-bandwidth cost by over 50% without subword tokenization.The post Meta and Stanford Researchers Propose Fast Byte Latent Transformer That Reduces Inference Memory Bandwidth by Over 50% Without Tokenization appeared first on MarkTechPost.
11/05/2026
Azure Service Bus Premium now offers 99.99% SLA in all Availability Zone regions
Starting May 1, 2026, all Premium namespaces deployed in regions with Availability Zone support will receive a 99.99% uptime SLA.A Premium namespace deployed in an Availability Zone region is automatically replicated across multiple zones, so the messaging service stays available even if a full datacenter goes offline.Any Premium namespace in an Availability Zone region now qualifies for the 99.99% SLA - no configuration changes needed.
11/05/2026
The power behind AI: Your brain
This story shows how a neurodivergent creator used vibe coding to build practical tools and find renewed inspiration.Nency Yera is a Revenue Strategy professional at Microsoft who discovered vibe coding three months ago and hasn’t stopped building since.You need VS Code (a free app), GitHub Copilot (the AI inside it), and five minutes to tell it how you think.
11/05/2026
Configuring firewall and proxies for smooth Windows updates
The key is in the configuration of your network endpoints for firewalls and proxies.This means that you should trust all the DNS hosts and subdomains related to wildcard FQDN for the connection to work properly.If you're a server administrator, you orchestrate which updates are available on the WSUS server for your devices to update.
11/05/2026
Stripe Events + Azure Event Grid: Now Generally Available
With Azure Event Grid as a destination for Stripe events, now Generally Available, teams can route those signals directly into Azure and build scalable, event-driven architectures without managing webhook infrastructure.Azure Event Grid acts as a fully managed event broker, routing those events directly into Azure so teams can build reactive, real-time workflows without managing custom webhook infrastructure.This release marks the General Availability of the Stripe destination for Azure Event Grid, which was first introduced in Public Preview.
11/05/2026
New Copilot entry points, smart suggestions, and keyboard-first design
We’re now offering proactive suggestions right from the Copilot button.The new Copilot button and updated shortcuts are rolling out to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for Windows and Mac, with web coming soon.The new simplified Alt + C and Cmd + Control + I shortcuts are available today in Outlook and Word for Windows and Mac in English.
11/05/2026
New investments to accelerate your migration to Microsoft 365
This tool is designed to migrate public and private channels from Slack to Teams, where your most critical conversations take place.The Slack to Teams Migration Tool from Microsoft has no licensing cost.Future investments in the Slack to Teams Migration Tool
11/05/2026
Design CI/CD for AI apps and agents selling through Microsoft Marketplace
In the previous post, Design observability for AI apps and agents selling through Microsoft Marketplace, we focused on observability—making AI app and agent behavior visible and explainable.This post is part of a series on building and publishing well-architected AI apps and agents in Microsoft Marketplace. The series focuses on AI apps and agents that are architected, hosted, and operated on Azure, with guidance aligned to building and selling solutions through Microsoft Marketplace.While publishers own CI/CD pipelines, customers play an important role in how AI systems are evaluated and adopted across environments.
11/05/2026
New in Microsoft Marketplace: May 11, 2026
Learn about 69 new offers that went live in Microsoft Marketplace, a single destination to find, try, and buy cloud solutions, AI apps, and agents to meet your business needs.Firemoon Studio offers developers access to more than 50 advanced models for creating, editing, and transforming images, videos, and audio.Features include a prompt playground, scalable live API, and usage-based billing, enabling flexible, cost-effective integration of AI media generation into applications.
11/05/2026
SAP on Azure Product Announcements Summary – SAP Sapphire 2026
Today at SAP Sapphire, we announced a new wave of innovations deepening the Microsoft–SAP partnership – advancing RISE with SAP on Azure, our SAP S/4HANA integrations, and our shared AI platform.Maersk migrated 500 SAP servers and a petabyte of data to Azure in six months — with near 100% uptime and zero incidents — and is now using Azure OpenAI with SAP to let teams query invoice and shipment data in natural language.The first half of 2026 marks the most significant release cycle for both the SAP Deployment Automation Framework (SDAF) and the SAP Testing Automation Framework (STAF) since their inception.
11/05/2026
Implementing Prompt Compression to Reduce Agentic Loop Costs
Agentic loops in production can be synonymous with high costs, especially when it comes to both LLM and external application usage via APIs, where billing is often closely related to token usage.
11/05/2026
Scaling GitHub Advanced Security in Azure DevOps with a single reusable YAML template
Scaling GitHub Advanced Security in Azure DevOps with a single reusable YAML templateInstead of maintaining multiple pipelines, we built a single reusable Azure DevOps YAML template that dynamically adapts to any repository.Scaling GitHub Advanced Security across Azure DevOps doesn’t require multiple pipelines—it requires the right architecture.
11/05/2026
Sakana AI and NVIDIA Introduce TwELL with CUDA Kernels for 20.5% Inference and 21.9% Training Speedup in LLMs
Sakana AI and NVIDIA Researchers demonstrate that simple L1 regularization can induce over 99% sparsity in feedforward layers with negligible downstream performance impact, and translate that sparsity into real GPU throughput gains using new sparse data formats and fused CUDA kernels.The post Sakana AI and NVIDIA Introduce TwELL with CUDA Kernels for 20.5% Inference and 21.9% Training Speedup in LLMs appeared first on MarkTechPost.
11/05/2026
A Coding Implementation to Build Agent-Native Memory Infrastructure with Memori for Persistent Multi-User and Multi-Session LLM Applications
In this tutorial, we implement how Memori serves as an agent-native memory infrastructure layer for building more persistent, context-aware LLM applications.We start by setting up Memori in a Google Colab environment and connecting it to both synchronous and asynchronous OpenAI clients, so that every model call can automatically pass through the memory layer.The post A Coding Implementation to Build Agent-Native Memory Infrastructure with Memori for Persistent Multi-User and Multi-Session LLM Applications appeared first on MarkTechPost.
11/05/2026
Triggering Azure Functions from Blob Storage Using Event Grid
In this post, I am going to walk through how to implement a direct Event Grid to Azure Function pattern.This is the simplest and lowest-latency option when you want real-time reactions to blob uploads.The direct Event Grid to Azure Function pattern provides a simple and reliable approach for real-time blob processing without additional infrastructure.
11/05/2026
City simulator with AI agents for traffic congestion
The aim of this project was to build something practical and experimental: a high fidelity simulation environment where multi agent AI systems can be tested, broken, and improved without affecting real world traffic.The project brings together a mix of gaming, backend, and AI technologies.Join us on Thursday 21 May at 12pm UK time for a live session in the Microsoft Foundry Discord Community where we will explore how a student built a full 20 intersection AI powered traffic simulation using Azure AI Foundry, GPT-4o and the Microsoft Agent Framework. This is a great opportunity for student developers who want to go beyond theory and see how modern AI tools can be combined to build real, end to end systems.
11/05/2026
From Test Cases to Trusted Automation: Scaling Enterprise Quality with GitHub Copilot
Enterprise QA teams today are automation‑led by default.GitHub Copilot proved most effective when used as a support system for automation teams, not a replacement for expertise.Microsoft Learn – References on Automation & Quality EngineeringThe following Microsoft Learn resources provide authoritative guidance on automation‑led quality engineering, test strategy, and building trust at enterprise scale.
11/05/2026
Understanding the deployment quota limitation (800) Error in Azure Bicep and ARM Deployments
Understanding deployment quota limitation (800) Error in Azure Deployments (Bicep/ARM)When working with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using Azure Bicep or ARM templates, deployment failures are a common part of day-to-day operations—especially in large-scale enterprise environments.One such frequently encountered but often misunderstood issue is the quota limitation (800) error, which typically occurs during repeated or automated deployments.
11/05/2026
Configure DNS forwarding for Azure NetApp Files
Azure NetApp Files (ANF) has a hard dependency on DNS for all volume types that integrate with Active Directory (AD): SMB, dual-protocol (SMB + NFS), and NFSv4.1 with Kerberos.When ANF is deployed in a spoke VNET connected to an Azure Virtual WAN hub, a routing requirement applies that directly causes Kerberos and LDAP failures — which appear to be DNS or AD failures — when not addressed.When the reverse DNS ruleset is absent from the external private DNS forwarder, the failure does not surface as a DNS error in the ANF portal.
11/05/2026
Best Vector Databases in 2026: Pricing, Scale Limits, and Architecture Tradeoffs Across Nine Leading Systems
Vector databases are now core retrieval infrastructure for RAG and agentic AI.This guide compares nine production options on architecture, pricing, and scale.The post Best Vector Databases in 2026: Pricing, Scale Limits, and Architecture Tradeoffs Across Nine Leading Systems appeared first on MarkTechPost.
10/05/2026
OpenClaw vs Hermes Agent: Why Nous Research’s Self-Improving Agent Now Leads OpenRouter’s Global Rankings
Hermes Agent, the open-source self-improving AI agent from Nous Research, has overtaken OpenClaw to claim the #1 position on OpenRouter's global daily token rankings as of May 10, 2026 — generating 224 billion daily tokens versus OpenClaw's 186 billion.The milestone places a Nous Research project ahead of an OpenAI-sponsored platform in real-world daily inference volume, just three months after launch.The post OpenClaw vs Hermes Agent: Why Nous Research’s Self-Improving Agent Now Leads OpenRouter’s Global Rankings appeared first on MarkTechPost.
10/05/2026
Speaker Guide: How to Apply to Speak at Ananse Tech Community
Step 3: Submit your session ideaMake sure your session includes:A clear titleA short summary of what attendees will learnWho the session is for (beginner, intermediate, advanced)💡 Strong proposals clearly align with the audience and deliver tangible value.Step 4: Wait for reviewThe Ananse Tech Community team reviews submissionsSelected speakers will be contacted for scheduling✅ We aim to match topics with upcoming sessions and community needsWhat happens after you’re selectedIf your session is approved:You’ll receive confirmation and scheduling detailsWe’ll provide guidance for:Session formatEvent logistics (Teams session)Your session will be promoted across:Microsoft Tech CommunityLinkedInOther Ananse platformsHow sessions are deliveredSessions are typically delivered virtually via Microsoft TeamsA Teams link will be provided for speakers and attendeesSessions may include:PresentationDemoQ&AWhy speak at Ananse Tech Community?Share your knowledge with a global, growing audienceBuild your personal brand in the Microsoft ecosystemGain speaking experience (great for new speakers)Contribute to a Ghana-led global tech community💡 Community speaking is also a great way to grow your network and speaking profile.
10/05/2026
How to Register for & Join Events
How event registration worksMost Ananse Tech Community events are shared through the Microsoft Tech Community platform.In addition, we provide a Microsoft Teams link so you can join the session directly.Step 1: Open the eventGo to the Ananse Tech Community page on Microsoft Tech CommunityClick on the event you want to attendStep 2: Mark your interest or attendanceClick Interested or Attending✅ This helps you:Keep track of the eventStay aware of updates or changesStep 3: Get the Teams link (Most important step)Inside the event details, you will see:The Microsoft Teams meeting link👉 Click this link at the time of the event to join the sessionStep 4: (Optional but recommended) Add to your calendarSome events may include:A calendar file, orInstructions to manually add the event✅ This ensures you don't forgetStep 5: Join the sessionAt the event time:Click the Teams linkJoin from:Your browser, orMicrosoft Teams appPro Tip (use this in your messaging)If you:Join the community ANDMark events as Interested/AttendingYou'll have:A central place to track eventsEasy access to join linksBetter visibility into upcoming sessions
10/05/2026
Ananse Tech Community - How to Join & Stay Updated
What is this community?Ananse Tech Community is an official Microsoft Tech Community User Group. 👏😁By joining, you’ll be able to follow our posts, see upcoming events, and stay informed about Microsoft‑focused learning sessions and career conversations.Step 5: Stay connectedAs a member, you can:See upcoming community eventsRead announcements and postsJoin discussions when availableKeep up even if you miss social media posts
10/05/2026
How to Build a Cost-Aware LLM Routing System with NadirClaw Using Local Prompt Classification and Gemini Model Switching
In this tutorial, we explore NadirClaw as an intelligent routing layer that classifies prompts into simple and complex tiers before sending them to the most suitable model.We start by installing the required packages, setting up an optional Gemini API key, and testing the local classifier through the NadirClaw CLI without making any live LLM […]The post How to Build a Cost-Aware LLM Routing System with NadirClaw Using Local Prompt Classification and Gemini Model Switching appeared first on MarkTechPost.
10/05/2026
NVIDIA AI Just Released cuda-oxide: An Experimental Rust-to-CUDA Compiler Backend that Compiles SIMT GPU Kernels Directly to PTX
NVlabs releases cuda-oxide v0.1.0, a custom rustc codegen backend that compiles #[kernel]-annotated Rust functions to PTX through a Rust → Stable MIR → Pliron IR → LLVM IR → PTX pipeline, with single-source host+device compilation from one cargo oxide build command.The post NVIDIA AI Just Released cuda-oxide: An Experimental Rust-to-CUDA Compiler Backend that Compiles SIMT GPU Kernels Directly to PTX appeared first on MarkTechPost.
10/05/2026
A Coding Implementation to Recover Hidden Malware IOCs with FLARE-FLOSS Beyond Classic Strings Analysis
In this tutorial, we explore how FLARE-FLOSS helps us recover hidden and obfuscated strings from a Windows PE file.We begin by setting up FLOSS and the MinGW-w64 cross-compiler.We synthesize a small malware-like executable that hides strings using multiple techniques, including static strings, stack-built strings, tight strings, and XOR-decoded strings.
10/05/2026
NVIDIA AI Releases Star Elastic: One Checkpoint that Contains 30B, 23B, and 12B Reasoning Models with Zero-Shot Slicing
NVIDIA researchers have introduced Star Elastic, a post-training method that embeds multiple nested reasoning models — at 30B, 23B, and 12B parameter scales — inside a single checkpoint, eliminating the need for separate training runs or stored model weights per variant.Built on the Nemotron Elastic framework and applied to Nemotron Nano v3, the method trains all three variants in a single 160B-token run, achieving a 360× token reduction compared to pretraining each model from scratch.Beyond training efficiency, Star Elastic introduces elastic budget control — a novel inference scheme that uses a smaller submodel for the thinking phase and the full model for the final answer — delivering up to 16% higher accuracy and 1.9× lower latency compared to standard budget control, while nested FP8 and NVFP4 checkpoints bring the full model family within reach of RTX-class GPUs.
09/05/2026
9 Best AI Tools for Spec-Driven Development in 2026: Kiro, BMAD, GSD, and More Compare
As AI coding agents grow more powerful, the engineering community has quietly split into two camps: developers who prompt iteratively and hope for the best, and developers who write structured specifications first and let agents execute against them.The second group is shipping faster, with fewer regressions, and with code that survives review.This guide covers the 9 AI tools driving that shift in 2026 — from AWS Kiro's EARS-structured spec IDE to GitHub Spec Kit's 93K-star open-source workflow, to lean execution frameworks like GSD that have crossed 61K stars in under five months.
09/05/2026
CHERIoT-Ibex: Closing the door on memory safety vulnerabilities with hardware-enforced protection
Memory safety vulnerabilities—largely arising from widely used programming languages such as C and C++—remain a leading cause of exploitable software defects across systems, from embedded devices to cloud-scale infrastructure.CHERIoT-Ibex is the first open-source production-quality implementation of the CHERIoT instruction set architecture and among the first cores certified by the CHERI Alliance (CHERI Alliance – CHERIoT). CHERIoT is an extension of the CHERI (Capability Hardware Enhanced RISC Instructions) instruction set, with a focus on embedded and Internet of Things (IoT) applications. Ibex is an open‑source 32‑bit RISC‑V core developed by LowRISC. CHERIoT‑Ibex builds on Ibex by including CHERIoT capability extensions to provide hardware‑enforced memory safety and fine‑grained compartmentalization. It is the result of a close partnership between Microsoft Research and Azure Hardware Systems & Infrastructure, combining advanced research innovation with industry-leading silicon IP development expertise. In 2023, Microsoft open-sourced the CHERIoT Platform to bring hardware-enforced memory safety to embedded systems, including an instruction set architecture, toolchain, real-time operating system, and the RTL implementation of the CHERIoT-Ibex core. The CHERI Alliance certification recognizes its ability to provide spatial and temporal memory safety, fine-grained compartmentalization, and compatibility with the broader CHERI ecosystem. Critically, CHERIoT-Ibex achieves these security guarantees with power and area efficiency comparable to low-cost microcontrollers, demonstrating that security doesn’t have to come at a premium.
09/05/2026
Meet GitHub Spec-Kit: An Open Source Toolkit for Spec-Driven Development with AI Coding Agents
If you have spent time using AI coding agents — GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Gemini CLI — you have probably run into this situation: you describe what you want, the agent generates a block of code that looks correct, compiles, and then subtly misses the actual intent.This “vibe-coding” approach can work for quick prototypes […]The post Meet GitHub Spec-Kit: An Open Source Toolkit for Spec-Driven Development with AI Coding Agents appeared first on MarkTechPost.
09/05/2026
Known issue: Upgrading Microsoft Tunnel version 20260129.1
We identified an upgrade issue with the early March release of Microsoft Tunnel version 20260129.1 that caused servers to become stuck and unable to complete the upgrade.Alternatively, we’ve created a script to help you update affected servers.This blog explains how to use the mstunnel-patch-2602 script to remediate the issue.
08/05/2026
OpenAI Adds Chrome Extension to Codex, Letting Its AI Agent Access LinkedIn, Salesforce, Gmail, and Internal Tools via Signed-In Sessions
OpenAI has shipped a Chrome extension for Codex, its AI coding agent, enabling it to complete browser-based tasks directly inside Google Chrome on macOS and Windows — including interacting with signed-in websites, using Chrome DevTools, and running multi-step workflows across browser tabs.The post OpenAI Adds Chrome Extension to Codex, Letting Its AI Agent Access LinkedIn, Salesforce, Gmail, and Internal Tools via Signed-In Sessions appeared first on MarkTechPost.
08/05/2026
What's New in Microsoft Entra: May 2026
No new agent installation is required, the client uses Microsoft Defender for Endpoint to route traffic through Global Secure Access for Microsoft 365, Microsoft Entra Internet Access, and Microsoft Entra Private Access.Secure branch office Microsoft Entra Internet Access with Global Secure Access remote network connectivity - Global Secure Access remote network connectivity enables secure access to full internet, including Microsoft 365, from branch offices and remote sites using Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) tunnels, without requiring Global Secure Access on end‑user devices.In April 2026, Microsoft transitions from Microsoft Entra Connect Sync to the cloud‑native Microsoft Entra Cloud Sync to simplify hybrid identity management and strengthen Zero Trust security.
08/05/2026
How to Build a Single-Cell RNA-seq Analysis Pipeline with Scanpy for PBMC Clustering, Annotation, and Trajectory Discovery
In this tutorial, we perform an advanced single-cell RNA-seq analysis workflow using Scanpy on the PBMC-3k benchmark dataset.We start by loading the dataset, inspecting its structure, and applying quality control checks to evaluate gene counts, total counts, mitochondrial content, and ribosomal gene signals.We then filter low-quality cells and genes, detect potential doublets with […]
08/05/2026
Help Shape the Future of Microsoft Teams for Small and Medium Businesses
Microsoft is inviting Small and Medium Business (SMB) customers and partners to join our Customer Advisory Board (CAB) and Partner Advisory Council (PAC) for Microsoft Teams SMB.These groups give you a simple, low-effort way to share real-world feedback with the product team — and help guide the Teams roadmap for SMBs.If you'd like to be considered for the Microsoft Teams SMB Customer Advisory Board or Partner Advisory Council, simply fill out this short interest form: 👉 Express your interest to join the Teams SMB Advisory Board
08/05/2026
Inspektor Gadget Completes Its First Independent Security Audit
That's what's recently happened with Inspektor Gadget, the open source eBPF tool for Kubernetes observability and Linux host inspection.Inspektor Gadget completed its first independent security audit, and the results tell a good story about the maturity of this CNCF project.Inspektor Gadget is a framework and toolkit that uses eBPF technology to collect and inspect data on Kubernetes clusters and Linux hosts.
08/05/2026
Retirement of Direct Exchange ActiveSync Certificate-Based Authentication by End of 2026
We are announcing the deprecation of Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) certificate-based authentication (CBA) directly to Exchange Online.By the end of 2026, Microsoft will no longer support direct CBA connections from EAS mobile email clients to Exchange Online.After that date, any EAS clients using CBA will need to authenticate via Microsoft Entra ID rather than sending client certificates directly to Exchange Online.
08/05/2026
Safely Migrating Terraform Managed Disks on Azure Using Stable Keys and Copilot
Many Terraform modules flatten VM and disk definitions into a list and use the list index as the for_each key:Automating the Migration with GitHub Copilot Skills:To remove risk and human error, the team created a reusable Copilot skill for managed disk key migration.
08/05/2026
Course Retirement Announcement: AI-3022
Please note that it may take some time for newly announced courses to appear on the page.AI-3022: Implement knowledge mining with Azure AI SearchAI-3022 is being retired to reflect the evolution of Azure AI, as the focus shifts toward generative AI, multimodal experiences, and more integrated application patterns that better represent how solutions are built today.
08/05/2026
The End is Nigh for DES and an Update for hunting down RC4
Hello again all, Chris Cartwright here from the Directory Services support team. We released the plan to remove DES as an encryption type for Kerberos completely. We also released identification scripts to assist with this at microsoft/Kerberos-Crypto: Tools and information regarding Windows Kerberos cryptography.Microsoft Windows Server Blog and then the first patching efforts in support of RC4 deprecation in How to manage Kerberos KDC usage of RC4 for service account ticket issuance changes related to CVE-2026-20833 - Microsoft Support. I wanted to provide a brief update for XML filtering that was illustrated in the previous blog post, So, you think you’re ready for enforcing AES for Kerberos?.
08/05/2026
Title Plan Update - May 8, 2026
📁May 8, 2026 - Title Plan Now AvailableAccess the latest Instructor-Led Training (ILT) updates anytime at http://aka.ms/Courseware_Title_Plan to ensure you're always working from the most current version.📌 Reminder: To help you stay informed more quickly and consistently, we’ve moved to a weekly publishing cadence for the title plan.
08/05/2026
Secure Medallion Architecture Pattern on Azure Databricks (Part II)
In this blog, I'll demonstrate how to use GitHub Copilot to do spec-driven development.For this blog, I'll use the content from my previous article Secure Medallion Architecture Pattern on Azure Databricks (Part I) as a technical specification to extract implementation details and generate two outputs:Next, we need to create the Python code that the main orchestrator SKILL.md will invoke to read the blog file.
08/05/2026
From Observability to Action: Building an AI-Powered AIOps Agent for Customer-Specific Operations
In this example, I use Premium SSD v2 performance tuning to show how a customer can begin with one measurable operational signal, apply clear policy, use AI to generate an explainable recommendation, request human approval, and then perform controlled execution using Azure-native automation.For larger estates, consider the Azure Monitor Metrics Batch API.Microsoft Teams supports actions that post an adaptive card and wait for a response, allowing a workflow to pause until a user responds.
08/05/2026
General Availability of Mailbox Import and Export Microsoft Graph APIs
As a part of our continuing march to Exchange Web Service (EWS) deprecation in Exchange Online (see Exchange Online EWS, Your Time is Almost Up |Microsoft Community Hub) - the Microsoft Graph Team announced another milestone in enabling developers to efficiently manage, migrate, and integrate mailbox data in Exchange Online through Microsoft Graph:Announcing general availability of the mailbox import and export Microsoft Graph APIs - Microsoft 365 Developer Blog
08/05/2026
Why External Participants Can—or Can’t—Join a Microsoft Teams Meeting
The invited person might join as a guest, external/trusted user, or anonymous participant depending on whether they sign in, which account they use, whether their organization has mutual external access configured.The organizer can fine tune control for specific meetings using Teams meeting options. Most external join failures are the result of how identity type, tenant policy, and meeting options intersect.
08/05/2026
Implementing Permission-Gated Tool Calling in Python Agents
AI agents have evolved beyond passive chatbots.
08/05/2026
Anthropic Introduces Natural Language Autoencoders That Convert Claude’s Internal Activations Directly into Human-Readable Text Explanations
When you type a message to Claude, something invisible happens in the middle.The words you send get converted into long lists of numbers called activations that the model uses to process context and generate a response.These activations are, in effect, where the model’s “thinking” lives.
08/05/2026
Announcing Microsoft Host Integration Server 2028: Modern connectivity for IBM Mainframes Midranges
Microsoft Host Integration Server 2028 (HIS 2028) is the next release of Host Integration Server and the successor to Host Integration Server 2020.It helps enterprise IT teams and developers integrate existing IBM host systems, programs, messages, and data with modern Windows, Linux, and Azure applications—while improving security posture, developer productivity, and platform alignment for the years ahead.HIS 2028 focuses on three themes: (1) platform modernization to align with current Microsoft engineering systems and developer workflows, (2) new and extended connectivity surfaces—especially via modern APIs, and (3) product cleanup to remove older dependencies and unsupported technologies.
08/05/2026
OpenAI Releases Three Realtime Audio Models: GPT-Realtime-2, GPT-Realtime-Translate, and GPT-Realtime-Whisper in the Realtime API
Three purpose-built audio models expand what developers can build with live voice: reasoning agents, speech translation across 70+ languages, and streaming transcription.The post OpenAI Releases Three Realtime Audio Models: GPT-Realtime-2, GPT-Realtime-Translate, and GPT-Realtime-Whisper in the Realtime API appeared first on MarkTechPost.
08/05/2026
From Test Cases to Trust: Elevating Enterprise Quality with GitHub Copilot
But QA engineers who use AI effectively will redefine quality.Quality engineering is no longer just about finding defects—it’s about enabling confidence in delivery.Tools like GitHub Copilot, when used responsibly, can become catalysts in that transformation.
08/05/2026
Partner Blog | Unlock the cloud benefits in your partner benefits package with a streamlined activation experience
Microsoft is continuing to modernize how you activate and manage these benefits in Partner Center, with a more secure, guided redemption experience aligned to your offer anniversary date and the billing account used for purchase.Seat-based cloud benefits move to a guided, keyless $0 checkoutIn the modernized flow, redemption starts in Partner Center and finishes with an integrated $0 checkout in the Microsoft 365 admin center.
08/05/2026
Build a CloakBrowser Automation Workflow with Stealth Chromium, Persistent Profiles, and Browser Signal Inspection
In this tutorial, we explore CloakBrowser, a Python-friendly browser automation tool that uses Playwright-style APIs within a stealth Chromium environment.We begin by setting up CloakBrowser, preparing the required browser binary, and resolving the common Colab asyncio loop issue by running the sync browser workflow in a separate worker thread.The post Build a CloakBrowser Automation Workflow with Stealth Chromium, Persistent Profiles, and Browser Signal Inspection appeared first on MarkTechPost.
08/05/2026
LightSeek Foundation Releases TokenSpeed, an Open-Source LLM Inference Engine Targeting TensorRT-LLM-Level Performance for Agentic Workloads
As agentic coding systems such as Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor scale from developer tools to infrastructure powering software development at large, the underlying inference engines serving those requests are under increasing strain.The LightSeek Foundation researchers have released TokenSpeed, an […]The post LightSeek Foundation Releases TokenSpeed, an Open-Source LLM Inference Engine Targeting TensorRT-LLM-Level Performance for Agentic Workloads appeared first on MarkTechPost.
07/05/2026
Public Preview: Migrate your regional virtual machines to availability zones
This new capability enables you to move your existing regional (nonzonal) VMs and VMSS Flex deployments into specific availability zones while preserving the VM names, data disks, and other stateful properties.We're excited to announce the public preview of regional to zonal migration for Azure Virtual Machines and for VMs in Virtual Machine Scale Sets with Flexible orchestration.For VMs running in a Flexible scale set, you first update the scale set model to include the target zones, then migrate each VM in place.
07/05/2026
Security Dashboard for AI: 3 Ways CISOs Drive Impact Today
As a result, the gap between AI adoption and AI governance is widening, and CISOs face growing challenges to maintain visibility, control, and compliance across an increasingly complex ecosystem.Scale without visibility: Over 75% of enterprises surveyed by PWC report they are already adopting AI agents.To address these growing challenges, we are excited to provide CISOs with the Security Dashboard for AI, which recently became generally available. This unified dashboard aggregates posture and real-time risk signals from Microsoft Defender, Entra, and Purview into one unified, executive-level view of AI posture, risk, and inventory across agents, apps, and platforms.
07/05/2026
Firm AI for professional services: governed, agentic workflows built on Microsoft Azure
In this installment of our Partner Spotlight series, we’re highlighting partners building industry-focused AI solutions and bringing them to customers through Microsoft Marketplace.I connected with Richard Baskerville from Intapp to learn how the company is delivering Firm AI—governed, agentic capabilities designed specifically for professional and financial services firms—while aligning with Microsoft Azure for security, scale, and enterprise procurement.[RB] Intapp serves professional and financial services firms exclusively.
07/05/2026
Autoruns, ProcDump, ZoomIt, DebugView, NotMyFault, ProcExp, Procmon, and Linux tools
This update to NotMyFault, a tool that can crash, hang, and cause kernel memory leaks on the Windows system, adds a new type of crash for Level-0 Hyper-V virtualized machines, and adds a SecureKernel crash.This update to Process Monitor, a utility for observing real-time file system, Registry, and process or thread activity, adds Ctrl + PgUp/PgDn for longer scrolling (10 page) in the main list view, shows milliseconds for the times in the Process Tree dialog, and fixes a series of API mismatches.Sysinternals EBPF, Sysmon for Linux, Procmon for Linux, ProcDump for Linux, jcd (on Linux), have been updated with support for RHEL10, Debian 13, and Fedora 43.
07/05/2026
Available today: GPT-5.5 Instant in Microsoft 365 Copilot
Building on GPT-5.3 Instant, GPT-5.5 Instant improves the quality of everyday work tasks designed to deliver more accurate and concise responses, with improved performance on image analysis and STEM-related tasks.Microsoft 365 Copilot licensed users will receive priority access to GPT-5.5 Instant, while users without a Microsoft 365 Copilot license will have standard access.GPT-5.5 Instant begins rolling out today to Copilot Chat experiences for quick responses, available to Microsoft 365 Copilot users with priority access and to Copilot Chat users with standard access.
07/05/2026
Introducing the Azure Resource Manager MCP Server!
We're super excited to announce the public preview of the Azure Resource Manager MCP Server!This is a remote MCP server that provides tools to give AI agents first-class access to Azure infrastructure operations through Azure Resource Manager (ARM).AI agents can now be equipped with tools to generate, validate, execute Azure Resource Graph (ARG) queries and tools to deploy and manage ARM template deployments.
07/05/2026
A New Chapter for Realtime AI: Reasoning, Translation, and Real-Time Transcription
Today, OpenAI’s GPT-realtime-translate, GPT‑realtime‑2 and, GPT-realtime-whisper are rolling out into Microsoft Foundry starting today — together representing a significant step forward for the realtime model lineup available to developers on the platform.GPT-realtime-translate and GPT-realtime-whisper together extend the realtime stack for live multilingual audio workflows.GPT-realtime-translate, GPT-realtime-whisper, and GPT‑realtime‑2 are rolling out into Microsoft Foundry today.
07/05/2026
Plan a fun Family Wellness Month with Copilot
May is Family Wellness Month, and with the help of Copilot, you can turn your family’s wellness goals into tailored plans and activities in seconds.Plan a device-free family weekIntroduce mindfulness for the whole family
07/05/2026
Update Your Exchange SE Hybrid On-premises Rich Coexistence to Graph
Stage 2: deprecation of EWS calls and switch to REST-based Microsoft Graph API calls for Exchange hybrid.Because of this, all customers who require rich coexistence (even those who already finalized Stage 1) will need to install an Exchange Subscription Edition (SE) update on premises and switch the dedicated Exchange hybrid app permissions to a more granular Graph API permission model.Step 1 – install the May 2026 Hotfix Update for Exchange SE (or newer) on your on-premises Exchange SE servers:
07/05/2026
Released: May 2026 Exchange Server Hotfix Update
Microsoft has released Hotfix Update (HU) for:Updating your Exchange rich hybrid coexistence to Graph API callsMay 2026 hotfix update contains functionality that will allow you to start switching your Exchange Server hybrid rich coexistence from using Exchange Web Services (EWS) to REST-based Microsoft Graph API calls.
07/05/2026
Passkeys aren’t the finish line: Eliminating fallbacks and fixing recovery
According to the Microsoft Digital Defense Report, AI-driven phishing campaigns are achieving click-through rates as high as 54%.Over the past year, synced passkeys have become the default sign-in method for hundreds of millions of Microsoft account users — across every major operating system, device type, and browser.⚠️ Deprecation notice: Security questions for password reset in Microsoft Entra ID will be deprecated starting March 2027.
07/05/2026
Announcing WDK with Visual Studio 2026
The WDK now fully supports Visual Studio 2026 for building, testing, and packaging Windows drivers.Visual Studio Build Tools now fully integrates with WDK and Windows SDK MSIs for production use.Visual Studio Build Tools can be used alongside installed Windows SDK and Windows Driver Kit MSIs.
07/05/2026
Announcing General Availability of Azure Dl/D/Esv7-series VMs based on Intel® Xeon® 6 processors
We’re excited to announce the general availability of the latest Azure Dlsv7, Dsv7, and Esv7 General Purpose and Memory Optimized Virtual Machines (VMs) powered by the latest Intel® Xeon® 6 processor.These new VM families are designed to help customers run business-critical, performance-sensitive workloads at scale by delivering up to 20% better general compute performance, larger VM sizes and memory capacities, and significant improvements in networking and storage performance compared to previous generation v6 VMs.Dsv7 VMs deliver up to 25% better performance for compute-bound workloads such as video transcoding, compression/decompression, and cryptography, up to 30% better performance for database workloads, and up to 25% better performance for AI pre-processing workloads, compared to Dsv6 VMs.
07/05/2026
Building Secure AI Platforms in Banking Using Azure Enterprise Architecture
Unlike public AI applications, banking systems must ensure:A production AI request flow:Common failure points in enterprise AI systems:
07/05/2026
New Microsoft Certified: Cybersecurity Business Professional Certification
Built for business professionals, the new Exam SC‑730 (beta) validates how you protect data, reduce risk, and respond to incidents.The Microsoft Certified: Cybersecurity Business Professional Certification helps you validate your ability to recognize common threats, apply everyday security best practices, protect sensitive data, and respond appropriately to incidents to help protect your organization.To earn this new Certification, you need to pass Exam SC-730: Cybersecurity Business Professional, currently in beta.
07/05/2026
You don't want to miss POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2026 (T-6 weeks)
PostgreSQL has quietly become one of the most important pieces of modern application infrastructure — and in 2026, that momentum is just impossible to ignore.It has evolved into a versatile, extensible platform that sits at the center of how modern systems are built.POSETTE 2026 brings together PostgreSQL contributors, extension authors, cloud engineers, platform teams, and practitioners from across the ecosystem.
07/05/2026
Automatic Teams meeting recording: why the policy alone is not enough
It gives the organizer access to the meeting option "Record and transcribe automatically".There are personal meeting templates users create themselves and Teams Administrators can Create a custom meeting template in Microsoft Teams. Personal templates are created from the "Save as template" button on the meeting options page.
07/05/2026
Design observability for AI apps and agents selling through Microsoft Marketplace
In the last post, API resilience and reliability patterns for AI apps and agents, we focused on what happens when AI systems encounter failure—and how resilient execution paths keep that failure contained.This post is part of a series on building and publishing well-architected AI apps and agents in Microsoft Marketplace. The series focuses on AI apps and agents that are architected, hosted, and operated on Azure, with guidance aligned to building and selling solutions through Microsoft Marketplace.See curated, step-by-step guidance to help you build, publish, or sell your app or agent (no matter where you start) in App Advisor
07/05/2026
How to get heard by Microsoft and win more together
At Ultimate Partner LIVE Bellevue, May 11-13, some of the sharpest practitioners in the Microsoft ecosystem are coming together to share what works.Cyril Belikoff helped architect the unified Microsoft Marketplace and launched the resale enabled offer, which lets channel partners bundle software development company solutions and transact against Azure commit.Cyril joins Vince Menzione and Jon Yoo, CEO of Suger, on Day 1 to cover where the AI-driven marketplace motion is heading and what partners need to do now to capture their share of the revenue flowing through it.
07/05/2026
New in Microsoft Marketplace: May 7, 2026
Learn about 133 new offers that went live in Microsoft Marketplace, a single destination to find, try, and buy cloud solutions, AI apps, and agents to meet your business needs.AI Assistant: Abe is an AI assistant for Microsoft Teams that creates message-linked reminders, converts time zones, and supports natural-language queries via Microsoft 365 Copilot.Ideal for performance scorecards, financial dashboards, and sales reports, it features customizable typography, variance display, and interactive sparkline with tooltips and cross-filtering, enhancing data insights without extra charts.
07/05/2026
Bringing all your Integration workloads to Logic Apps Standard
In our December 2025 announcement, we outlined a long-term direction for enterprise integration: Azure Logic Apps is the successor to BizTalk Server.Today we’re announcing the Logic Apps Migration Agent—an open-source Microsoft project that delivers an AI-assisted, end-to-end modernization experience with a structured, stage-gated workflow.Customizable for your source platform and standards: Extend the agent with product-specific discovery and conversion steps, tailor mappings and transformation rules, and align outputs with your target Logic Apps patterns and engineering conventions.
07/05/2026
End-to-end workload observability with Query Store for primary and replicas
And when performance issues hit, the hardest part is often simple: where did the queries actually run?With the latest query store capabilities in Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server, you can now capture workload executed not just on the primary, but also on read replicas—including cascading read replicas—and export the captured runtime stats, wait stats, and query text into Azure Monitor Logs (Log Analytics workspace / LAWS).This post walks through a reproducible demo that provisions a primary server, a read replica, and a cascading read replica, then runs a TPC-H–based workload across all three to generate query store data you can analyze locally and in Log Analytics.If you don't know how to start issuing queries in a Log Analytics workspace, refer to Get started with log queries in Azure Monitor Logs.
07/05/2026
AgentCon Around the World: How MVPs Brought AI Agents to Life
Over the past months, AgentCon has taken shape as a series of grassroots events organized by Microsoft MVPs across the globe—and events are still being added to the calendar. Throughout 2026, AgentCon events are bringing together thousands of developers across multiple cities worldwide, offering community‑led, free learning experiences focused on AI agents and real‑world applications.Share your experience in the comments, or tell us your MVP story. If you’re passionate about technology, community, and knowledge sharing, this might be your moment to take the next step: Nominate or become a Microsoft MVP.
07/05/2026
Meta AI Releases NeuralBench: A Unified Open-Source Framework to Benchmark NeuroAI Models Across 36 EEG Tasks and 94 Datasets
Meta AI team has released NeuralBench, a unified open-source framework for benchmarking NeuroAI models, alongside NeuralBench-EEG v1.0 — the largest open EEG benchmark to date, covering 36 tasks, 94 datasets, and 14 deep learning architectures evaluated under a single standardized interface across 9,478 subjects and 13,603 hours of brain recordings.The post Meta AI Releases NeuralBench: A Unified Open-Source Framework to Benchmark NeuroAI Models Across 36 EEG Tasks and 94 Datasets appeared first on MarkTechPost.
07/05/2026
POSETTE 2026: The PostgreSQL Event You Don’t Want to Miss (T-6 weeks)
PostgreSQL has quietly become one of the most important pieces of modern application infrastructure — and in 2026, that momentum is just impossible to ignore.It has evolved into a versatile, extensible platform that sits at the center of how modern systems are built.POSETTE 2026 brings together PostgreSQL contributors, extension authors, cloud engineers, platform teams, and practitioners from across the ecosystem.
07/05/2026
OpenAI Introduces MRC (Multipath Reliable Connection): A New Open Networking Protocol for Large-Scale AI Supercomputer Training Clusters
MRC (Multipath Reliable Connection) is a new open networking protocol developed by OpenAI in partnership with AMD, Broadcom, Intel, Microsoft, and NVIDIA that improves GPU networking performance and resilience in large-scale AI training clusters by spreading packets across hundreds of paths simultaneously, recovering from network failures in microseconds, and enabling supercomputers with over 100,000 GPUs to be built using only two tiers of Ethernet switches.The post OpenAI Introduces MRC (Multipath Reliable Connection): A New Open Networking Protocol for Large-Scale AI Supercomputer Training Clusters appeared first on MarkTechPost.
07/05/2026
Elisa – Vuoden kumppani / Cloud & AI Platform Transformation
Microsoft Azure on keskeinen osa tätä kokonaisuutta. Elisa toteutti vuoden aikana merkittäviä Azure-hankkeita muun muassa Aktian, Digital Workforcen, Suomen Punaisen Ristin Veripalvelun, Sympan ja Terveystalon kanssa. Vuoden 2025 Azure-kumppanuuspalkinto vahvistaa Elisan asemaa luotettavana Microsoft-kumppanina, joka auttaa asiakkaitaan tekemään pilvestä ja tekoälystä hallittua kilpailuetua.
07/05/2026
Building a Scalable Contract Data Extraction Pipeline with Microsoft Foundry and Python
An Azure Function with a Blob trigger enables automatic processing when a file is uploaded.The prebuilt layout model helps extract tables, text, and structure from documents.Microsoft Learnmicrosoft/content-processing-solution-accelerator: Programmatically extract data and apply schemas to unstructured documents across text-based and multi-modal content using Azure AI Foundry, Azure OpenAI, Azure AI Content Understanding, and Cosmos DB.
07/05/2026
Zyphra Releases ZAYA1-8B: A Reasoning MoE Trained on AMD Hardware That Punches Far Above Its Weight Class
Zyphra releases ZAYA1-8B, a reasoning Mixture of Experts model with only 760M active parameters that outperforms open-weight models many times its size on math and coding benchmarks — closing in on DeepSeek-V3.2 and surpassing Claude 4.5 Sonnet on HMMT'25 with its novel Markovian RSA test-time compute method.Trained end-to-end on AMD Instinct MI300 hardware and released under Apache 2.0, it sets a new standard for intelligence density in the small language model weight class.The post Zyphra Releases ZAYA1-8B: A Reasoning MoE Trained on AMD Hardware That Punches Far Above Its Weight Class appeared first on MarkTechPost.
07/05/2026
Governing Agent Sprawl: A Multi‑Region AI Agent Landing Zone on Azure (Reference Architecture)
It describes a multi‑region AI agent landing zone on Azure that treats agents as first‑class, governable workloads—provisioned automatically, constrained by policy, and observable from day one.The AI gateway in Azure API Management provides a policy‑enforcement and observability layer in front of AI models, agents, and tools.Azure AI Foundry Control Plane provides a unified management surface for AI agents, models, and tools across projects and subscriptions.
07/05/2026
How Validation‑Driven Terraform Made Our Azure Function Deployments Predictable
When Terraform deploys Azure Functions, the most expensive failures are rarely “syntax” problems.In one of our Azure Function platforms, repeated deployment failures were not caused by bugs in application code or gaps in Terraform itself—they were caused by discovering platform constraints too late.By introducing a validation‑driven approach—combining Terraform input validations, targeted preconditions, and lightweight Azure DevOps pre‑flight checks—we moved failure discovery to the right place: pull requests and plan stages.
07/05/2026
Cutover Strategy for Azure PaaS Services: A Step-by-Step Guide to Near Zero-Downtime Migrations
Recommendation: Use Phased Parallel Cutover for enterprise PaaS migrations involving messaging, databases, and multi-team ownership.What cutover challenges have you encountered in your Azure migrations?Have you used a relay pattern for messaging, or found a different approach that worked? Share your experiences in the comments below — your insights help the community learn faster.
07/05/2026
Planning for Communities in Teams: What Admins and Communicators Should Do Next
Communities are becoming a more visible part of Teams, making now the right time for admins and communicators to align on readiness, governance, and content.You’ll also learn the key decisions admins and corporate communications teams should make to ensure Communities add clarity, not noise as adoption increases.Reset All Company for the Teams experience
06/05/2026
A Groq-Powered Agentic Research Assistant with LangGraph, Tool Calling, Sub-Agents, and Agentic Memory: Lets Built It
In this tutorial, we build a Groq-powered agentic research workflow that runs directly using Groq’s free OpenAI-compatible inference endpointThe post A Groq-Powered Agentic Research Assistant with LangGraph, Tool Calling, Sub-Agents, and Agentic Memory: Lets Built It appeared first on MarkTechPost.
06/05/2026
CopilotKit Introduces Enterprise Intelligence Platform That Gives Agentic Applications Persistent Memory Across Sessions and Devices
CopilotKit Intelligence adds a managed persistence layer on top of the open-source CopilotKit stack, giving agents the ability to retain context, state, and interaction history without custom storage infrastructureThe post CopilotKit Introduces Enterprise Intelligence Platform That Gives Agentic Applications Persistent Memory Across Sessions and Devices appeared first on MarkTechPost.
06/05/2026
Multitude builds resilient banking platform with PostgreSQL and MySQL on Azure
At Multitude, we operate across 17 countries and deliver digital banking, credit services, payment processing, and regulatory reporting through a platform composed of more than 400 microservices.Each bounded context represents a logical business domain and encapsulates the services and schemas required to support that capability.By combining zone-redundant availability, structured recovery workflows, governed retention policies, and standardized lifecycle management, we operate a database layer engineered for resilience, auditability, and regulatory alignment at scale.
06/05/2026
Distributing model weights to your AI cluster: a faster pre-flight on AKS and Slurm
Microsoft's published scalability target for a standard storage account is 200 Gbps egress (region-dependent).Slurm makes this easy because the whole pipeline runs inside one sbatch allocation: nodes don't move between stages, per-node /mnt/nvme persists, and srun is a stage sequencer for free.The cleanest answer, by a wide margin, is to not separate them in the first place: run both phases inside one MPIJob, with one merged worker image that contains both azcp-cluster and your training stack.
06/05/2026
Meet the Judges of the 2026 Imagine Cup World Championship
Today, she is building two AI-native ventures: the Institute for Applied AI and AIVERGENT.The Imagine Cup World Championship is a chance to see the next generation of founders in action.Watch the livestream on June 2 at Microsoft Build 9:45 AM PTD to see which startup is named the 2026 Imagine Cup World Champion.
06/05/2026
Azure SQL BACPAC Export Failure with CDC & db_cdcreader (SQL71501)
Exporting an Azure SQL Database to a BACPAC using SqlPackage / SSMS may fail when Change Data Capture (CDC) is enabled and database users (or Entra groups) are assigned to CDC-related roles such as db_cdcreader.Azure SQL Database with CDC enabledExport fails during schema validation phase
06/05/2026
Now in Foundry: IBM Granite 4.1, NVIDIA Nemotron Nano Omni, and Qwen3.6-35B-A3B
This week Microsoft Foundry adds two major model families alongside a reasoning powerhouse that spans the full spectrum from specialized speech and vision to general-purpose coding and long-context analysis. IBM's Granite 4.1 is a famiily of 10: six LLMs across 3B, 8B, and 30B sizes in both full-precision and FP8 variants, plus a safety model, a vision-language model for document extraction, and a multilingual speech recognition model.Using the Qwen3.6-35B-A3B endpoint deployed in Microsoft Foundry, enable thinking preservation for multi-turn sessions.
06/05/2026
Resilient by Design: Azure Databricks Disaster Recovery Strategy
To help organizations operationalize this approach today, we have defined a structured strategy for synchronizing Unity Catalog objects and associated data across regions, enabling a resilient-by-design Azure Databricks architecture.In October 2025, Databricks announced a Managed Disaster Recovery solution, developed in collaboration with Capital One, which includes managed replication, customer-specified failover, and read-only secondary capabilities. The approach outlined in this post serves as a complementary, customer-managed pattern, providing a practical and production-ready path for organizations to achieve robust disaster recovery and business continuity while Databricks continues to expand its native DR capabilities.The framework outlined below provides a practical and strategic approach to operationalizing disaster recovery in Azure Databricks environments, bridging the gap between architectural intent and true operational readiness.
06/05/2026
From Chaos to Clarity: Your Databricks Workspace on a Single Pane of Glass
As Azure Databricks workspaces evolve, complexity creeps in unnoticed. Every Azure Databricks conversation with customers eventually lands on the same question: “What do we actually have in this workspace?”In most enterprises, each business or data science team operates its own workspace, while the central platform or operations team has little to no visibility into what’s being created or why.The utility works in two phases: Discovery and Analysis.
06/05/2026
Advancing print readiness across the Windows on Arm ecosystem
Momentum across the Windows on Arm ecosystem continues to build as more commercial and retail customers adopt Arm-based Windows devices for everyday work.The HP Print Support Application, previously known as the HP Universal Print Application, enhances the printing experience for HP devices configured with the Microsoft IPP Class Driver.Ricoh Print Support Application enables advanced, printer‑specific functionality for Ricoh devices on modern Windows systems by restoring vendor features on top of Microsoft’s driverless IPP printing model.
06/05/2026
First Fridays: Signal to Strategy, AI‑Powered Measurement for Modern Communicators
Join us Friday, June 5th at 10 am PT, as we share how AI and Copilot are changing the way communicators approach measurement and analytics at Microsoft. Amy Morris and Luke Sinclair of the Microsoft Global Employee & Executive Communications (GEEC) team will walk through a practical, communicator‑led approach to capturing signals across channels, identifying themes over time, and turning insight into action. How communicators can use AI and Copilot to synthesize signals across multiple sources and see patterns that were previously hard to spot This session is for communicators, analytics partners, and anyone responsible for understanding sentiment, impact, and outcomes in an increasingly complex measurement environment. Register now at aka.ms/FirstFridaysJune!
06/05/2026
New Microsoft Certified: Dynamics 365 Sales AI Consultant Associate Certification
Show you’re ready to design agent-enabled sales solutions with the new Exam AB-210 (beta). The new Microsoft Certified: Dynamics 365 Sales AI Consultant Associate Certification is built for today’s sellers who want to operate at the intersection of sales and AI.To earn the certification, you’ll need to pass Exam AB-210: Accelerating Sales Pipelines with AI in Dynamics 365, currently in beta.
06/05/2026
Introducing cert-manager for Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes: now in Public Preview
Today we’re releasing a public preview of cert-manager for Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes.It’s an Arc extension that automates TLS certificate and trust bundle management for edge Kubernetes clusters.Microsoft cert-manager for Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes gives customers a supported way to use cert-manager, with Microsoft handling packaging, delivery, and ongoing maintenance so teams can adopt the capability without taking on the full operational burden of managing the OSS component themselves.
06/05/2026
Introducing Learning Activities: AI-powered practice for educators and students
With Learning Activities, educators can paste in lesson content and generate a shareable practice activity in under three minutes.The AI does the heavy lifting: creating flashcards, fill-in-the-blank exercises, matching games, and quizzes from whatever content you bring.Learning Activities is a web-based tool powered by Microsoft AI.
06/05/2026
Building resilient networks for AI supercomputers
In this post, we share what’s unique about networking at extreme GPU scale and the system-level design choices required to enable large synchronous training jobs to run reliably, even during network failures.We are also publishing, in partnership with others, the open-source Multipath Reliable Connection (MRC) specification and software interfaces, and open-sourcing the associated libraries.To complement MRC, we implemented a two-tier, multiplane network topology in Fairwater using high-radix switches.
06/05/2026
Google AI Releases Multi-Token Prediction (MTP) Drafters for Gemma 4: Delivering Up to 3x Faster Inference Without Quality Loss
Google Introduces MTP Drafters for Gemma 4 Family Using Speculative Decoding to Achieve Up to 3x SpeedupThe post Google AI Releases Multi-Token Prediction (MTP) Drafters for Gemma 4: Delivering Up to 3x Faster Inference Without Quality Loss appeared first on MarkTechPost.
06/05/2026
When Claude Hallucinates in Court: The Latham & Watkins Incident and What It Means for Attorney Liability
There is a particular kind of irony that the legal profession rarely gets to witness in such pristine form.In May 2025, Latham & Watkins a firm that routinely bills over $2,000 an hour for its partners and counts Anthropic among its clients filed a court declaration in Concord Music Group v.Anthropic that contained […]
06/05/2026
How to Build a Fully Interactive Multi-Page NiceGUI Application with Real-Time Dashboard, CRUD Operations, File Upload, and Async Chat
In this tutorial, we build a fully interactive, multi-page web application using NiceGUI.We start by setting up the environment and designing a reusable layout that includes navigation, theming, and dark mode support.As we move forward, we implement a live dashboard with real-time metrics and charts, demonstrating reactive bindings and timed updates.
06/05/2026
Turning GitHub Copilot into a “Best Practices Coach” with Copilot Spaces + a Markdown Knowledge Base
Copilot Spaces solve the context problem by allowing you to attach a curated set of sources (files, folders, repos, PRs/issues, uploads, free text) plus explicit instructions—so Copilot answers in the context of your team’s rules and artifacts.Spaces can be shared with your team and stay updated as the underlying GitHub content changes—so your “best practices coach” stays evergreen.To standardize repeatable workflows like code review, test scaffolding, or endpoint scaffolding, create prompt files (slash commands) as .prompt.md files—commonly in .github/prompts/.
06/05/2026
🚀 Modernizing Azure Landing Zone Deployments: From Terraform Scripts to GHCP-Driven Engineering
Most Azure Landing Zone (ALZ) deployments we see today still follow the same pattern they did a few years ago.Rewriting GitHub Actions pipelinesThis is exactly where GitHub Copilot (GHCP) changes the game.
06/05/2026
Operationalizing Responsible AI in Microsoft Foundry within Enterprise Network Boundaries
Deploy Azure Microsoft Foundry in a VNet-integrated landing zoneSet up Azure Microsoft Foundry as the core AI platform layer.Operationalizing Responsible AI in Microsoft Azure goes beyond defining policies—it demands tight alignment across AI services, infrastructure, networking, and governance controls.
06/05/2026
Inworld AI Launches Realtime TTS-2: A Closed-Loop Voice Model That Adapts to How You Actually Talk
The Inworld AI's new model conditions on full audio context, not just transcripts — a meaningful architectural shift for voice-first AI agents The post Inworld AI Launches Realtime TTS-2: A Closed-Loop Voice Model That Adapts to How You Actually Talk appeared first on MarkTechPost.
06/05/2026
Bringing Hybrid, Agent-based AI to Higher Education
As interest grows in agent‑based AI, institutions are increasingly exploring conversational interfaces as an entry point to digital services.The evolution of the delivery of student services in higher education.A growing pattern in agent‑based AI delivery is the use of hybrid architectures that blend local execution on modern AI-enabled PCs powered by small language models (SLMs), with cloud‑based AI services built on large language models.
05/05/2026
Use Azure Container Registry as an Upstream Source for Artifact Cache
ACR’s artifact cache feature has helped teams reduce upstream dependency on public registries like Docker Hub, GitHub Container Registry, and Microsoft Artifact Registry by serving cached copies of publicly available images from a local ACR instance.A step-by-step walkthrough using the Azure CLI to set up an ACR-to-ACR cache rule with a user-assigned managed identity.The new --identity (-i) parameter on az acr cache create accepts the resource ID (ARM ID) of the user-assigned managed identity you want the cache rule to use.
05/05/2026
Calling APIs using private Certificate Authorities from Logic Apps
They were trying to make what looked like a simple HTTP request to a Jira API but were getting back an SSL error.The root of the error was that the customer was securing the API endpoint with a certificate generated from a private Certificate Authority in their environment.Because this certificate was not signed by VeriSign, GoDaddy or other public certificate authority, and the Logic App HTTP Connector was failing as it did not trust the issuer.The fix for this is simple as it turns out but required a bit of reading the manual.
05/05/2026
Optimizing Azure spend with Microsoft Marketplace
The session explored how organizations can leverage Marketplace as a strategic procurement engine and maximize their cloud investments.A major focus of our session was the Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC).This agreement allows organizations to commit to a certain level of Azure consumption in exchange for discounted rates.
05/05/2026
Public Preview: Migrate Availability Sets to Virtual Machine Scale Sets
We're excited to announce the public preview of availability set to Virtual Machine Scale Set migration for Azure Virtual Machines.This new capability enables you to move your existing VMs from availability sets to Virtual Machine Scale Sets with Flexible orchestration—unlocking higher availability, autoscaling, and zone-level resiliency without recreating your workloads from scratch.Why migrate from availability sets to Virtual Machine Scale Sets?
05/05/2026
Logic Apps, Windows auth, the On-Premises Data Gateway and you
However, this customer had a need to connect to an on-premises SQL instance via the on-premises data gateway (OPDG).We got the gateway registered in Azure and were ready to test it out.The customer is using Logic Apps and the SQL Connector to connect back to their on-premises SQL instance.To configure the on-premises data gateway account for delegation, do the following:
05/05/2026
Better together with Azure WAF + Microsoft Defender for Storage + Defender for Azure SQL Databases
Azure Web Application Firewall (WAF) serves as a critical control at the application edge, inspecting inbound HTTP/S traffic and blocking common web-based exploits before they reach backend services.While WAF focuses on securing the application boundary, Defender for Cloud extends protection into the resource layer by providing Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP) capabilities, including security posture management and workload protection.The Azure Networking Security blog post “Zero Trust with Azure Firewall, Azure DDoS Protection, and Azure WAF: A practical approach” highlights WAF’s role in inspecting inbound HTTP/S traffic, detecting malicious request patterns (such as OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities), and reducing direct exposure of backend endpoints by enforcing a controlled application entry point.
05/05/2026
Closing the ‘Expressivity Gap’: How Mistral’s Voxtral TTS is Redefining Multilingual Voice Cloning with a Hybrid Autoregressive and Flow-Matching Architecture
Voice AI has a dirty secret.The speaker sounds like themselves for two seconds, then drifts into generic synthetic territory.The post Closing the ‘Expressivity Gap’: How Mistral’s Voxtral TTS is Redefining Multilingual Voice Cloning with a Hybrid Autoregressive and Flow-Matching Architecture appeared first on MarkTechPost.
05/05/2026
Foundry IQ and the partner opportunity: Turning domain knowledge into AI advantage
As organizations deploy agents at scale, a hard truth is emerging: an agent is only as valuable as the knowledge behind it.Foundry IQ is a knowledge layer within Microsoft AI Foundry that connects curated, structured knowledge sources to the agents customers build and deploy.Model Context Protocol (MCP) – Open standard for connecting AI agents to knowledge and tools
05/05/2026
Windows news you can use: April 2026
This month, the Windows Accessibility team delivered its first interactive deep dive on the Tech Community featuring demos of the latest improvements in Narrator and live Q&A. Watch it on demand to help ensure your organization is taking advantage of the latest Windows 11 accessibility features.We also continue to host Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA) here on the Tech Community to help you plan for older Secure Boot certificates starting to expire in June.[W365] – A new Windows 365 monitoring and reporting platform, now in public preview, consolidates Cloud PC health, performance, and configuration data into integrated dashboards in Intune.
05/05/2026
Build a Modular Skill-Based Agent System for LLMs with Dynamic Tool Routing in Python
In this tutorial, we build a complete skill-based agent system for large language models and explore how modular capabilities can be structured like an operating system for AI agents.We define reusable skills, attach metadata and schemas to them, register them in a central registry, and enable dynamic orchestration through tool calling and multi-step reasoning.The post Build a Modular Skill-Based Agent System for LLMs with Dynamic Tool Routing in Python appeared first on MarkTechPost.
05/05/2026
What partners need to know before Microsoft’s new fiscal year
At Ultimate Partner LIVE Bellevue, May 11–13, a lineup of senior Microsoft executives will take the mainstage to share what is shifting, what it means for your business, and how the most aligned partners are responding. Here is who to know.In his fireside with Vince Menzione, he will share what the most successful partners are doing differently as AI moves from a conversation to a core business motion.Her session covers FY27 channel priorities: where Microsoft is investing, what the most successful CSP and indirect partners are doing right now with AI and Copilot, and why the partners who have moved to an outcomes-based model are already seeing compounding growth.
05/05/2026
Introducing OpenAI's newest chat model in Microsoft Foundry
OpenAI's GPT-5.5 Instant (or Chat-latest in the API) begins rolling out in Microsoft Foundry today as GPT-chat-latest.Built on GPT-5.4 and GPT-5.3-chat, the new model delivers measurable gains in factual accuracy, tool calling, and response efficiency.According to OpenAI, the new model produces 52.5% fewer hallucinations and reduces hallucinated claims by 37.3% on conversations previously flagged for factual errors when compared to GPT-5.3-chat.
05/05/2026
Planned Maintenance May 31, 2026: Updates to Viva Glint SFTP Connectivity
To support ongoing security and infrastructure improvements, Viva Glint will perform planned maintenance on May 31, 2026 starting at 1:00am Pacific time (PDT).The maintenance window is expected to last approximately 3–4 hours, during which time customers may experience limited access to both Viva Glint surveys and the platform.We recognize that maintenance windows can cause disruption and appreciate your understanding as we continue to improve the reliability, security, and performance of Viva Glint.
05/05/2026
Partner Case Study | Copeland
One of those platforms is Connect+, which Copeland uses to monitor and control refrigeration controllers in grocery and large-format retail environments where uptime directly affects food safety and operations.When Copeland became a standalone company following a divestiture from Emerson Electric, the team faced a hard deadline.The company used the transition to modernize Connect+ and establish an operating model built for scale, security, and reliability with Azure.
05/05/2026
Read-only analytics access and custom metrics now available in Microsoft Copilot Studio
Turning Copilot Studio analytics into clear business insightThe Analytics Viewer role in Copilot StudioThe Analytics Viewer role provides view-only access to an agent’s Analytics page, without permission to edit, configure, publish, or share the agent.
05/05/2026
When PostgreSQL v17 Chooses the Wrong Plan: A Deep Dive into CTEs with Data Skew
However, when queries combine highly skewed data distributions with runtime randomness (for example, ORDER BY random() LIMIT 1), this increased planner confidence can sometimes lead to execution plans that are correct in theory but catastrophic for specific runtime values.The failure occurs because the PostgreSQL 17 planner estimates a large matching result set based on the cardinality of values produced by the audit_purchases CTE, and consequently chooses a plan optimized for that estimated volume rather than for the single runtime-selected account.Disabling hash joins at the session level forces PostgreSQL 17 to revert to a nested loop plan using index scans.
05/05/2026
New Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Cloud Developer Associate Certification
Show your readiness to design and run AI solutions on Azure, with new Exam AI-200 (beta).To support this shift, we’re introducing the new Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Cloud Developer Associate Certification to help you validate your knowledge of building, integrating, and monitoring AI solutions on Azure by using containerized compute, vector-enabled databases, event-driven AI pipelines, serverless functions, secret management, and distributed observability.To earn this new Microsoft Certification, you need to pass Exam AI-200: Developing AI Cloud Solutions on Azure, currently in beta.
05/05/2026
Extending Sentinel Data Integration: Azure Blob Storage Support for CCF Connectors
Microsoft Sentinel continues to expand its ecosystem through the Codeless Connector Framework (CCF), enabling ISVs to build and deliver integrations with Sentinel faster while simplifying deployment for customers.With this latest enhancement, ISVs can now build connectors that read data from Azure Blob Storage—unlocking new flexibility in how security data is collected and delivered.This approach introduces a durable data layer between the data source and Sentinel, enabling more resilient and scalable ingestion scenarios.
05/05/2026
Watch Part 2 of our video series: Navigate a busy workday with Copilot
We’re passionate about helping people learn how to use Copilot to make work easier, get more productive, and stay on top of everyday tasks, which is the inspiration behind our video series.The videos we have created for Part 2 demonstrate how the Microsoft 365 Copilot app can help you get through your workday.Catch up on meetings with video highlights
05/05/2026
The Advantages of Premium Cases in Purview eDiscovery
For example, up to 50,000 cases and 5 TB per search in E5 (versus 10,000 cases and 2 TB in E3).Each legal hold in E5 can encompass up to 2,000 mailboxes and 2,000 sites in one policy.Reconstructs conversations in a threaded view for Microsoft Teams chats and email chains.
05/05/2026
My MVP Story: Four Years In, Two Years with Security Copilot, and a Lot of Learning
Sentinel launches in 2019, on April 1, 2024, Security Copilot launches.This April, I’m celebrating four years as a Microsoft MVP (Security) and two years of Security Copilot.I’m also celebrating a milestone I’m still processing: being the only woman in the world with the Security Copilot designation in Security Copilot’s second year.
05/05/2026
Coachello, Techlatest, and SilverLining.Cloud deliver transactable offers in Microsoft Marketplace
AI Avatar Roleplays: Coachello’s AI Avatar Roleplays lets employees practice high-stakes workplace conversations with lifelike AI avatars in Microsoft Teams, guided by Microsoft 365 Copilot.DeepSeek and Llama Powered All-in-One LLM Suite: Techlatest provides a DeepSeek-powered and Llama-powered all-in-one large language model (LLM) suite on a Microsoft Azure virtual machine.The serverless design scales on demand to shorten up to 100 URLs per second, and customers pay only for API calls while clicks and traffic remain included at no extra cost.
05/05/2026
Implementing Statistical Guardrails for Non-Deterministic Agents
Non-deterministic agents are those where the same input can lead to distinct outputs across multiple runs.
05/05/2026
From Manual Backfills to Autonomous Pipelines: Building an LLM-Powered Backfill Agent on Azure
In this post, I describe how to build a backfill agent using Azure AI Foundry, Model Context Protocol (MCP), Azure Functions, Synapse, and ADX.In this demo, Logic Apps, Synapse, and Kusto are treated as existing systems; the focus is how to expose controlled MCP tools from an Azure Function App and connect them to Azure AI Foundry agent.Connect the MCP server to Azure AI Foundry
05/05/2026
Federated Copilot connectors - bringing real-time enterprise data within Microsoft 365 Copilot
Extending that vision, we are announcing general availability of federated Copilot connectors1, a new class of Copilot connectors that bring real-time data to Copilot via Model Context Protocol (MCP).The first wave of Microsoft-built federated Copilot connectors includes partners like Canva, HubSpot, Intercom, Linear, LSEG (London Stock Exchange Group), Moody’s, Notion and more.Built on the emerging industry standard Model Context Protocol (MCP), federated connectors bring third-party data into Microsoft 365 Copilot live at query time, enabling users to reason over real-time information without leaving their workflow.
05/05/2026
(Co)work in Progress
Give Microsoft 365 Copilot Cowork your team's playbook.Plugins bring your organization's skills and knowledge into one workflow so Cowork can help teams work the way they already do. Try Copilot Cowork in Frontier * Partner integrations for LSEG (London Stock Exchange Group), Miro, monday.com, and S&P Global Energy are available in the coming weeks
05/05/2026
Deploying Azure Resources with Managed HSM Keys Using Bicep
Managed HSM is different from regular Key Vault:Since Managed HSM uses RBAC, assign roles like:Resource identity must have access to HSM key
05/05/2026
Why Gradient Descent Zigzags and How Momentum Fixes It
How momentum optimizes gradient descent by dampening oscillations and accelerating convergence on complex The post Why Gradient Descent Zigzags and How Momentum Fixes It appeared first on MarkTechPost.
05/05/2026
Google Adds Event-Driven Webhooks to the Gemini API, Eliminating the Need for Polling in Long-Running AI Jobs
A push-based notification system for Batch API, Deep Research, and video generation tasks arrives with built-in security, retry guarantees, and two configuration modes.The post Google Adds Event-Driven Webhooks to the Gemini API, Eliminating the Need for Polling in Long-Running AI Jobs appeared first on MarkTechPost.
05/05/2026
Moving Beyond Prompts: A Practical Introduction to Spec-Driven Development
But for anything involving multiple inputs, constraints, or edge cases, the process can become unpredictable.Tools like GitHub Copilot, Azure AI Studio, and AI-assisted workflows in Visual Studio Code tend to be more effective when given clear, structured inputs.Amplifier - Modular AI Agent Framework - Amplifier
05/05/2026
Building an AI Agent for Azure Infrastructure Validation
Infrastructure consistency is critical in large-scale Azure environments, especially in migration programs and DevOps-driven deployments.While Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using Terraform improves reproducibility, it does not fully eliminate:To address this, we propose building an AI-powered Infrastructure Validation Agent that continuously validates and reconciles:
05/05/2026
A Coding Guide to Survey Bias Correction Using Facebook Research Balance with IPW CBPS Ranking and Post Stratification Methods
In this tutorial, we walk through a complete, end-to-end workflow for correcting bias in survey data using the balance library.We simulate a realistic population, deliberately introduce sampling bias, and then apply multiple re-weighting techniques to recover unbiased estimates.We focus on four widely used methods: Inverse Probability Weighting (IPW), Covariate Balancing Propensity Scores (CBPS), […]
05/05/2026
Building Multi-File Refactoring Agents with GitHub Copilot Workspace
While tools such as GitHub Copilot have significantly improved developer productivity at the function and file level, modern applications demand capabilities that operate across the entire repository.With GitHub Copilot Workspace, developers can now move from incremental edits to intent-driven, multi-file transformations powered by AI.The role of Copilot Workspace in modern development workflows
05/05/2026
Build and Deploy Logic App Workflows Using Visual Studio Code and CI/CD Pipeline
Download and install the following Visual Studio Code dependencies for your specific operating system using either method:Starting with version 2.81.5, the Azure Logic Apps (Standard) extension for Visual Studio Code includes a dependency installer that automatically installs all the required dependencies in a new binary folder and leaves any existing dependencies unchanged. Provides a local data store and emulator to use with Visual Studio Code so that you can work on your logic app project and run your workflows in your local development environment.
05/05/2026
Zyphra Introduces Tensor and Sequence Parallelism (TSP): A Hardware-Aware Training and Inference Strategy That Delivers 2.6x Throughput Over Matched TP+SP Baselines
Zyphra Introduces Tensor and Sequence Parallelism (TSP): A Folded Parallelism Strategy That Reduces Both Parameter and Activation Memory Across the Same GPU AxisThe post Zyphra Introduces Tensor and Sequence Parallelism (TSP): A Hardware-Aware Training and Inference Strategy That Delivers 2.6x Throughput Over Matched TP+SP Baselines appeared first on MarkTechPost.
04/05/2026
Build a secure identity foundation: 5 webinars to strengthen access management with Microsoft Entra
To avoid gaps in protection, organizations need to fully deploy and scale core identity protections–from phishing-resistant authentication to Conditional Access policies to risk remediation and resiliency–across cloud and hybrid deployments. That’s why we’re launching the Secure identity foundation with Microsoft Entra series: a five-part webinar lineup focused on implementing these core identity capabilities across Microsoft Entra. Think of this series as a gui...
04/05/2026
How to Build an End-to-End Production Grade Machine Learning Pipeline with ZenML, Including Custom Materializers, Metadata Tracking, and Hyperparameter Optimization
In this tutorial, we walk through an end-to-end implementation of an advanced machine learning pipeline using ZenML. We begin by setting up the environment and initializing a ZenML project, then define a custom materializer that enables seamless serialization and metadata extraction for a domain-specific dataset object. As we progress, we build a modular pipeline that […] The post
04/05/2026
Architecture to Resilience: A Decision Guide
Start with the framework, accelerate with the tool Watch the video walkthrough The Application Resilience Framework originated from a practical gap we saw in resilience reviews: teams had architecture diagrams, monitoring data, incident history, and runbooks, but no consistent way to connect them into a measurable resilience model. The framework is intended to close that gap by tu...
04/05/2026
Amazon Security Lake Integration with Microsoft Sentinel: Parquet at the Gates
A story of cost, control, and custom engineering at cloud scale Every organization strives to design its security architecture in a way that can be designed to help address architectural complexity and support cost‑aware, scalable designs, depending on workload characteristics and implementation choices. Across multiple customer environments, we increasingly see a consistent pattern emerge—sec...
04/05/2026
Extended service terms enforcement is now in effect
As of May 4, 2026, we've aligned renewal and end-of-term options to create a more consistent and predictable experience. Customers and partners now have clear choices at expiration: renew to a new term, cancel at end of term, or temporarily extend service through a paid extended service term (EST).
04/05/2026
SonarPilot - Bulk Managing SonarQube Issues
Stop Managing SonarQube Issues One by One, Introducing SonarPilot Introduction If you've worked on a large projects, you know the feeling. You open your SonarQube dashboard, and you're staring at 30,000+ open issues spread across many rules. You need to triage them before the next sprint. You need to assign a category of issues to the right developer. You need to mark 4000 findings as false positives. And the only tool you have is, the SonarQube w...
04/05/2026
Top Search and Fetch APIs for Building AI Agents in 2026: Tools, Tradeoffs, and Free Tiers
Discover the top search and fetch APIs for AI agents in 2026. Compare tools like TinyFish, Tavily, and Firecrawl based on latency, token efficiency, and free tiers to optimize your agent's web retrieval. The post Top Search and Fetch APIs for Building AI Agents in 2026: Tools, Tradeoffs, and Free Tiers appeared first on
04/05/2026
Hands-on webinar: Study and Learn agent in M365 Copilot
Join us on Wednesday, May 13th @ 8am Pacific Time for an in-depth professional development webinar on the new Study & Learn agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot, which is about to become available for all students 13+ and educators. This will be a 60-minute hands-on webinar where the Product Management team will walk through the Study & Learn agent, which is purpose-built for learning. The experience goes beyond just answering questions and instead guiding students through ...
04/05/2026
Introducing selective response actions for high-value assets in Microsoft Defender
Deploying Microsoft Defender on high-value assets (HVAs) such as domain controllers, ADFS servers, and other Tier-0 systems, requires a thoughtful approach to balance strong protection with operational stability. Given the powerful response capabilities available, organizations often seek greater control over how these actions are applied in sensitive environments. Many organizations, especially those with strict privileged access management policies, also prefer to limit cloud-initiated admi...
04/05/2026
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Customer Newsletter
What's new in Defender for Cloud? Container runtime anti-malware detection and blocking and DNS Detection for Kubernetes is now GA in Defender for Containers for AKS, EKS, and GKE. Learn more about these announcements here and
04/05/2026
Collecting Microsoft 365 Copilot Data with Microsoft Purview eDiscovery
Copilot Data Collection Reference Table Data Type
04/05/2026
Modernizing Azure Virtual Desktop with Nerdio and Azure Files
Coauthored with Nerdio Organizations adopting Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) typically begin with small pilot deployments that perform well under limited load. As these environments scale to hundreds or thousands of users, a consistent set of challenges emerges. At the center of that shift is the user profile laye...
04/05/2026
Windows 365 and Azure Virtual Desktop: Expanding access
The way people work continues to evolve—and so do the ways organizations use Windows delivered from the cloud. From small businesses without dedicated IT teams, to enterprises modernizing existing virtualization deployments, to shift workers who need flexibility without a dedicated device, the range of scenarios continues to grow. Today’s updates build on that momentum—expanding how Windows 365 and Azure Virtual Desktop support more environments, more customers, and...
04/05/2026
Retired Azure Reserved Virtual Machine Instances Transition Guide
Summary This guide is designed for customers with Azure Reserved Virtual Machine Instances (RIs) that will no longer be available for new purchase or renewal starting July 1, 2026 for select VM series. It helps you understand the impact of these changes and plan next steps to maintain cost predictability and avoid lapses in commitment-bas...
04/05/2026
PostgreSQL as your Graph Database in the AI era
Enterprise data is full of hidden relationships: citation chains in legal docs, service dependencies, approval hierarchies, and drug interactions. These connections often hold the most valuable insight, but SQL-only and vector search can miss them. With Apache AGE now generally available, AI Functions in ai_extension in public preview, and graph visualization shipped in the PostgreSQL VS Code extension, Azure Database ...
04/05/2026
Monthly news - May 2026
Microsoft DefenderMonthly news - May 2026 Edition This is our monthly "What's new" blog post, summarizing product updates and various new assets we released over the past month across our Defender products. In this edition, we are looking at all the goodness from April 2026. We are now including news related to Defender for Cloud in the Defender portal. For all other Defender for Cloud news, have a look at the dedicated Defender for Cloud Monthly News
04/05/2026
MGCI Newsletter Late April / Early May 2026
Hi MGCI Members! As April wraps up, we’re energized by another strong MGCI General Session and the continued momentum we’re seeing across global community events. From student-led innovation to Copilot-focused learning and large-scale community-led conferences, there are more ways than ever to learn, connect, and participate. Let’s take a look at what just happened and what’s coming up next. ✅ Recently Wrapped: MGCI Monthly General Session
04/05/2026
Logic Apps Newsletter - May 2026
In this issue: Ace Aviator of the Month News from our product group News from our community Ace Aviator of the Month May 2026's Ace Aviator:
04/05/2026
Your AI agents are now employees. It’s time to treat them that way. Meet Loop.
Guest Author: Femke Cornelissen ✨ Chief Transformation Officer - Wartell Meet Loop.
04/05/2026
API resilience and reliability patterns for AI apps and agents selling through Microsoft Marketplace
Why API resilience is a Marketplace readiness requirement The previous post Design Predictable AI Performance for Apps Selling Through Microsoft Marketplace showed how to design systems that behave predictably when things go right. This post focuses on what happens when they do ...
04/05/2026
Performance Tuning and Scaling Optimization for Large-Scale Azure Workloads
Summary As cloud-native systems scale, performance challenges rarely stem from a single bottleneck. Instead, they emerge from the interaction between compute, orchestration, and data layers under load. This article captures a practical optimization journey of a high-volume Azure-based workload and highlights how controlled scaling, improved orchestration design, and proactive database maintenance can significantly outperform brute-force scaling. Introduction Distribut...
04/05/2026
Making it easier to identify Windows protected print mode compatible devices
As the Windows print ecosystem continues transitioning away from legacy driver‑based architectures, Windows Protected Print Mode (WPP) helps improve system security by enforcing use of the Windows modern print stack&nbs...
04/05/2026
New in Microsoft Marketplace: May 4, 2026
BENE.BIZ Power Slider: The BENE.BIZ Power Slider visual for Microsoft Power BI lets you build interactive numeric and date-range sliders for reports.This fully automated, read-only assessment from Simplicity IT Inc. runs inside your Azure environment and delivers a scored road map for Active Directory retirement, complete with AI-classified application inventory and migration recommendations.Agents with Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management: 1-Week Proof of Concept: In this proof of concept, Nexer Group AB will identify and prioritize high-value AI agent opportunities for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, then produce a pilot-ready use case with key performance indicators, data needs, governance requirements, and a realistic path to a 30-day build or a 45-day build.
04/05/2026
High Availability Testing for Azure Kubernetes Service in a Single Region with Availability Zones
During migration testing engagements for enterprise workloads moving to Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), we frequently validate high availability behavior under simulated infrastructure failures within a single Azure region using Availability Zones. In one such workload migration scenario involving a multi‑replica API service, infrastructure‑level HA con...
04/05/2026
Announcing the public preview of Oracle Database built-in connector for Azure Logic Apps Standard
Announcing the public preview of Oracle Database built-in connector for Azure Logic Apps Standard Run Oracle Database operations natively in your Logic Apps Standard workflows. Today we’re excited to announce the public preview of Oracle Database built-in connector for Azure Logic Apps (Standard). This connector brings first-class Oracle Database connectivity to single-tenant workflows by running in-process with the Logic Apps...
04/05/2026
Purpose For Your PKI (Practical PKI Part 3)
My name is Ron Arestia, and I am a Security Researcher with Microsoft’s Detection and Response Team (DART). We respond to customer cybersecurity incidents to assist with containment and recovery from threat actors. In this brief blog post, we will discuss the “why” behind your PKI. This is part 3 of a series on practical PKI implementation based on my experience with customer interactions working as a Microsoft engineer. Feel free to catch up on previous blog posts or jump right into t...
04/05/2026
The AI Workforce Has Already Arrived in Healthcare. Are You Ready to Lead It?
Start here. Answer honestly. Right now, how many AI agents are running inside your organization? Who built them? What patient data, claims information, or proprietary research do they touch? If your CISO walked into your office tomorrow and asked for a complete inventory of every agent in your enterprise, including each one's owner, the systems it can access, and the policies governing its behavior, could you produce that...
04/05/2026
A Developer’s Guide to Systematic Prompting: Mastering Negative Constraints, Structured JSON Outputs, and Multi-Hypothesis Verbalized Sampling
Most developers treat prompting as an afterthought—write something reasonable, observe the output, and iterate if needed. That approach works until reliability becomes critical. As LLMs move into production systems, the difference between a prompt that usually works and one that works consistently becomes an engineering concern. In response, the research community has formalized prompting into […] The post
03/05/2026
A Coding Implementation to Explore and Analyze the TaskTrove Dataset with Streaming Parsing Visualization and Verifier Detection
In this tutorial, we take a deep dive into the TaskTrove dataset on Hugging Face and build a complete, practical workflow to efficiently explore it. Instead of downloading the full multi-gigabyte dataset, we stream it directly and work with individual samples in real time. We begin by setting up the environment and inspecting the raw […] The post
03/05/2026
Running GitHub Actions Runners on Azure Container Apps with KEDA Autoscaling
GitHub-hosted runners work well for most scenarios. But as workloads grow, teams often need: Better cost optimization — pay only when jobs run More control over execution environments and installed tools Scalable parallel execution — run 10, 20, or 50 jobs simultaneously Network access
03/05/2026
How MS Discovery Is Empowering Scientists to Do More
Research and development has traditionally been a slow, sequential, and largely manual endeavour. Scientists formulate hypotheses, design experiments, run computations in constrained environments, and document results, each stage dependent on the last, each transition requiring human review and intervention. Knowledge is fragmented across systems, insights are bottlenecked by individual capacity, and the gap between hypothesis and actionable outcome can span weeks or months....
03/05/2026
Sakana AI Introduces KAME: A Tandem Speech-to-Speech Architecture That Injects LLM Knowledge in Real Time
Sakana AI Introduces KAME: A Tandem Architecture That Injects Real-Time LLM Knowledge Into Speech-to-Speech Conversational AI Without Adding Latency The post Sakana AI Introduces KAME: A Tandem Speech-to-Speech Architecture That Injects LLM Knowledge in Real Time appeared first on MarkTechP...
03/05/2026
What is Tokenization Drift and How to Fix It?
A model can behave perfectly one moment and degrade the next—without any change to your data, pipeline, or logic. The root cause often lies in something far more subtle: how your input is tokenized. Before a model processes text, it converts it into token IDs, and even minor formatting differences—like spacing, line breaks, or punctuation—can […] The post What is Tokenization Drift and...
03/05/2026
Mistral AI Launches Remote Agents in Vibe and Mistral Medium 3.5 with 77.6% SWE-Bench Verified Score
Mistral AI's latest release brings async cloud-based coding sessions, a new 128B flagship model, and an agentic Work mode to Le Chat — a meaningful step forward for developers building with AI agents.The post Mistral AI Launches Remote Agents in Vibe and Mistral Medium 3.5 with 77.6% SWE-Bench Verified Score appeared first on MarkTechPost.
03/05/2026
Build a Multi-Agent AI Workflow for Biological Network Modeling, Protein Interactions, Metabolism, and Cell Signaling Simulation
Build a Multi-Agent AI Workflow for Biological Network Modeling, Protein Interactions, Metabolism, and Cell Signaling SimulationThe post Build a Multi-Agent AI Workflow for Biological Network Modeling, Protein Interactions, Metabolism, and Cell Signaling Simulation appeared first on MarkTechPost.
02/05/2026
Modernizing Terraform Pipelines on Azure: OIDC Federation for GitHub Actions and Azure DevOps
It's the most ignored credential in the cloud, and statistically the most likely one to leak.The pipeline mints a short-lived token at runtime, exchanges it for an Azure access token via Microsoft Entra, and never touches a secret.This post walks through the pattern end-to-end, for both GitHub Actions and Azure DevOps, the way I've rolled it out across multiple customer estates.
02/05/2026
Automating Azure Naming Standards using API and DevOps Pipelines
Introduction In large Azure environments, one of the most overlooked yet critical governance challenges is resource naming consistency. While organizations define naming standards, enforcing them at scale across multiple subscriptions, teams, and pipelines often becomes a manual and inconsistent process. In real-world projects, this leads to: Operational confusion Difficult resource identification Reduced traceability...
02/05/2026
Reimagining Azure Governance with Automation & EPAC
🧩 The Challenge: Governance at Scale Managing Azure environments manually introduces: ❌ Policy drift across subscriptions ❌ Inconsistent naming conventions ❌ Delays in compliance enforcement ❌ Human errors in deployments 🔍 Insight: Governance gaps are often not due to lack of policies—but lack of automation. Solution Overview: EPAC Enterprise Policy as Code (EPAC) to bring govern...
02/05/2026
A Coding Implementation to Parsing, Analyzing, Visualizing, and Fine-Tuning Agent Reasoning Traces Using the lambda/hermes-agent-reasoning-traces Dataset
In this tutorial, we explore the lambda/hermes-agent-reasoning-traces dataset to understand how agent-based models think, use tools, and generate responses across multi-turn conversations. We start by loading and inspecting the dataset, examining its structure, categories, and conversational format to get a clear idea of the available information. We then build simple parsers to extract key components […] The post
02/05/2026
A New NVIDIA Research Shows Speculative Decoding in NeMo RL Achieves 1.8× Rollout Generation Speedup at 8B and Projects 2.5× End-to-End Speedup at 235B
A new paper from NVIDIA Research integrates speculative decoding directly into NeMo RL with a vLLM backend, delivering lossless rollout acceleration at both 8B and projected 235B model scales.
02/05/2026
A Coding Implementation of End-to-End Brain Decoding from MEG Signals Using NeuralSet and Deep Learning for Predicting Linguistic Features
In this tutorial, we explore how we can decode linguistic features directly from brain signals using a modern neuroAI pipeline. We work with MEG data and build an end-to-end system that transforms raw neural activity into meaningful predictions, in this case, estimating word length from brain responses. We set up the environment, load and process […] The post
01/05/2026
Meta Introduces Autodata: An Agentic Framework That Turns AI Models into Autonomous Data Scientists for High-Quality Training Data Creation
Meta Introduces Autodata: An Agentic Framework That Turns AI Models into Autonomous Data Scientists for High-Quality Training Data CreationThe post Meta Introduces Autodata: An Agentic Framework That Turns AI Models into Autonomous Data Scientists for High-Quality Training Data Creation appeared first on MarkTechPost.
01/05/2026
Enabling AI‑Driven Workforce Transformation with People Skills and Workforce Insights Agent: April 2026 M365 Champions Community call
We kicked off the call with the annoucement of our digital premiere of More Than Code: SharePoint community film.Anirudh Bajaj and Jenny Huang led the main topic this month with a deep dive into People Skills and Workforce Insights Agent.The Workforce Insights Agent is designed to help leaders translate skills and organizational data into actionable decisions.
01/05/2026
Lock down AI, web, and private apps: what’s new in Internet Access and Private Access
A key capability of Microsoft Entra Internet Access is the Secure Web and AI Gateway, which applies identity-centric network controls to web and AI traffic.Today, we’re excited to share the latest features now generally available in Microsoft Entra Internet Access and Private Access and to announce brand-new capabilities in public preview.While Internet Access secures your web and AI traffic, Microsoft Entra Private Access helps you replace legacy VPNs with Zero Trust Network Access for private apps:
01/05/2026
A Coding Guide on LLM Post Training with TRL from Supervised Fine Tuning to DPO and GRPO Reasoning
In this tutorial, we walk through a complete, hands-on journey of post-training large language models using the powerful TRL (Transformer Reinforcement Learning) library ecosystem. We start from a lightweight base model and progressively apply four key techniques: Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT), Reward Modeling (RM), Direct Preference Optimization (DPO), and Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO). Also, we […] The post
01/05/2026
High-Fidelity Network Observability at Scale— ACNS Metrics Filtering and Log Aggregation Now GA
We are thrilled to announce that Advanced Container Networking Services (ACNS) for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) now delivers two powerful observability features in General Availability: container network metrics filtering and container network log filtering and aggregation. Together, these capabilities set a new standard for Kubernetes network observability, giving you high-fidelity visibility at dramatically lower cost and noise. These capabilities fundamentally redefine how network observ...
01/05/2026
Join us May 6: Learn how Microsoft Teams is helping SMBs thrive
On Wednesday, May 6, the Microsoft Teams SMB product team is going live for a focused 40-minute session designed specifically for small and medium businesses.Angela Chin, Principal PM Manager on the Teams SMB team, will walk through the latest updates in Microsoft Teams built with smaller businesses in mind:Wednesday, May 6, 2026, 8:05–8:45 AM PT.
01/05/2026
Microsoft ODBC Driver 17.11.1 for SQL Server Released
We are pleased to announce the general availability of Microsoft ODBC Driver 17.11.1 for SQL Server, released on April 30, 2025.This servicing update delivers important bug fixes and expands Linux platform support.The driver is available for download from the Microsoft ODBC Driver for SQL Server documentation page.
01/05/2026
Migrating frontline mobile devices: Aligning stakeholders before real-world testing
By: Carol Burns - Principal Product Manager | Microsoft Intune and Sucheta Gawade, Microsoft MVP (Azure & Security / Intune) Practitioner perspective from Sucheta Gawade, Microsoft MVP (Azure & Security / Intune), with deep experience in secure frontline mobility, including regulated healthcare environments. In the previous article, we focused on
01/05/2026
Title Plan Update - May 1, 2026
📁May 1, 2026 - Title Plan Now AvailableAccess the latest Instructor-Led Training (ILT) updates anytime at http://aka.ms/Courseware_Title_Plan to ensure you're always working from the most current version.📌 Reminder: To help you stay informed more quickly and consistently, we’ve moved to a weekly publishing cadence for the title plan.
01/05/2026
Databricks Lakebase: The operational database for AI agents and apps
This is where Databricks Lakebase enters the picture, representing a significant evolution by bringing fully managed PostgreSQL OLTP capabilities directly into the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform.Lakebase addresses the need for a single, governed platform that can seamlessly handle both transactional and analytical workloads, thereby simplifying data architectures, reducing operational overhead, and accelerating the development of real-time applications and AI agents.By seamlessly integrating a fully managed PostgreSQL OLTP engine directly into the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform, Lakebase addresses the long-standing challenge of data fragmentation.
01/05/2026
go-mssqldb v1.10.0: Better Reliability, Developer Experience, and Standards Compliance
We're excited to announce the release of go-mssqldb v1.10.0, the official Microsoft Go driver for SQL Server and Azure SQL Database.This release brings significant reliability improvements, better standards compliance, and a smoother developer onboarding experience.This release requires Go 1.21+ and is fully compatible with SQL Server 2012 through 2022 and Azure SQL Database.
01/05/2026
Service Principals in Microsoft Power Platform
A service principal, a non‑human application identity in Microsoft Entra ID that authenticates with certificates, never logs in interactively, and keeps running no matter who leaves.In this blog, we will highlight opportunities to strengthen your security posture across the Power Platform with Service Principals alongside ideas for when a Service Principal may not be applicable for your scenario.Power Platform Pipelines are a built-in option for application lifecycle management native to the Power Platform.
01/05/2026
The Journey of Copilot: From Setup to Mastery for Azure SAP customers
As you begin using GitHub Copilot within your SAP development and integration environment, you may notice performance differences, especially when working within corporate networks.GitHub Copilot is no longer a black box, it becomes a trusted, secure, and intelligent AI assistant seamlessly integrated into your Azure and SAP development ecosystem.GitHub Copilot for SAP ABAP in VS Code: Setup Guid... - SAP Community
01/05/2026
Announcing Microsoft.Data.SqlClient 6.1.5
We are pleased to announce the release of Microsoft.Data.SqlClient 6.1.5, the latest servicing update to the 6.1 line. This update focuses on connection performance, error propagation, and vector type metadata correctness. Install or update from NuGet: dotnet add package Microsoft.Data.SqlClient --version 6.1.5 Full release notes:
01/05/2026
Shift-Left Governance for AI Agents: How the Agent Governance Toolkit Helps You Catch Violations
In part one of this series, we covered AGT’s runtime governance: the policy engine, zero-trust identity, execution sandboxing, and the OWASP Agentic AI risk ma...
01/05/2026
Protect Your Streaming Data in Use: Confidential Computing for Azure Event Hubs Dedicated
For organizations in regulated industries — financial services, healthcare, government, defense — the security conversation around data has always revolved around two states: data at rest and data in transit. Encrypt your storage. Encrypt your network traffic. Check, check. But there's a third state that's been much harder to address: data in use. What happens to your events while they're being actively processed by the streaming infras...
01/05/2026
Now generally available: Microsoft 365 E7 and Agent 365
We're excited to announce the general availability of Microsoft 365 E7 and Agent 365!Microsoft 365 E7 is the Frontier Suite powered by Work IQ, designed for a human-led, agent-operated enterprise—turning human intent into AI action that functions securely and at scale. Microsoft 365 E7 bundles Microsoft 365 E5, Copilot, Agent 365, and more into a single integrated offer built for customers’ Frontier Transformation. Designed for organizations to move from AI experimentation to scale, it includes Microsoft Entra Suite and advanced Defender, Intune, and Purview capabilities, delivering comprehensive security across agents and employees. Agent 365 is the control plane for customers to observe, govern, and secure both Microsoft and third-party AI agents, grounded in shared intelligence and built with trust to protect the organization.
01/05/2026
Microsoft 365 E7 and Agent 365 are now generally available
Microsoft 365 E7 is built to do exactly that – combining advanced AI capabilities with enterprise-grade security and governance so organizations can move beyond isolated pilots and deploy AI confidently at scale.Today, Microsoft 365 E7 – the Frontier Suite – is generally available, offering a single, integrated solution that unifies intelligence and trust, so organizations can move from experimentation to enterprise-wide AI adoption. In addition to being included with Microsoft 365 E7, Agent 365 is available as a standalone license at $15 per user per month.
01/05/2026
What’s New in Agent 365: May 2026
Agent 365 is built on three core value pillars: observe, govern, and secure, designed to give IT and security teams clear visibility, consistent controls, and enterprise-grade protection across your entire agent fleet.In this series, we’ll highlight new Agent 365 features and enhancements now and over the months ahead.Registry sync enables AI admins to securely consent to and connect ecosystem partner agent platforms to Agent 365, bringing external agents and their metadata into the Agent 365 registry for a more unified view of your agent population.
01/05/2026
Windows 365 for Agents now in public preview: Run AI agents securely, at scale
AI agents are rapidly evolving from tools that answer questions to performing human-level work inside an enterprise ecosystem, powering essential business workflows that have traditionally been completed manually. But while governance and policy models are emerging, one critical question remains unresolved for IT: where should agents actually run?
01/05/2026
AI‑Accelerated AVM Refactoring: Modernizing Legacy IaC Safely and Swiftly
In one anonymized engagement, an AI‑assisted audit found that **43% of module invocations (~10 modules) ** still relied on legacy, non‑AVM wrappers — even though modernization work was already underway.But in a live estate, each change must be checked through one lens: **state safety**.Microsoft’s AVM guidance now explicitly discusses **AI‑assisted IaC solution development** — pairing AVM modules with AI tools to speed delivery while keeping humans in control.
01/05/2026
Qwen AI Releases Qwen-Scope: An Open-Source Sparse AutoEncoders (SAE) Suite That Turns LLM Internal Features into Practical Development Tools
Qwen Team Introduces Qwen-Scope: An Open-Source Sparse Autoencoder Suite That Turns LLM Internals into Practical Development ToolsThe post Qwen AI Releases Qwen-Scope: An Open-Source Sparse AutoEncoders (SAE) Suite That Turns LLM Internal Features into Practical Development Tools appeared first on MarkTechPost.
01/05/2026
From Terminal to Autonomous Coding: Mastering GitHub Copilot CLI ACP Server
This article will take you from zero to advanced, covering concepts, architecture, setup, and real-world use cases.The Agent Client Protocol (ACP) is an open standard designed to connect clients (like IDEs or tools) with AI agents in a consistent and interoperable way.GitHub Copilot CLI can run as an ACP-compatible server, exposing its AI capabilities programmatically.
01/05/2026
A Coding Deep Dive into Agentic UI, Generative UI, State Synchronization, and Interrupt-Driven Approval Flows
In this tutorial, we build the entire Agentic UI stack from the ground up using plain Python, without relying on external frameworks to abstract away the core ideas.We implement the AG-UI event stream to make agent behavior observable in real time, and we bring in A2UI as a declarative layer that allows interfaces to […]The post A Coding Deep Dive into Agentic UI, Generative UI, State Synchronization, and Interrupt-Driven Approval Flows appeared first on MarkTechPost.
01/05/2026
Moonshot AI Open-Sources FlashKDA: CUTLASS Kernels for Kimi Delta Attention with Variable-Length Batching and H20 Benchmarks
Moonshot AI releases FlashKDA, a high-performance implementation of Kimi Delta Attention that plugs directly into the flash-linear-attention ecosystem — and benchmarks show it's meaningfully faster.The post Moonshot AI Open-Sources FlashKDA: CUTLASS Kernels for Kimi Delta Attention with Variable-Length Batching and H20 Benchmarks appeared first on MarkTechPost.
01/05/2026
AHEAD helps us launch the Strategic Azure Storage Services Partner Program
Authors: Aung Oo, Vice President Azure Storage Product Management Parker Leavitt, Partner Account Manager, AHEAD Special thanks to: Michael Johnson, Vice President, Cloud, AHEAD AHEAD background AHEAD was formed in 2007 and possesses deep expertise in Infrastructure, Cloud Platforms, AI, Analytics, Networking, Storage, Sec...
01/05/2026
Microsoft Research’s World-R1 Uses Flow-GRPO and 3D-Aware Rewards to Inject Geometric Consistency Into Wan 2.1 Without Architectural Changes
Microsoft Research's World-R1 Uses Reinforcement Learning to Force 3D Consistency Into Text-to-Video Models The post Microsoft Research’s World-R1 Uses Flow-GRPO and 3D-Aware Rewards to Inject Geometric Consistency Into Wan 2.1 Without Architectural Changes appeared first on
01/05/2026
Announcing Native PowerShell Tooling for ReFS Snapshots
We’re excited to share a new open-source PowerShell module on GitHub that provides PowerShell-native management of ReFS snapshots. It wraps the existing refsutil streamsnapshot in cmdlets designed for scripting and automation, with pipeline support and consistent error handling.
01/05/2026
Introducing DeepSeek V4 Flash and V4 Pro in Microsoft Foundry
As AI adoption matures, the conversation is shifting from model capability to system design, how to orchestrate models that deliver the right balance of quality, speed, and cost. Today, we’re expanding the Microsoft Foundry model catalog with
01/05/2026
SASE 101: How to get started with secure access in a cloud-first world
As organizations adopt cloud applications, hybrid work, and distributed teams, many are re-evaluating how users securely access applications and data. Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) has become a common starting point for these conversations, but for many teams, understanding where to begin can feel unclear. This article provides a practical foundation for teams learning about SASE for the first time. It explains what SASE is, why it emerged, how it differs from Secu...
30/04/2026
Designed for Surface Accessories for Frontline Work
Frontline scenarios often involve Surface devices that are shared across shifts, used in physically demanding settings, or deployed across multiple locations. In these situations, accessories play a critical role in shaping how devices are configured for day‑to‑day use and how well they perform within the environments in which they are used.
30/04/2026
Prompt flow is being retired
What you need to know Prompt flow in Microsoft Foundry and Azure Machine Learning will be retired on 20 April 2027. As part of this change, Microsoft recommends moving to Microsoft Agent Framework, which provides a production-ready foundation for b...
30/04/2026
What’s new in Microsoft Sentinel: April 2026
Welcome to the April 2026 edition of What's new in Microsoft Sentinel. April brings a broad set of updates, with RSAC 2026 announcements rolling out alongside new features. Hi...
30/04/2026
Work IQ API Public Preview: Build Copilot Powered Agents with A2A
Today, the Work IQ API is available in public preview, expanding access to the same underlying intelligence capabilities used by Microsoft 365 Copilot for developers and partners. Work IQ gives developers programmatic access to Copilot so you can build agents and apps that use Copilot’s grounding, context, and reasoning without wiring raw data or permissions. In this public preview, that access is exposed in three formats—Agent‑to‑Agent (A2A) for agent collaboration, Model Context Prot...
30/04/2026
Accelerating the Flow of Learning
By Vince Frankson, Authentica Solutions | Guest Post via the Microsoft Education Blog Education technology leaders are not short on vision; they are short on time. They know exactly what their Microsoft 365 environment is capable of. What they deserve are better tools, smarter automation, and a partner that shows up ready to serve. At Authentica Solutions, we pride ourselves on our culture of servant leadership, not just as a slogan, but as our guiding principle. Our mission is ...
30/04/2026
Microsoft named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Document Management
AI is raising the bar for document management. It’s no longer enough to store and share files— content needs to be governed, structured, and connected to the way teams actually work so AI can reason over it responsibly and help people move from information to action. That’s why we’re excited to share that Microsoft has been named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Document Management, ...
30/04/2026
Dynamically remove apps from managed Windows 11 devices
You can now use policy to remove select pre-installed Microsoft Store apps on devices running Windows 11, version 25H2 or version 24H2. We've also made a significant update to this policy: a dynamic app removal list. This feature lets you remove any preinstalled MSIX/APPX app by referencing its Package Family Name (PFN). What's the benefit? Fewer unwanted apps, simpler provisioning, and a more tailored desktop for your users. Just use a standard, poli...
30/04/2026
Building Futures Through Community: Creating Pathways into Tech
For the team behind Experts Live Denmark - organized by the Microsoft MVP & RD community in Denmark - this belief has shaped how they think about community: not just as a place to share knowledge, but as a space to open doors into the industry. That thinking is what led to the collaboration with ReDI School of Digital Integration Den...
30/04/2026
Partner Blog | Driving channel velocity in an AI-first world: Microsoft Marketplace at Channel Partners Conference
With an audience deeply focused on differentiation, scale, and customer value, the conference highlighted how cloud, AI, and modern commerce models are redefining the partner opportunity. Microsoft Marketplace participated as a Platinum sponsor, reflecting the central role the channel plays as customers move AI from experimentation into production.Connor O’Reilly, Channel Sales Manager, Devicie
30/04/2026
Prefix-scoped access for User Delegation SAS is now generally available for Azure Blob Storage
We would like to share that prefix-scoped access for User Delegation SAS for Azure Blob Storage is generally available in all Azure regions. SAS tokens for Blob Storage have historically supported two levels of scope: container and individual blob. With this release, you can now scope access to a prefix or virtual directory within a container, granting access to all blobs beneath the path. This is especially valuable for applications that organi...
30/04/2026
Announcing Microsoft Drivers 5.13.1 for PHP for SQL Server
Announcing Microsoft Drivers 5.13.1 for PHP for SQL Server We have released Microsoft Drivers 5.13.1 for PHP for SQL Server (sqlsrv and pdo_sqlsrv). This patch release addresses several important bug fixes, including a security fix for access token handling in pooled connections and multiple stability improvements. Bug Fixes Access token identity leaking across pooled connections ...
30/04/2026
EDR coexistence by design: A practical starting point to Defender
A common assumption is that side by side deployment exists only as a short bridge to replacement.Running Defender alongside an existing prevention platform allows organizations to:Using Defender Endpoint capabilities in a side‑by‑side model:
30/04/2026
What’s new in Microsoft Intune – April
April's Intune updates focus on three areas administrators have consistently asked us to improve: fresher device data, streamlined identity foundations across platforms, and simpler management for non-traditional endpoints. This month includes advancements in Windows app inventory, Linux single sign-on (SSO), and expanded enrollment and control for Apple devices. Higher‑frequency app inve...
30/04/2026
From content to conversation: Learning that adapts in real time
Explore how agentic systems can create learning experiences that are as responsive as a teacher, as patient as a mentor, and as available as the moment curiosity strikes. Monica Arés builds learning systems at the intersection of emerging technology and human capability, from platform-based learning at Amazon to the first immersive learning ecosystem at Meta, and now agentic learning at Microsoft. She focuses on designing systems that don’t just deliver information but a...
30/04/2026
Speed where it matters: How Microsoft Intune helps IT prioritize time-sensitive actions
By: Albert Cabello Serrano | Principal Product Manager - Microsoft Intune A closer look at how Intune delivers updates to devices and the investments we’re making to help important changes move faster and more predictably. A common concern we hear from IT admins is, “How quickly will this change actually reach my device?” In many cases, the answer is much faster than expected. Today, 90% of policy updates, app deployments, and device ac...
30/04/2026
A Coding Implementation on Pyright Type Checking Covering Generics, Protocols, Strict Mode, Type Narrowing, and Modern Python Typing
A Coding Implementation on Pyright Type Checking Covering Generics, Protocols, Strict Mode, Type Narrowing, and Modern Python Typing The post A Coding Implementation on Pyright Type Checking Covering Generics, Protocols, Strict Mode, Type Narrowing, and Modern Python Typing appeared first on
30/04/2026
What’s New in Microsoft 365 Copilot | April 2026
Welcome to the May 2026 edition of What's new in Microsoft 365 Copilot! Every month, we highlight new features and enhancements to keep Microsoft 365 admins up to date with Copilot features that help your users be more productive and efficient in the apps they use every day. Let’s take a closer look at what’s new this month: User capabilities:
30/04/2026
Teacher Appreciation Week: Create expressions of gratitude with Copilot
Teacher Appreciation Week is a great moment to recognize the educators who made a difference this year, but it can be hard to move beyond the standard thank you note and gift. With Microsoft Copilot, you can turn specific moments from the school year into a thoughtful message, present, or creative project that are personal and heartfelt. Below are a few ways parents and students can use Copilot to reflect, organize their ideas, and express gratitude during Teacher Appreciation Week.
30/04/2026
Troubleshooting TPM Certificate: How to Fix the "Missing Stored Keyset" Error
Understanding the "Missing Stored Keyset" Error The "missing stored keyset" error typically appears when an application or service cannot find a necessary key within the system's Key Storage Provider (KSP). This can result from...
30/04/2026
Potential Consequences of Using Postgres as a Job Queue
Introduction At small scale, using Postgres as a job queue is totally fine, and I’d even say it’s the right call. Fewer moving parts, one less system to manage, ACID guarantees on your jobs. What’s not to love?
30/04/2026
Introducing Post-Stream Refinement: Higher-Accuracy Real-Time Transcription
Real-time speech recognition has always been defined by a fundamental trade-off: speed versus accuracy. Applications that need instant, streaming transcription — live captions, voice agents, real-time dictation — have historically had to accept that their fastest results wouldn't always be their most accurate. Conversely, the most accurate transcription approaches required processing full audio segments offline, making them unsuitable for real-time scenarios. Toda...
30/04/2026
Voice Live API now supports WebRTC (Preview)
We are thrilled to announce that Voice Live API now supports WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication) connection, enabling low‑latency, real‑time voice interactions directly from web and mobile clients. Why WebRTC is required in real-time voice agent building WebRTC enables real‑time, bi‑directional audio and video streaming directly in the browser without plu...
30/04/2026
SharePoint Showcase: AI-Forward Content Creation & Curation for the Modern Intranet
More than 2,700 Microsoft 365 customers joined us at the Microsoft 365 Community Conference in Orlando to learn what’s new across Microsoft 365. In one of our sessions, AI‑Forward Content Creation & Curation for the Modern Intranet, we shared how SharePoint is evolving from a place where employees find information, to a platform that helps teams create and keep it curr...
30/04/2026
What's New in Microsoft Teams | April 2026
Our team just wrapped up the M365 Community Conference in Orlando, FL, and it was an incredible way to close out April! Our teams were energized by connecting with, listening to, and sharing what’s new with many of you: the builders, innovators and icons of intelligent work. Thank you to everyone who attended, and we can’t wait to see even more of you at next year’s conference! As for this month’s Teams updates, we remain focused on bringing you features that can make collaboration mor...
30/04/2026
You can’t govern what you can’t see: Closing the identity visibility gap for apps
Effective identity governance often starts with a simple question: who has access? Today, I am happy to introduce account discovery with Microsoft Entra ID Governance, a new capa...
30/04/2026
Public Preview: Managed Identity support for graphical session recording
Overview Azure Bastion provides secure RDP and SSH access to Azure virtual machines directly via the Azure portal or via the native SSH/RDP client already installed on your local computer. Today, we are introducing public preview for managed identity support for session recording, giving administrators a seamless, identity-based way to authenticate Bastion when writing recordings to a designated storage account. Why...
30/04/2026
Spend less time hunting for meeting issues with the Best Practice Configurations dashboard in Teams
https://learn.microsoft.com/microsoftteams/best-practice-dashboard The dashboard is built to help admins monitor meeting-related best practices across the environment. It highlights common causes of meeting quality, such as correct ports and protocols being used, outdated Te...
30/04/2026
Word: Legal Agent in Frontier
The Legal Agent flags non-conforming provisions and recommends edits to align with internal standards and approved language from your playbook.The Legal Agent runs within Microsoft 365 security, compliance, and governance controls your organization already uses for legal documents and standards.Early customer feedback shows strong interest in how the Legal Agent supports legal workflows in Word.
30/04/2026
New in Microsoft Marketplace: April 30, 2026
Learn about 155 new offers that went live in Microsoft Marketplace, a single destination to find, try, and buy cloud solutions, AI apps, and agents to meet your business needs. Get it now in our marketplace
30/04/2026
VDI, Teams, and what’s changing in 2026: VBSS becomes VMSS, and eCDN lands in the core license
Audience: Mission Critical customers running Microsoft Teams on virtualized desktop platforms (Citrix, AVD, Windows 365, VMware/Omnissa Horizon). TL;DR: Two Teams...
30/04/2026
🚀 From Drift to Diagnosis: AI‑Powered Root Cause Analysis for Azure Infrastructure
🌍 A Real-World Scenario During a recent production deployment of an enterprise AI platform, everything looked perfectly aligned from an infrastructure perspective: ✅ Infrastructure deployed via IaC (Terraform)✅ Private endpoints enforced✅ Public access disabled for all AI services A few hours later, an alert triggered. ❗ The Azure OpenAI endpoint was publicly accessible. This was unexpected — and risky. 🔍 What the team did next <...
30/04/2026
IBM Releases Two Granite Speech 4.1 2B Models: Autoregressive ASR with Translation and Non-Autoregressive Editing for Fast Inference
IBM Releases Granite Speech 4.1 2B and Its Non-Autoregressive Twin — Compact ASR Models Built for Enterprise The post IBM Releases Two Granite Speech 4.1 2B Models: Autoregressive ASR with Translation and Non-Autoregressive Editing for Fast Inference appeared first on
30/04/2026
🖼️Streamline Image Generation Workflow in Foundry Toolkit
Integrating image generation into a production AI application has historically meant juggling multiple surfaces — browsing models in the Foundry portal, setting up deployments via the Azure CLI, testing prompts in a separate tool, then stitching together API credentials before writing a single line of app code. That context-switching adds friction at exactly the moment you want to be experimenting. With this release, the full image generation workflow — discover, deploy, prompt, iterat...
30/04/2026
Fixing Broken Markdown in AI Translation: Hardening a Production Pipeline
By Minseok Song and Hiroshi Yoshioka (Microsoft MVPs) TL;DR Recent community feedback, especially from Japanese translations, revealed that many translation failures were not semantic, but structural. Through detailed issue reports and discussions, we identified recurring patterns such as broken links, malformed code fences, inconsistent list structures, and CJK-specific formatting issues. &nbs...
30/04/2026
From ServiceNow to Self-Healing Infrastructure: A Multi-Repo Azure AI Platform
Quick — what version of infrastructure is running in your production subscription right now?Production had a broken NSG rule.We run Azure AI infrastructure across multiple markets.
30/04/2026
Cursor Introduces a TypeScript SDK for Building Programmatic Coding Agents With Sandboxed Cloud VMs, Subagents, Hooks, and Token-Based Pricing
Cursor Launches TypeScript SDK to Let Developers Build and Deploy Programmatic Coding Agents The post Cursor Introduces a TypeScript SDK for Building Programmatic Coding Agents With Sandboxed Cloud VMs, Subagents, Hooks, and Token-Based Pricing appeared first on
30/04/2026
Running Diffusion Models at Scale on AKS
Diffusion workloads are simple at prototype scale and unforgiving in production. A single demo can run on one GPU-backed VM, but a real platform has to handle bursty demand, long-running jobs, model artifact distribution, secure public access, rollout safety, and hardware-level observability. Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is a strong fit when the requirement is not just to run a model, but to operate a repeatable platform for GPU inference. The reusable pattern is straightforward: kee...
30/04/2026
Hardening OpenClaw on AKS: Mitigating Container Escapes with Kata microVM Isolation
What is OpenClaw, and what security challenges does it pose with container escapes? OpenClaw is an open-source autonomous AI agent designed for power users and developers to automate tasks, such as managing emails, files, and scheduling via chat apps like WhatsApp or Telegram. While OpenClaw functions as a powerful autonomous assistant, its runtime model creates a massive security paradox: to be truly useful, the agent requires broad permissions to your filesy...
30/04/2026
Azure SRE Agent for Azure Monitor Alerts: Reduce Alert Fatigue, Investigate What Matters
The Alert Problem Organizations running Azure Monitor tend to land in one of two situations: Alert fatigue has set in. Alert rules tend to grow over time — a CPU threshold from two years ago, a health probe check from a migration, a disk alert from an outage that never got cleaned up. These rules fire regularly, most auto-resolve, and nobody investigates them. But buried in that noise are rea...
30/04/2026
Updates to Teamwork Deployment specialization: View new name and requirements
Starting April 29, 2026, Microsoft is renaming the Teamwork Deployment specialization as the Secure AI Productivity specialization to reflect the increased focus on the secure foundations required for successful AI adoption.Additionally, the performance, skilling, and Solutions Partner designation requirements will be updated to better align with foundational workloads from Microsoft 365 E3 and the realities of modern AI adoption.Additionally, partners will be required to hold both the Modern Work designation and the Security designation to earn the Secure AI Productivity specialization.
29/04/2026
Partner Blog | Frontier Transformation starts here: Save the date for MCAPS Start for Partners
Customers are moving toward Frontier Transformation, and they are looking to Microsoft partners to turn AI from isolated experimentation into a repeatable operating capability embedded into how work gets done.MCAPS Start for Partners is built to give you early clarity on what Microsoft will prioritize in FY27 so you can translate strategy into execution.Save the date to join us virtually on Wednesday, July 22, 2026, to align on what is changing, what is net-new, and where Microsoft will focus.
29/04/2026
April update: What’s New in Azure for Partners
Explore AI-powered migration and modernization at the Microsoft Azure Summit: Migrate and Modernize with Agentic AI event. Back by popular demand, this event will take place on April 23, 2026. AI + Data Go Big is Microsoft’s unified, end‑to‑end GTM motion to win the AI and Data Platform by empowering customers to unlock AI value through an AI‑ready data foundation. Support customers with AI transformation—especially where data readiness is a blocker—while benefiting from Microsoft’s most comprehensive offers to accelerate wins. If you are a partner with the Analytics on Azure specialization, take the opportunity to learn more and become a Fabric Featured Partner to stand out as customers modernize their data estates.
29/04/2026
Plugin Marketplace for Azure SRE Agent: Build Once, Install Anywhere
This is the key distinction: a plugin doesn't just tell the agent what your policies are — it gives the agent tools to query your internal systems and apply those policies with real data.Every SRE Agent in the org can discover it and install it with one click — no need for each team to manually recreate skills and configure connectors.Three teams have contributed plugins to the company's internal marketplace:
29/04/2026
Enterprise Security Assessment: A Strategic Lens for Mission Critical Environments
Understanding Enterprise Security at ScaleThe Enterprise Security Assessment (ESA) helps organizations understand their security posture across Azure, Microsoft 365, and hybrid environments from a true enterprise perspective.An Enterprise Security Assessment is typically delivered as a focused engagement designed to establish an enterprise‑wide view of security posture.
29/04/2026
The Microsoft 365 Copilot Frontier Program: What Executives and IT Leaders Actually Need to Know
What Is the Microsoft 365 Copilot Frontier Program?Frontier is Microsoft's early access program that gives organizations access to the newest AI-powered Copilot capabilities before they reach general availability (GA).The Microsoft 365 Copilot Frontier program is a strategic option for enterprise organizations that want to shape the future of AI productivity tools, not just consume them.
29/04/2026
Turn AI Potential into Real Impact—One Day Is All It Takes
The Microsoft Global Agent‑a‑thon is your opportunity to move from AI interest to real, usable solutions in one day, with guidance and support that continues well beyond the event.Through the Agent‑a‑thon, nonprofits can:The Agent‑a‑thon is designed to support you before, during, and after the event.
29/04/2026
Top 10 KV Cache Compression Techniques for LLM Inference: Reducing Memory Overhead Across Eviction, Quantization, and Low-Rank Methods
Top 10 KV Cache Compression Techniques for LLM Inference: Reducing Memory Overhead Across Eviction, Quantization, and Low-Rank MethodsThe post Top 10 KV Cache Compression Techniques for LLM Inference: Reducing Memory Overhead Across Eviction, Quantization, and Low-Rank Methods appeared first on MarkTechPost.
29/04/2026
Use Data Wrangler to Streamline Your Microsoft Sentinel data lake Notebook Development
One of the many exciting features of the Microsoft Sentinel data lake is a built-in advanced analytics engine, powered by
29/04/2026
Operating AI Agents on Azure: Observability with Azure AI Foundry
Azure AI Foundry is Microsoft’s enterprise platform for building, deploying, and operating AI applications and intelligent agents as first‑class Azure workloads.Microsoft Agent Framework is an Azure‑native framework designed to build and operate intelligent agents directly within Azure AI Foundry.The OpenAI Agent SDK provides low‑level control for building custom agent runtimes.
29/04/2026
GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing
Instead of counting premium requests, every Copilot plan will include a monthly allotment of GitHub AI Credits, with the option for paid plans to purchase additional usage.Usage will be calculated based on token consumption, including input, output, and cached tokens, using the listed API rates for each model.This change aligns Copilot pricing with actual usage and is an important step toward a sustainable, reliable Copilot business and experience for all users.Learn more here and access partner resources here.
29/04/2026
Use multiple phone numbers in a unified Teams experience with Teams Phone user multi-line
We’re excited to announce general availability of Microsoft Teams Phone user multi-line, which lets admins assign up to 10 phone numbers to a single Teams Phone user.Teams Phone user multi-line helps streamline that experience by enabling a Teams user to make and receive calls for multiple phone numbers within one unified Teams experience.The result: less overhead for admins and a cleaner calling experience for users who need to handle more than one business calling number in Teams.
29/04/2026
Automate agent evaluation with the Evaluation APIs
Now, these same evaluation capabilities can be used programmatically through Power Platform REST API and your connectors.Here’s how you can use these Evaluation APIs to automate agent evaluation as part of your development and release workflows.Below are the core Evaluation API endpoints available today, starting with how to retrieve test sets and trigger evaluation runs programmatically.
29/04/2026
Opt-In Windows Server 2025 Feature Update from the WS 2022 and WS 2019 Settings Dialog
This capability allows customers who want to in-place upgrade their servers to Windows Server 2025 to upgrade using the Windows Update service, and without the need for Windows Server 2025 physical media.Plan on a gradual roll-out of Windows Server 2025 across your server estate, starting with the least critical servers.Steps for Installing the Windows Server 2025 Feature Update on Windows Server 2022 Server Core using SCONFIG
29/04/2026
Microsoft 365 Backup granular restore now generally available!
Data recovery shouldn’t feel like an all-or-nothing decision. Until now, Microsoft 365 Backup allowed you to recover OneDrive accounts and SharePoint sites. We’re excited to announce granular browse and restore for OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online, giving IT teams a more selective way to recover individual files and folders when something goes wrong, while leaving the rest of your environment untouched.With these enhancements, Microsoft 365 Backup provides IT teams with greater flexibility to back up and restore files, folders, accounts, and sites—helping streamline recovery timelines while maintaining security and control. (Learn more about restoration expectations.)Image: Select files and folders to restore in the Microsoft 365 admin center
29/04/2026
Get started with the New Relic MCP server in Azure SRE Agent
Overview The New Relic MCP server is a cloud-hosted bridge between your New Relic account and Azure SRE Agent. Once configured, it enables real-time interaction with your observability data—APM traces, distributed traces, logs, metrics, alerts, incidents, dashboards, and entities—through natural language. All actions respect your existing New Relic role and capability assignments. The server uses Streamable HTTP transport with a single Api-Key hea...
29/04/2026
Qwen Team Releases FlashQLA: a High-Performance Linear Attention Kernel Library That Achieves Up to 3× Speedup on NVIDIA Hopper GPUs
The QwenLM team has released FlashQLA, a new kernel library that dramatically accelerates the forward and backward passes of Gated Delta Network (GDN) Chunked Prefill, targeting both large-scale pretraining and edge-side agentic inference scenarios.The post Qwen Team Releases FlashQLA: a High-Performance Linear Attention Kernel Library That Achieves Up to 3× Speedup on NVIDIA Hopper GPUs appeared first on MarkTechPost.
29/04/2026
Copilot in OneNote now understands more of your notes
Copilot in OneNote now understands images, tables, and moreCopilot in OneNote can now better understand your notes beyond typed text—including note tags, images, and tables—to deliver more accurate responses to your queries with the additional context.Simply ask Copilot questions about your OneNote page, which can include note tags, images, tables, inked notes and more.
29/04/2026
Building an Enterprise-Grade SQL Platform on Kubernetes using Crossplane and Azure PostgreSQL
Build a Kubernetes-native SQL platform using Crossplane-based database operator to provision Azure PostgreSQL Flexible Server.The composition creates multiple PrivateDNSCNAMERecord resources for read and write endpoint abstraction.The composition reads user intent from the composite spec—regions, CIDR ranges, DNS settings, database sizing, retention, and admin secret references—and translates that into Azure resources including a resource group, private DNS zone, regional VNets and subnets, bidirectional peering, a primary Azure PostgreSQL Flexible Server, a cross-region replica, and private DNS CNAME records for read/write abstraction.
29/04/2026
Operations Context for AI | Ontology in Fabric IQ
Generate a full business ontology from an existing Power BI semantic model, map entities and relationships, and embed real-time operational signals alongside business rules that live inside the ontology with the data and its meaning. From there, trace cascading operational impacts across your business through the relationship graph, stand up Operations Agents in natural language with Teams-based actions, and connect the same ontology as a knowledge source in Copilot Studio or Azure AI Foundry. Fabric IQ introduces a semantic foundation that unifies models and data through an ontology.
29/04/2026
Step by Step Guide to Build a Complete PII Detection and Redaction Pipeline with OpenAI Privacy Filter
In this tutorial, we build a complete, production-style pipeline for detecting and redacting personally identifiable information using the OpenAI Privacy Filter.We begin by setting up the environment and loading a token classification model that identifies multiple categories of sensitive data, including names, emails, phone numbers, addresses, and secrets.We then design helper functions to […]
29/04/2026
Design predictable AI performance to scale selling through Microsoft Marketplace
Trade-offs in AI performance: latency, quality and cost This post is part of a series on building and publishing well-architected AI apps and agents in Microsoft Marketplace. The series focuses on AI apps and agents that are architected, hosted, and operated on Azure, with guidance aligned to building and selling solutions through Microsoft Marketplace.While unpredictable token usage and orchestration steps can quickly escalate infrastructure costs in AI-powered systems, design choices can prevent runaway expenses without compromising the quality of responses.
29/04/2026
Azure Monitor Service Level Indicators (SLI)
Today, we are excited to introduce Service Level Indicators (SLI) and Service Level Objectives (SLO) in Azure Monitor a step forward in helping teams measure how customers are experiencing their applications.SLI: A quantitative measure of how well an application or service is performing from the customer’s point of view.Azure Monitor SLI brings service health management directly into the Azure platform.
29/04/2026
Granular email content access with unified RBAC – now the default for new Defender tenants
Email investigations are a key part of detecting and responding to phishing and malware. As security workflows continue to evolve, there is an increasing need to align email content visibility more closely with specific roles and scenarios, such as Tier‑1 analysis or specialized workflows like user‑reported phishing triage. Today we’re announcing additional “read-only” controls for more granular email access in Microsoft Defender and that starting on May 30th, 2026, unified ...
29/04/2026
CloudThat: How the gamified CloudAttack app is transforming AI skilling
Microsoft Training Services Partner CloudThat, an award-winning global leader in training and consulting, recognized this challenge and set out to reimagine how people build cloud and AI skills.The result is CloudAttack, a proprietary generative AI–powered gamified learning platform that’s making skill-building more interactive, enjoyable, and measurable.CloudThat’s answer to these challenges is CloudAttack, an app rooted in AI technology and gamification teaching methodology.
29/04/2026
How to Manage RC4 Hardening – Definitive Guide
This article is a technical continuation of the RC4 deprecation / Kerberos hardening work I covered in my previous article last month.If you already went through the “why” (risk of RC4, what changes Microsoft is rolling out, and the high-level migration approach), the goal here is to get hands-on and precise: what exactly changes across the three rollout phases, which registry keys and AD attributes drive KDC behavior, what you should expect to see in security logs, and how to turn those signals into concrete remediation steps.How to manage Kerberos KDC usage of RC4 for service account ticket issuance changes related to CVE-2026-20833 How to manage Kerberos KDC usage of RC4 for service account ticket issuance changes related to CVE-2026-20833 - Microsoft Support
29/04/2026
Get more out of Microsoft Clipchamp with these little‑known features
Stay on brand with Brand kitsWith Brand kits in Clipchamp, individual users or Microsoft 365 administrators can create curated, organization-wide sets of logos, brand colors, and fonts in one place to ensure consistent use, and then apply them across videos with just a few clicks.Share your thoughts in the comments.
29/04/2026
Hands-on Session: From idea to interactive lesson with Microsoft Learning Zone
Join us on Tuesday, May 12th at 8:00 AM Pacific for a hands-on professional development session introducing Learning Zone - a new app that helps you create interactive, classroom-ready lessons in minutes.You can follow along using your own Microsoft 365 Education account.✅ Building your first interactive lesson: Create your first interactive lesson (in minutes!)
29/04/2026
New in Microsoft Marketplace: April 29, 2026
Learn about 201 new offers that went live in Microsoft Marketplace, a single destination to find, try, and buy cloud solutions, AI apps, and agents to meet your business needs.365SAMPulse: 365SAMPulse is a lightweight SaaS tool for small to midsize organizations that provides clear visibility into Microsoft 365 usage, licensing, and adoption.It analyzes and converts forms, PL/SQL logic, and triggers into responsive web interfaces and secure back-end services using modern frameworks.
29/04/2026
Migrating Splunk Logs to Azure Application Insights on VMs
Since your apps already write logs to files, we can replace Splunk forwarders with Azure Monitor Agent (AMA).Step 2.1 – Install Azure Monitor Agent (AMA) on VMs3. Integrate log4net with Application Insights:
29/04/2026
AG-UI: The Future of Agent-Driven User Interfaces
Introducing AG-UI (Agent–User Interface) — a unified protocol that finally standardizes how agents talk to frontends.It enables streaming, declarative UI generation, state synchronization, and human-in-the-loop workflows out of the box.AG-UI is the missing piece that bridges backend intelligence with real-time, interactive user experiences.
29/04/2026
General availability of Default Ruleset (DRS) 2.2 for Web Application Firewall
Azure Web Application Firewall (WAF) continues to evolve to meet these demands and now supports Default Rule Set (DRS) 2.2 across both Azure Front Door and Azure Application Gateway.The latest recommended Azure WAF ruleset, based on OWASP Core Rule Set (CRS) 3.3.4., DRS 2.2 combines OWASP CRS protections with Microsoft-authored rules developed with the Microsoft Threat Intelligence team, delivering broader coverage, updated signatures, reduced false positives, and a more modern security baseline for your internet-facing applications.DRS 2.2 is based on the OWASP Core Rule Set 3.3.4, delivering improvements in rule accuracy and new protections for common web vulnerabilities.
29/04/2026
Solutions for document-centric business processes - Portal Systems - SharePoint Partner Showcase
We are excited to share a new episode on our partner showcase series focused on SharePoint in Microsoft 365.In this brief discussion Patrick Carl from Portal Systems AG join Vesa Juvonen from Microsoft to showcase different features and capabilities they've built for Microsoft 365 and SharePoint using SharePoint Framework (SPFx).Portal Systems AG is an independent software manufacturer specializing in Enterprise Content Management (ECM) and software solutions based on Microsoft 365 and SharePoint.
29/04/2026
Meta FAIR Releases NeuralSet: A Python Package for Neuro-AI That Supports fMRI, M/EEG, Spikes, and HuggingFace Embeddings
Introducing NeuralSet: Meta's Simple, Fast, and Scalable Python Package That Bridges Neuroscience and AI The post Meta FAIR Releases NeuralSet: A Python Package for Neuro-AI That Supports fMRI, M/EEG, Spikes, and HuggingFace Embeddings appeared first on MarkTechPost.
29/04/2026
smol-audio: A Colab-Friendly Notebook Collection for Fine-Tuning Whisper, Parakeet, Voxtral, Granite Speech, and Audio Flamingo 3
smol-audio Is the Audio AI Cookbook Practitioners Have Been Waiting For The post smol-audio: A Colab-Friendly Notebook Collection for Fine-Tuning Whisper, Parakeet, Voxtral, Granite Speech, and Audio Flamingo 3 appeared first on MarkTechPost.
29/04/2026
A Coding Implementation on Document Parsing Benchmarking with LlamaIndex ParseBench Using Python, Hugging Face, and Evaluation Metrics
In this tutorial, we explore how to use the ParseBench dataset to evaluate document parsing systems in a structured, practical way.We begin by loading the dataset directly from Hugging Face, inspecting its multiple dimensions, such as text, tables, charts, and layout, and transforming it into a unified dataframe for deeper analysis.The post A Coding Implementation on Document Parsing Benchmarking with LlamaIndex ParseBench Using Python, Hugging Face, and Evaluation Metrics appeared first on MarkTechPost.
29/04/2026
Making Sense of Azure AI Foundry IQ
This post explores those boundaries and grounds them in concrete, enterprise‑relevant scenarios, before showing how Foundry IQ can be implemented directly via Azure AI Search APIs and SDKs.Azure AI Foundry IQ is a managed knowledge layer built on Azure AI Search.It allows you to define a knowledge base that spans multiple content sources such as SharePoint, Azure Blob Storage, OneLake, existing Azure AI Search indexes, and selected external sources and expose them through a single, permission‑aware endpoint.
29/04/2026
Building an Enterprise Knowledge Copilot with Foundry IQ and Agentic Retrieval on Azure AI
This article walks through building a knowledge copilot that unifies that data behind a single conversational interface — using Microsoft's Foundry IQ knowledge bases and the agentic retrieval engine in Azure AI Search.It provides a unified knowledge layer for agents — a single endpoint that replaces per-project RAG pipelines with a reusable, topic-centric knowledge base that any number of agents can consume.Create a knowledge base in Azure AI Search
29/04/2026
Poolside AI Introduces Laguna XS.2 and M.1: Agentic Coding Models Reaching 68.2% and 72.5% on SWE-bench Verified
Poolside Releases Laguna XS.2 and M.1: Open-Weight Agentic Coding Models Built for Long-Horizon Tasks The post Poolside AI Introduces Laguna XS.2 and M.1: Agentic Coding Models Reaching 68.2% and 72.5% on SWE-bench Verified appeared first on MarkTechPost.
29/04/2026
How to Build Traceable and Evaluated LLM Workflows Using Promptflow, Prompty, and OpenAI
In this tutorial, we build a complete, production-style LLM workflow using Promptflow within a Colab environment.We begin by setting up a reliable keyring backend to avoid OS dependency issues and securely configure our OpenAI connection.The post How to Build Traceable and Evaluated LLM Workflows Using Promptflow, Prompty, and OpenAI appeared first on MarkTechPost.
29/04/2026
Transforming Video Content into Structured SOPs Using Graph-based RAG
Converting that knowledge into structured documentation like Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) is often manual and time-consuming.Enter Graph-based RAG (GraphRAG)GraphRAG extends traditional RAG by building a knowledge graph instead of treating content as disconnected chunks.
29/04/2026
Flexible Cooling for AI Growth: How Zonal Architecture Supports Diverse Hardware Needs
Microsoft is pioneering zonal cooling in its next-generation AI datacenters, enabling flexible, performant, efficient, and sustainable thermal management for diverse workloads.Zonal cooling is a facility design that introduces multiple independent water loops, each supplying coolant at different temperatures.Microsoft is building facility-level zonal cooling in the next generation of its AI datacenters going live in 2028 and beyond, while exploring the other three approaches in the lab. Facility-level zonal cooling is expected to reduce PUEs by up to 10%.
29/04/2026
OpenAI Releases Privacy Filter: A 1.5B-Parameter Open-Source PII Redaction Model with 50M Active Parameters
OpenAI's Privacy Filter Is a 1.5B-Parameter PII Detector Built on a Distilled Decoder — And It Runs in Your Browser The post OpenAI Releases Privacy Filter: A 1.5B-Parameter Open-Source PII Redaction Model with 50M Active Parameters appeared first on MarkTechPost.
28/04/2026
Announcing SQL Server Management Studio 22.5.2
Today we released a smaller SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) update, version 22.5.2, to address a few issues related to GitHub Copilot and SQL Projects. As always, we recommend that users update to the latest release when it’s available, as it’s the generally available and supported release. You can view the release notes for more details related to the fixes, and with both SQL Projects and copilot, we continue to monitor customer feedback and add functionality with each release. If you’re using either feature, we appreciate you trying out what’s new and reporting any issues or requests on the feedback site.With this release there’s an important change for GitHub Copilot in SSMS that I want to call out. We have disabled completions by default.why did you disable completions by default?
28/04/2026
APIM Circuit Breaker com Azure OpenAI
APIM Circuit Breaker com Azure OpenAI Visão Geral Ao consumir modelos do Azure OpenAI em produção, depender de um único endpoint representa um risco real. Basta uma instância ficar indisponível ou atingir limites de throttling para que toda a aplicação seja impactada. Neste artigo, construímos uma arquitetura resiliente utilizando o Azure API Management (APIM)&nb...
28/04/2026
Deploying DNS Private Resolvers and Private DNS Zones for Azure AI Supported Services
DNS Private resolvers are regional, which means if you have Azure EAST US and WEST US 2 regions, you need to create DNS Private resolvers in both regions linked to Private DNS Zones, you can adopt centralized or distributed DNS Private resolvers, I will discuss both options later in this articlePsPing, a tool from Sysinternals, is highly effective for verifying network connectivity from on-premises environments to Azure resources on specific ports.By using PsPing, you can test and confirm that the necessary ports are open and accessible, which is crucial for troubleshooting connectivity issues and ensuring smooth communication between your on-premises infrastructure and Azure-hosted resources.
28/04/2026
What's New in Excel (April 2026)
Welcome to the April 2026 update.In broader Microsoft 365 news, Copilot's Agentic capabilities are now generally available, and Copilot Cowork, which is an agentic AI capability that acts like a digital teammate—turning your goals into multi-step plans and helping execute tasks across apps (email, meetings, documents, workflows) with user oversight, is available via the Frontier program. For Excel, new Edit with Copilot capabilities include the Chat/Edit switcher, step-by-step reasoning with plan mode, understanding changes made by Copilot, and the ability to use the power of Python directly from Copilot, as well as new OpenAI GPT-5.5 and Claude Opus 4.7 models.Many of these features are the result of your feedback.
28/04/2026
Join us at Microsoft 365 Copilot Live Expo and Discovery event in Huntsville, AL!
The Microsoft US Federal Customer Success Unit (CSU) wants to help you change that with an event designed to break that cycle — before it starts.Microsoft 365 Copilot LIVE Expo and DiscoveryMay 19–21, 2026 The Summit at Redstone |The Copilot LIVE Expo, part of the MILE (Microsoft Immersive Learning Experience) program, throws all of that out and offers something different.
28/04/2026
Building Intelligent Apps With Azure
With artificial intelligence (AI) becoming part of everyday tools, organizations of all sizes are looking for ways to build smarter, more helpful apps. Microsoft Azure makes this easier by giving teams the tools and training they need to learn, experiment, and create with confidence.Azure supports teams with hands‑on learning, expert guidance, and built‑in responsible AI tools through frameworks like Microsoft Responsible AI, helping teams build safely and confidently.Azure provides tools and best practices to help teams:
28/04/2026
Proactive Reliability Series — Article 1: Fault Types in Azure
Welcome to the Proactive Reliability Series — a collection of articles dedicated to raising awareness about the importance of designing, implementing, and operating reliable solutions in Azure. Each article will focus on a specific area of reliability engineering: from identifying critical flows and setting reliability targets, to designing for redundancy, testing strategies, and di...
28/04/2026
HashiCorp Vault Integration with Terraform — Secure Secret Management
To mitigate these risks, organizations can integrate HashiCorp Vault with Terraform to securely store and retrieve secrets dynamically during infrastructure provisioning.This blog demonstrates the Vault-Terraform integration using a real-world example:Enable Azure AD authentication method:
28/04/2026
Architecting Cost-Aware LLM Workloads with Model Router in Microsoft Foundry
The 2025-11-18 release adds tool-use support, enabling Model Router inside the Foundry Agent Service.If you’re standardizing on the Microsoft Foundry SDK rather than the OpenAI Python SDK, the Responses API offers an equivalent path.Because Model Router can dispatch to either chat or reasoning (o-series) models, parameter behavior shifts based on the actual model picked.
28/04/2026
Query plan regressions got you down? Here's how can Automatic Plan Correction turns it around.
It is part of the Automatic Tuning family and has been quietly doing its job since SQL Server 2017, detecting query plan regressions and automatically forcing a previously known good plan to restore performance.With SQL Server 2022 CU4 and continuing into SQL Server 2025, we have made significant improvements to the statistical model that APC uses for regression detection.APC supports two statistical models for determining whether a query plan has regressed.
28/04/2026
Partner Blog | Strengthen partner operations with platform updates
For Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) partners, that experience depends on the operational readiness behind the scenes: secure access, resilient APIs, accurate billing and reconciliation, and subscription lifecycle flows that set the right expectations. This quarterly operational briefing is designed to give your technical teams a clear, actionable view of the latest platform, security, and API updates so you can protect revenue continuity, reduce operational friction, and stay ahead of enforcement milestones.It also highlights where platform readiness can unlock new growth opportunities, especially for partners investing in advanced workloads and specializations.
28/04/2026
Partner Blog | Veeam
As hybrid learning environments become more complex and cloud adoption accelerates, IT teams need a unified approach to protect data across both on‑premises systems and virtual infrastructure.Headquartered in Seattle, Washington, Veeam is a long-standing Microsoft partner that delivers data protection and recovery solutions to help organizations protect data across hybrid environments.That focus is why Batterjee Medical College (BMC)—a rapidly expanding private medical college in Saudi Arabia—partnered with Veeam to strengthen their data resilience strategy and ensure continuity as their operations, hybrid learning environment, and regional footprint continue to grow.
28/04/2026
From Late Nights to Global Impact: Ariane Djeupang’s Microsoft MVP Journey
Ariane is a project manager and machine learning engineer based in Cameroon - and a leader across multiple open-source communities.The moment she became a Microsoft MVPAfter she was nominated and completed the application, she was welcomed into the Microsoft MVP community - one of only four MVPs in Cameroon, and the first (and currently only) woman MVP in the country.
28/04/2026
OrganAIze - What Happens When You Let AI Agents Organize Themselves?
Goal: Create a comprehensive report on quantum computingWithout guardrails, a self-spawning system could create infinite agents and burn through your API budget in seconds.It's to explore the boundary of what's possible when you trust the model with orchestration decisions and focus your engineering effort on safety, cost control, and observability instead.
28/04/2026
How Microsoft 1ES uses agentic AI to take on security and compliance at scale
Within Microsoft’s One Engineering System (1ES) organization, teams build and maintain the internal engineering systems that product groups across the company rely on to ship and secure their services.But this is exactly the kind of challenge AI was made for: high-speed, high-scale evaluation and judgment calls, coached by human expertise.Frontier models like GPT-5.5 and Claude Opus 4.7 can now reason about context, intent, and tradeoffs not just generate code.
28/04/2026
Public Preview: User-initiated provisioning for Windows 365 Reserve
Launched in December 2025, Windows 365 Reserve is a business continuity solution that helps restore employee access when their primary device becomes unavailable by providing a Cloud PC when it’s needed most.Today, we’re announcing the public preview of user‑initiated provisioning for Windows 365 Reserve.This capability was teased at Microsoft Ignite and is now available in public preview!
28/04/2026
Microsoft Defender: New Advanced hunting enhancements
We’ve made several enhancements across the experience to expand limits and better support large-scale investigations so analysts can query, explore, and act on more data with fewer constraints.We have heard your feedback on the need for larger data sets and are excited to announce that the results limitation in advanced hunting has been raised from 30,000 to 100,000 records.In addition to the above enhancements, we are delighted to introduce the ability to save KQL functions directly from the advanced hunting page into your log analytics workspace.
28/04/2026
AI at every career stage (start, grow, lead)
Learn practical ways to build confidence early on, scale your impact midcareer, and strengthen strategy and coaching as you lead.In the final post in this series on AI for business users, Microsoft Senior Learning Manager Ashley Masters Hall shares insights on how AI skills can help you grow your confidence and impact, along with your career.In the second, AI prompting tips & tricks for everyday tasks, we look at simple approaches that help non-technical roles work smarter.
28/04/2026
Improve Marketplace outcomes with AI-powered listing recommendations in App Advisor
What stands out to me now, however, is how much that experience has become more streamlined and actionable. App Advisor is one of the clearest demonstrations of Microsoft’s commitment to helping software development companies succeed, and in many ways, it represents the pinnacle of that evolution. With App Advisor—and now AI-powered marketplace listing recommendations—we’re able to continuously improve how we show up in Marketplace without introducing risk or guesswork. We have more control and clarity than we have ever had before.In the Teams App Store, especially, visibility translates directly into installs, usage signals, and ultimately sales conversations.
28/04/2026
Update host keys to use SFTP on Azure Blob Storage
Update host keys to use SFTP on Azure Blob StorageFAQs to Host keys for SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) support for Azure Blob StorageHow to list all your storage accounts with SFTP enabled
28/04/2026
Aligning SAP application servers with the HANA primary zone on Azure (Public Preview) — Part 1
This post introduces a new Pacemaker resource agent for SAP on Azure deployments, that helps automate the Active/Passive application-server alignment.Azure SAP Zone Resource Agent is a Pacemaker resource agent that aligns SAP application server VMs with the current HANA primary VM.Think of Azure SAP Zone Alignment Resource Agent as an orchestration layer that sits alongside your existing Pacemaker-managed HANA high availability setup:
28/04/2026
Azure SAP Zone Resource Agent (Public Preview) — Technical Deep Dive (Part 2)
The azure-sap-zone resource agent is a Pacemaker resource agent designed to manage the alignment of SAP application Azure Virtual Machines (VMs) with the primary HANA Azure VM.This agent ensures that SAP application servers are started in the same Azure availability zone as the HANA primary VM to maintain high availability and optimal performance.With the information in this post, you should have what you need to evaluate the Azure SAP Zone Resource Agent in your environment - from setting up the managed identity and permissions, to installing the agent, configuring the cluster, and troubleshooting common issues.
28/04/2026
Securing Your AI Agents Before They Ship: Red Teaming with Microsoft PyRIT
Securing Your AI Agents Before They Ship: Red Teaming with Microsoft PyRITPyRIT is Microsoft's open-source answer: an automation framework battle-tested on 100+ products including Copilot.Why AI red teaming is fundamentally different from traditional security testing
28/04/2026
Foundry Agent Service + Microsoft Agent Framework Explained
So to solve for this, today we’ll get hands-on with the Microsoft Foundry Agent Service, a platform which lets you bring in your own agents using your preferred tools and host them with built-in enterprise controls, measurability, and discoverability, and the powerful open-source Microsoft Agent Framework that’s uniquely designed to make it easier to build both single and multi-agentic workloads with orchestration.And joining me to demonstrate all this is resident developer expert, Jeff Hollan.Work IQ, Foundry IQ, and Fabric IQ.
28/04/2026
Preeminent Technologies and Codemod offer transactable partner solutions in Microsoft Marketplace
Microsoft partners like Preeminent Technologies and Codemod deliver transact-capable offers, which allow you to purchase directly from Microsoft Marketplace.SpaceBeacon: SB Flights & Hotels from Preeminent Technologies (doing business as SpaceBeacon) is a service of the SpaceBeacon AI-powered travel platform.SB Flights & Hotels lets you book your trip via voice commands.
28/04/2026
Project Pavilion Presence at KubeCon EU 2026
KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2026 took place from 23 to 26 March at RAI Amsterdam, and it was a strong one.Microsoft was there throughout, and once again supported a range of open source projects in the Project Pavilion.Microsoft's products and services are built on and alongside many of the technologies represented in the pavilion, and the health of these communities matters to us directly.
28/04/2026
Istio‑Based Weighted Traffic Management on AKS for Enterprise Workloads
This article demonstrates how to implement weighted load balancing from AKS workloads to backend AKS internal services using Istio—addressing a key limitation in native Azure load balancing services.This section presents two common deployment use cases that apply the same Istio traffic‑management pattern—weighted routing with cookie‑based session affinity—but differ in where backend workloads run.This section walks through the production‑ready Istio configuration used to implement weighted traffic routing with cookie‑based session affinity.
28/04/2026
Troubleshooting SQL MI Failover Group Creation in Hub–Spoke Network with Centralized Firewall
Failover groups for Azure SQL Managed Instance provide a managed way to replicate all user databases from a primary managed instance to a secondary managed instance in another region, with stable listener endpoints that remain constant across geo-failovers.The root cause turned out to be network path behaviour in a hub–spoke environment with centralized firewalling—specifically around required ports, routing, and traffic handling.During deployment, Failover Group creation failed (or remained stuck), and the system did not progress to seeding/replication from the primary to the secondary instance.
28/04/2026
Top 10 Physical AI Models Powering Real-World Robots in 2026
The gap between language model capabilities and robotic deployment has been narrowing considerably over the past 18 months.A new class of foundation models — purpose-built not for text generation but for physical action — is now running on real hardware across factories, warehouses, and research labs.The post Top 10 Physical AI Models Powering Real-World Robots in 2026 appeared first on MarkTechPost.
28/04/2026
Deploying Azure Redis Enterprise with Geo-Replication Using Terraform
This post walks through a production‑proven pattern for running stateful services across Azure regions using Terraform.We’ll cover a primary–replica Redis architecture, regional isolation with Key Vault and networking, and a clean Terraform parameterization strategy that scales from development to production without duplication.That’s where Terraform + Azure Managed Redis geo‑replication shines.
28/04/2026
The Future of Agentic AI: Inside Microsoft Agent Framework 1.0
On April 3, 2026, Microsoft marked a major milestone with the General Availability (GA) release of Microsoft Agent Framework 1.0, a production‑ready, open‑source framework for building agents and multi‑agent workflows in.NET and Python.According to the official announcement, Microsoft Agent Framework is an open‑source SDK and runtime for building AI agents and multi‑agent workflows with strong enterprise foundations.Microsoft Agent Framework 1.0 distinguishes itself by focusing on "Enterprise Readiness" and "Interoperability."
28/04/2026
Extracting and Auditing Azure DevOps Permissions at Scale with PowerShell
The blog post introduces ADO Permissions Output, an open-source PowerShell toolset that extracts Azure DevOps security permissions across 30+ security namespaces, resolves cryptic tokens and GUIDs into human-readable names, and produces structured JSON and CSV output suitable for auditing, compliance, and import into Power BI.This toolset bridges the gap between the raw security APIs and actionable audit output, resolving cryptic tokens into readable names, surfacing effective and inherited permissions, and detecting stale or ghost group members through Entra group expansion.The tool is open source, requires only PowerShell 7 and a PAT, and is designed for unattended pipeline execution with output committed back to the repository for version-tracked audit history.
28/04/2026
Azure SQL Database BACPAC Export Stuck with Private Link and Resource Locks
When you enable the Use private link option during import or export, the service automatically creates temporary, service-managed private endpoints to securely connect the Azure SQL Database to the target Storage Account.You must manually approve the private endpoint for both the Azure SQL logical server and the Azure Blob storage account in separate steps.Azure SQL Import/Export using Private Link (Microsoft Learn) Import or Export a Database Using Private Link - Azure SQL Database |
28/04/2026
Why Does Azure App Service Return HTTP 404?
When an application deployed to Azure App Service suddenly starts returning HTTP 404 – Not Found, it can be confusing —especially when: In this article, I’ll walk through real-world reasons why Azure App Service can return HTTP 404 errors, based on production issues, support cases, and community discussions.An HTTP 404 response from Azure App Service means:
28/04/2026
How to Build a Lightweight Vision-Language-Action-Inspired Embodied Agent with Latent World Modeling and Model Predictive Control
In this tutorial, we build an embodied simulation vision agent that learns to perceive, plan, predict, and replan directly from pixel observations.We create a fully NumPy-rendered grid world in which the agent observes RGB frames rather than symbolic state variables, enabling us to simulate a simplified Vision-Language-Action-style pipeline.We train a lightweight world model […]
28/04/2026
Meet Talkie-1930: A 13B Open-Weight LLM Trained on Pre-1931 English Text for Historical Reasoning and Generalization Research
What if a language model had never heard of the internet, smartphones, or even World War II?That’s not a hypothetical — it’s exactly what a team of researchers led by Nick Levine, David Duvenaud, and Alec Radford has built.They call it talkie, and it may be the most historically disciplined large language model […]
28/04/2026
Introducing AI Skill Assessment in Azure API Center
As AI skills become central to enterprise automation and intelligent workflows, ensuring their quality, safety, and discoverability at scale is a growing challenge. Today, we're excited to announce skills assessment in Azure API Center — a built-in, automated quality scoring system powered by the LLM-as-a-judge technique. This capability enables organizations to continuously evaluate AI skills against defined quality standards, giving platform administrators governance...
27/04/2026
From co-sell ready to co-sell active: How to drive Microsoft seller engagement
About the author: Trunal Bhanse, CEO, Clazar, brings significant experience as a leader and an innovator across Airbnb and Confluent. At the latter, Trunal led a pioneering team of engineers scaling cloud marketplaces and billing infrastructures. Having witnessed the complexity first-hand, he launched Clazar to democratize cloud marketplace access for businesses.
27/04/2026
Protect your estate: Reassess your Windows update policies
A new Windows Autopatch report that reflects updated recommendations on patch compliance is rolling out soon to your tenant. Keeping devices up to date has never been more critical for security. As noted in a recent post AI-powered defense for an AI-accelerated threat landscape
27/04/2026
So, You’ve disabled Windows Hello for Business, but the User can still Sign-in using a PIN
Hi, it’s Brent from the Windows Directory Services team. I recently worked a case concerning a user who had the Windows Hello for Business (“WHfB”) policy disabled, but the user could still sign-in to the computer using their PIN. As you may have guessed, the Windows admin team of the Active Directory domain for this user wanted to know how this could be and how they could remove this sign-in option from the user.
27/04/2026
Bring Your Own Model to Foundry Agent Service Is Now Generally Available
Enterprise teams building AI agents often need to route model requests through their own infrastructure — whether for compliance, governance, or other controls provided by gateways. Today, we are excited to announce general availability of the Bring Your Own Model (BYOM) for Foundry Agent Service feature, letting you connect prompt agents to models hosted behind Azure API Management or any third-party AI model gateway. This means you can build agents in Foundry while k...
27/04/2026
Design predictable usage-based billing for AI apps and agents selling in Microsoft Marketplace
Design predictable usage‑based billing for AI apps and agents selling on Microsoft Marketplace Compared to traditional software, pricing and billing feel harder because of the range of AI functionality. They reason, they infer, call tools, process data, all, to complete tasks on the customer’s behalf. If you’re building an AI app or agent to sell in Microsoft Marketplace, usage‑based billing needs to be designed with care, instrumented with intention, and expl...
27/04/2026
Deprecating Legacy TLS and Endpoints for POP and IMAP in Exchange Online
Security on the internet continues to evolve, and older cryptographic protocols no longer provide the protections required for today’s threat landscape. As part of our ongoing work to help customers keep their email environments secure, we’re taking another step in modernizing Exchange Online connectivity. What’s changing We’re planning to fully deprecate support for legacy TLS versions (TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1) for POP3 and IMAP4 connecti...
27/04/2026
Build a Reinforcement Learning Powered Agent that Learns to Retrieve Relevant Long-Term Memories for Accurate LLM Question Answering
In this tutorial, we build a Reinforcement Learning–driven agent that learns how to retrieve relevant memories from a long-term memory bank. We start by constructing a synthetic memory dataset and generating queries that require the agent to recall specific information. Using OpenAI embeddings, we convert both memories and queries into vector representations, enabling similarity signals […] The post
27/04/2026
Copilot in Outlook: New agentic experiences for email and calendar
Outlook used to be where you worked. Starting today, it's where Copilot works for you. Until now, Copilot in Outlook helped with the task in front of you: drafting an email, catching up on a long thread, or finding a time to meet. Useful, but not the hardest part. The real work is everything around it: the follow-ups that slip, the messages that need attention, and the schedule changes that pile up before the day even starts. That’s what’s changing today. Copilot in Outlook is n...
27/04/2026
OpenMOSS Releases MOSS-Audio: An Open-Source Foundation Model for Speech, Sound, Music, and Time-Aware Audio Reasoning
The model unifies speech, environmental sound, music, and temporal reasoning into a single architecture — and outperforms every open-source model tested on general audio benchmarks, including systems more than four times its size. The post OpenMOSS Releases MOSS-Audio: An Open-Source Foundation Model for Speech, Sound, Mus...
27/04/2026
Announcing Microsoft.Data.SqlClient 7.0.1
We are pleased to announce the release of Microsoft.Data.SqlClient 7.0.1, the first servicing update to the 7.0 line. This patch addresses several compatibility fixes reported by the community after the 7.0.0 GA release. Install or update from NuGet: dotnet add package Microsoft.Data.SqlClient --version 7.0.1 Full release notes:
27/04/2026
Explore curated Microsoft Partner Skilling Journeys
Partners like you understand that skilling isn't optional—it's foundational for success in an AI-first market. Keeping up with evolving technologies and capabilities will better position you with the skills needed to succeed in an ever-changing market.
27/04/2026
Assess Secure Boot status with Microsoft Defender
Understanding the Secure Boot certificate challenge Secure Boot is a foundational security feature that validates the integrity of your device's boot process, ensuring only trusted software can run during system startup. This protection has been quietly defending enterprise devices since 2012, but the original 2011 certificates that enable this trust are approaching their expiration date. When certificates expire in June 2026, devices that haven't transitioned...
27/04/2026
New eligible workloads for the Solutions Partner designation for Business Applications
The pathway to attaining and renewing the Solutions Partner designation for Business Applications has been widened thanks to the addition of two new eligible workloads: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center and Copilot Studio. Contact Center has been added across both performance and customer success metrics, while Copilot Studio has been added to performance.
27/04/2026
New Local Management Group for ALZ & Updated Sovereign Policies for SLZ
Following on from months of working alongside customers, partners, and our internal product groups, we have now made two updates to the Azure landing zone (ALZ) and the Sovereign landing zone (SLZ), that I’d like to walk you through in this post: A new dedicated ‘Local’ Management Group added beneath the Landing Zones Management Group – applies to both ALZ & SLZ A refresh of the sove...
27/04/2026
Azure Local expands to sovereign-scale infrastructure with disaggregated deployments
As organizations accelerate digital transformation across datacenters, sovereign environments, and edge locations, infrastructure architectures must evolve to meet new operational and regulatory demands. The first feature update of Azure Local in CY 2026 (version 2604) marks a significant step forward—expanding Azure Local as a platform for sovereign private cloud infrastructure, introducing larger scale, disaggregated deployment architectures, expanded storage ecosyst...
27/04/2026
Available today: GPT-5.5 Thinking and ChatGPT Images 2.0 in Microsoft 365 Copilot
Today, we’re expanding what Microsoft 365 Copilot can do with GPT-5.5 Thinking and ChatGPT Images 2.0 bringing stronger support for deeper analysis, multi-step work, and visual creation. GPT-5.5 Thinking is now available in Copilot Studio early release cycle environments as GPT-5.5 Reasoning and is rolling out across Microsoft 365 Copilot in Copilot Chat, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Chat...
27/04/2026
Unlocking hard data estates: How Cloudera on Microsoft Marketplace brings AI to regulated industries
In this guest blog post, Alex Wagman, Global Cloud Alliance Manager at Cloudera, considers the data challenges of regulated industries and how Cloudera enables governed hybrid data and AI. There’s a frustrating paradox facing chief information officers and data leaders in regulated industries today: The data with the most business value — customer records, transactions, operational intelligence — is often the data that’s least accessible for AI initiatives. <...
27/04/2026
Meta AI Releases Sapiens2: A High-Resolution Human-Centric Vision Model for Pose, Segmentation, Normals, Pointmap, and Albedo
Meta Reality Labs releases a new foundation model family for human-centric vision that pushes pose estimation, segmentation, and 3D geometry to new state-of-the-art levels — all from a single backbone. The post Meta AI Releases Sapiens2: A High-Resolution Human-Centric Vision Model for Pose, Segmentation, Normals, Po...
27/04/2026
Build AI RAG Apps with LangChain, Azure DocumentDB and Microsoft Foundry: Step-by-Step Guide
Scenario Imagine you are building your company’s RAG chat application using Microsoft Foundry - Azure OpenAI and orchestrating the flow with LangChain. The chat experience works, but now it needs to be grounded in your company’s data. You generate embeddings and want to store and query them without adding another ...
27/04/2026
From Portal Edits to GitOps : Deploying Azure API Management Configuration with APIOps
Introduction Modern enterprise platforms are increasingly built around APIs, and Azure API Management (APIM) sits at the heart of these systems as the control plane for enforcing policies, managing access, and routing traffic. While APIM provides a powerful interface through the Azure portal, many organisations initially manage APIs manually. Over time, this approach introduces systemic challenges such as configuration drift across environments, lack of traceability, a...
27/04/2026
Rethinking Data Modeling: How GitHub Copilot Is Changing the Way We Design Systems
There is a point in every engineer’s journey where data modeling stops feeling intuitive. What starts as a clean schema becomes harder to reason about. Relationships blur. Query paths multiply. Small changes ripple across different steps. This is where data modeling reveals its real challenge: not just storing data but preserving clarity as systems scale. And this is where GitHub Copilot became a practical accelerator for us. WHEN DATA MODELS STOP SCALING W...
27/04/2026
Azure AI Foundry vs Traditional ML Pipelines: What’s Different and Why It Matters
The Traditional ML Pipeline: What It Was Built For Traditional ML pipelines typically look like this: Data ingestion and preparation Model training (often batch‑oriented) Model validation and versioning Deployment via APIs or batch jobs Monitoring focused on accuracy and drift This approach worked well for: Predictive models (forecasting, classification) Periodic retraining cycles Isolated u...
27/04/2026
How to Troubleshoot Azure Functions Service Bus Trigger Issues
Table of Contents Overview Understanding How the Service Bus Trigger Works Message Processing Flow Key Concepts
27/04/2026
The LoRA Assumption That Breaks in Production
LoRA is widely used for fine-tuning large models because it’s efficient, but it quietly assumes that all updates to a model are similar. In reality, they’re not. When you fine-tune for style (like tone, format, or persona), the changes are simple and concentrated in just a few dimensions — which LoRA handles well with low-rank […] The post The LoRA Assumption That Breaks in Production...
27/04/2026
How to Build a Fully Searchable AI Knowledge Base with OpenKB, OpenRouter, and Llama
In this tutorial, we explore how to build and query a local knowledge base with OpenKB using a free, open model via OpenRouter. We securely retrieve the API key with getpass, set up the environment without hardcoding secrets, and initialize a structured, wiki-style knowledge base from scratch. As we move through the workflow, we add […] The post Ho...
27/04/2026
How to Build Smarter Multilingual Text Wrapping with BudouX Through Parsing, HTML Rendering, Model Introspection, and Toy Training
In this tutorial, we explore how we use BudouX to bring intelligent, phrase-aware line breaking to languages where whitespace is not naturally present, such as Japanese, Chinese, and Thai. We begin by setting up the library and working with its default parsers to understand how raw text is segmented into meaningful chunks. We then move […] The post
26/04/2026
Microsoft’s New In‑House AI Models (MAI‑Transcribe, MAI‑Voice, MAI‑Image)
What Are the New MAI Models? MAI‑Transcribe‑1 (Speech‑to‑Text) MAI‑Transcribe‑1 is Microsoft’s first‑generation in‑house speech recognition model. It supports 25 languages and is optimized for real‑world, noisy enterprise audio, such as meetings and call centers. Key highlights Enterprise‑grade transcription accuracy Designed for multilingual and accented speech<...
26/04/2026
Top 7 Benchmarks That Actually Matter for Agentic Reasoning in Large Language Models
As AI agents move from research demos to production deployments, one question has become impossible to ignore: how do you actually know if an agent is good? Perplexity scores and MMLU leaderboard numbers tell you very little about whether a model can navigate a real website, resolve a GitHub issue, or reliably handle a customer […] The post Top 7...
26/04/2026
Dev Containers for .NET in VS Code: A Beginner‑Friendly Guide That Actually Works
What Dev Containers are really about At a high level, Dev Containers let you use a Docker container as your development environment inside VS Code. But the real idea is not “Docker for development”. The real idea is this: Move all environment complexity out of your laptop and into version‑controlled configuration. With Dev Containers: Your laptop becomes just a VS Code client Your tools, SDKs, runtimes, and dependencies live...
26/04/2026
RAG Without Vectors: How PageIndex Retrieves by Reasoning
Retrieval is where most RAG systems quietly break. Traditional pipelines rely on vector similarity—embedding queries and document chunks into the same space and fetching the “closest” matches. But similarity is a weak proxy for what we actually need: relevance grounded in reasoning. In long, professional documents—like financial reports, research papers, or legal texts—the right answer […] The post
26/04/2026
A Coding Tutorial on Datashader on Rendering Massive Datasets with High-Performance Python Visual Analytics
In this tutorial, we explore Datashader, a powerful, high-performance visualization library for rendering massive datasets that quickly overwhelm traditional plotting tools. We work through its full rendering pipeline in Google Colab, starting from dense point clouds and reduction-based aggregations to categorical rendering, line visualizations, raster data, quadmesh grids, compositing, and dashboard-style analytical views. As we […] The post
26/04/2026
Azure Key Vault Auto‑Rotation Practicle Guide
If you’ve ever been called into a Severity-1 issue because a certificate expired at midnight, you already understand why credential rotation matters. Keys, secrets, and certificates sit quietly in the background and when they expire, applications go dark, trust breaks, and teams scramble. This is where Azure Key Vault auto‑rotation stops being a "nice‑to‑have" security feature and becomes a foundational operational capability. Based on the C...
26/04/2026
xAI Launches grok-voice-think-fast-1.0: Topping τ-voice Bench at 67.3%, Outperforming Gemini, GPT Realtime, and More
The new flagship voice model outperforms Gemini, GPT Realtime, and its own predecessor across retail, airline, and telecom workflows The post xAI Launches grok-voice-think-fast-1.0: Topping τ-voice Bench at 67.3%, Outperforming Gemini, GPT Realtime, and More appeared first on Ma...
25/04/2026
A Coding Implementation on kvcached for Elastic KV Cache Memory, Bursty LLM Serving, and Multi-Model GPU Sharing
In this tutorial, we explore kvcached, a dynamic KV-cache implementation on top of vLLM, to understand how dynamic KV-cache allocation transforms GPU memory usage for large language models. We begin by setting up the environment and deploying lightweight Qwen2.5 models through an OpenAI-compatible API, ensuring a realistic inference workflow. We then design controlled experiments where […] The post
25/04/2026
How ACR Artifact Cache Handles Multi-Arch Images: What Gets Cached and When Webhooks Fire
By Johnson Shi (Senior Product Manager), Toddy Mladenov (Principal PM Manager), Luis Dieguez (Principal SWE Manager),
25/04/2026
How can you stay competitive and relevant in an AI-Driven World?
Global Cloud & AI Community | Microsoft Tech Community | April 2026 | 12 min read A candid conversation for cloud & AI professionals, learners, and curious minds navigating the most transformative shift in the history of technology.Let's be honest with each other for a moment. Every week, a new AI tool drops. Every month, a new model breaks last month's benchmark. And somewhere in the back of your mind maybe while you're scrolling LinkedIn, o...
25/04/2026
Google DeepMind Introduces Vision Banana: An Instruction-Tuned Image Generator That Beats SAM 3 on Segmentation and Depth Anything V3 on Metric Depth Estimation
A new Google paper argues that image generation pretraining is to computer vision what GPT-style pretraining is to NLP — and the benchmark numbers back that up. The post Google DeepMind Introduces Vision Banana: An Instruction-Tuned Image Generator That Beats SAM 3 on Segmentati...
25/04/2026
Access fixes released in Version 2604 (Build 16.0.19929.20090)
Bug Name Issue Fixed Values display in the wrong control when using a form as a sublist When a form was used as a sublist (subdatasheet), field values could display in the wrong control, showing data in incorrect positions. Values now display in the correct cont...
25/04/2026
Meet GitNexus: An Open-Source MCP-Native Knowledge Graph Engine That Gives Claude Code and Cursor Full Codebase Structural Awareness
Abhigyan Patwari's GitNexus has quietly crossed 19,000 GitHub stars by solving a problem every AI-assisted developer has hit but rarely named — agents that edit code they don't actually understand. The post Meet GitNexus: An Open-Source MCP-Native Knowledge Graph Engine That Gives Claude Code and Cursor Fu...
25/04/2026
A Coding Implementation on Deepgram Python SDK for Transcription, Text-to-Speech, Async Audio Processing, and Text Intelligence
In this tutorial, we build an advanced hands-on workflow with the Deepgram Python SDK and explore how modern voice AI capabilities come together in a single Python environment. We set up authentication, connect both synchronous and asynchronous Deepgram clients, and work directly with real audio data to understand how the SDK handles transcription, speech generation, […] The post
25/04/2026
A Coding Implementation on Microsoft’s OpenMementos with Trace Structure Analysis, Context Compression, and Fine-Tuning Data Preparation
In this tutorial, we work with Microsoft’s OpenMementos dataset and explore how reasoning traces are structured through blocks and mementos in a practical, Colab-ready workflow. We stream the dataset efficiently, parse its special-token format, inspect how reasoning and summaries are organized, and measure the compression provided by the memento representation across different domains. As we […] The post
25/04/2026
Modernizing Industrial Safety and Inspection with AI-Driven Drone Automation
In large-scale manufacturing and infrastructure environments, maintaining structural integrity is a continuous operational challenge. Industrial facilities—from automotive plants to energy and infrastructure sites—depend on thousands of structural connection points such as bolts and fasteners to ensure safe and reliable operations. Over time, vibration, thermal cycling, and mechanical stress can cause these components to loosen or degrade. While drones have dramatically improved how in...
25/04/2026
Title Plan Update - April 24, 2026
📁April 24, 2026 - Title Plan Now Available Access the latest Instructor-Led Training (ILT) updates anytime at
24/04/2026
Unpacking Endpoint Management is back - and we’ve got a lot to talk about
If you’ve been missing real, candid conversations about endpoint management, good news! Unpacking Endpoint Management is officially back. This series is all about what actually works. No fluff, just practical tips, proven strategies, and honest discussions to help you optimize and simplify the way you manage and secure endpoints today (and prepare for what’s next). We’re bringing together people from across Microsoft Intune, Security, and Customer Experience engineering...
24/04/2026
Teams Customer Connect: Now available globally in 26 languages
We're excited to announce that Customer Connect web chat in Microsoft Teams (previously called Live Chat) is now available globally, supporting 26 languages and bringing seamless customer engagement to businesses worldwide. For small and medium-sized businesses, every customer interaction matters. Whether someone discovers your business through a Google search, a social media post, or a friend's recommendation, the moment they land on your website is critical. With Customer Connect in ...
24/04/2026
SAVE THE DATE! MCAPS for Partners is July 22, 2026!
MCAPS Start for Partners is around the corner. Join us on July 22 for this year’s MCAPS Start for Partners, where you’ll access actionable support for key initiatives from Frontier Transformation to co-sell execution. Keynotes and breakout sessions will focus on where demand is headed and reveal insights into Microsoft priority and investment areas—so that attendees can prepare to align their organizations accordingly. Stay tuned for regist...
24/04/2026
Microsoft’s perspective on agentic identity standards
For now, I’ll anchor on three broad areas of interest that are shaping how identity standards are evolving for agentic systems: bootstrapping of trust, delegation, and shared secrets.Perspective on agentic identity standards-P. Dingle, Director of Identity Standards
24/04/2026
Introducing New Frontline Innovations at Microsoft 365 Community Conference
We announced several exciting updates at the Microsoft 365 Community Conference this week: you can now scale Teams pilots to your broader frontline organization faster, fill open shifts automatically with smart scheduling, deliver official operational updates with the new Communicator App, and conduct site walkthroughs handsfree in Frontline Agent. Scale your frontline pilot with a guided deployment wizard Deploy and manage a consistent Microsoft T...
24/04/2026
DeepSeek AI Releases DeepSeek-V4: Compressed Sparse Attention and Heavily Compressed Attention Enable One-Million-Token Contexts
DeepSeek-AI has released a preview version of the DeepSeek-V4 series: two Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) language models built around one core challenge making one-million-token context windows practical and affordable at inference time. The series consists of DeepSeek-V4-Pro, with 1.6T total parameters and 49B activated per token, and DeepSeek-V4-Flash, with 284B total parameters and 13B activated per token. […] The post
24/04/2026
Earn certifications and accelerate deal velocity at the Sales Certification Week event
Join a no-cost, three-day virtual Sales Certification Week event designed to help partner sellers build practical AI fluency, activate real-world use cases, and validate AI readiness by earning Microsoft credentials—without taking extended time away from selling. Sales Certification Week is part one of a two-part s...
24/04/2026
mssql-python 1.6: Unblocking Your Threads
The last two mssql-python releases shipped big features: Bulk Copy in 1.4 for high-throughput data loading, and
24/04/2026
mssql-django 1.7.1: Microsoft Fabric Support and Migration Fixes
We just shipped mssql-django 1.7.1 with two fixes that matter if you're running Django on Microsoft Fabric or using descending indexes in your migrations. JSONField Now Works on Microsoft Fabric SQL Database in Microsoft Fabric reports itself as EngineEdition 12, which our backend didn't previously recognize. The result: JSONField queries, hash functions, collation introspection, and test teardown all broke on Fab...
24/04/2026
Designing a Medallion Framework — A Decision Guide
Everyone draws the same picture: Bronze → Silver → Gold. Three boxes, three arrows. Done. What that picture hides is the dozen design decisions you have to make inside each box — and the ones you make at the boundaries between them. Get those right and onboarding the 200th table feels like onboarding the 2nd. Get them wrong and you’ll be rewriting the framework in 18 months.
24/04/2026
Enhancing Enterprise AI Deployments with Zero Trust Networking
Problem Statement Azure OpenAI is publicly accessible by default Azure OpenAI frequently asked questions | Microsoft Learn Any application with API access can call it from anywhere Violates: Enterprise security policies Zero Trust architecture
24/04/2026
Converse naturally across languages with consecutive interpretation
I am Harin Lee, a Principal Product Manager on the Microsoft Teams team.Keep two-language meetings flowing with consecutive interpretation in TeamsConsecutive interpretation is a new mode in Interpreter for Windows, Mac, and the web that helps participants collaborate more naturally in meetings with two spoken languages.
24/04/2026
Intent‑Aware Static Inspection for Agent and Skill Packages
When you review an agent or skill package, you’re effectively reviewing a compact behavior specification.By applying intent-aware static inspection with explicit thresholds, review effort was focused on higher-risk packages.YAML‑based agent and skill packages are not inherently risky; they are often chosen precisely because they enable simpler distribution and faster inference.
24/04/2026
Get ahead of agent sprawl: manage and govern AI agents at scale
Agents are a new type of identityEffective identity governance must therefore include automated lifecycle management to address agent sprawl.To learn more about Microsoft Entra Agent ID and how it empowers organizations to secure access for AI agents:
24/04/2026
Deploying an Agentic Service to Microsoft 365 Copilot with Delegated OBO Access
You've built an agentic service. It works. It uses the framework you chose — maybe LangChain, maybe Semantic Kernel, maybe the Microsoft Agent Framework, maybe something entirely your own. It talks to your LLM, calls your downstream APIs, and manages multi-turn conversations the way you designed it. Now someone asks: "Can we surface this in Microsoft 365 Copilot?" The obvious path is to rebuild the...
24/04/2026
When RAG Isn’t Enough: Moving from Retrieval to Relationship-Aware Systems in Enterprise AI:
The Problem In an enterprise AI scenario, the goal was to map structured feature data to relevant sections within large technical documents. At a glance, this appears to be a straightforward semantic matching problem. Initial results using semantic search were promising. However, as the system was used more extensively, certain issues became apparent: Inconsistent mappings across similar inputs Occasional matches to contextually unrelated...
24/04/2026
When Anthropic’s Managed Agents Meet Microsoft Hosted Agents
Let’s start from a real engineering pain point. In their engineering blog Managed Agents, Anthropic describes a sobering observation: while building the agent scaffolding (the “harness”) for Claude Sonnet 4.5, they noticed the model suffered from “context anxiety,” so they added context-reset logic into the ...
24/04/2026
Join our free livestream series on hosting agents in Microsoft Foundry
Join us for a new 3‑part livestream series where we deploy AI agents on Microsoft Foundry using Microsoft Agent Framework and LangChain/LangGraph, then level them up with tools, observability, and evals.Deploy Python agents to Foundry Hosted agents using the Azure Developer CLIHost your agents on Foundry: Microsoft Agent Framework
24/04/2026
Google DeepMind Introduces Decoupled DiLoCo: An Asynchronous Training Architecture Achieving 88% Goodput Under High Hardware Failure Rates
Training frontier AI models is, at its core, a coordination problem.When one chip fails or even slows down, the entire training run can stall.As models scale toward hundreds of billions of parameters, that fragility becomes increasingly untenable.
24/04/2026
Mend Releases AI Security Governance Framework: Covering Asset Inventory, Risk Tiering, AI Supply Chain Security, and Maturity Model
Mend.io's new framework gives engineering and security teams a practical playbook for governing AI systems before the next incident forces the conversation. The post Mend Releases AI Security Governance Framework: Covering Asset Inventory, Risk Tiering, AI Supply Chain Security, and Maturity Model appeared first on MarkTechPost.
24/04/2026
Mend.io Releases AI Security Governance Framework Covering Asset Inventory, Risk Tiering, AI Supply Chain Security, and Maturity Model
Mend.io's new framework gives engineering and security teams a practical playbook for governing AI systems before the next incident forces the conversation. The post Mend.io Releases AI Security Governance Framework Covering Asset Inventory, Risk Tiering, AI Supply Chain Security, and Maturity Model ap...
23/04/2026
Host a Microsoft Build //local host Event in Your City
In this session, we'll show how GitHub Copilot SDK lets you build an agent, embed it in an app, and take it with you across devices and into the cloud.This session shows how to run agentic workloads on a fast, AI native runtime on Azure Container Apps.In this demo‑rich session, we’ll show the latest innovations in SQL Database and Cosmos DB, then build an app on Azure HorizonDB, Azure’s new cloud‑native PostgreSQL service, to show how AI apps built directly in the database simplifies design and enables reasoning over operational data.
23/04/2026
Simplifying gMSA for Windows Containers on AKS: Open-Source Tooling Now Available
We’re excited to announce that the Windows Containers AKS gMSA tooling is now publicly available on our GitHub repo (Microsoft/Windows-Containers-AKS-gMSA):
23/04/2026
OpenAI Releases GPT-5.5, a Fully Retrained Agentic Model That Scores 82.7% on Terminal-Bench 2.0 and 84.9% on GDPval
The model targets the full stack of computer work — coding, research, data analysis, and software operation — without needing a human to supervise every stepThe post OpenAI Releases GPT-5.5, a Fully Retrained Agentic Model That Scores 82.7% on Terminal-Bench 2.0 and 84.9% on GDPval appeared first on MarkTechPost.
23/04/2026
Centralizing Enterprise API Access for Agent-Based Architectures
Problem Statement When building AI agents or automation solutions, calling enterprise APIs directly often means configuring individual HTTP actions within each agent for every API. While this works for simple scenarios, it quickly becomes repetitive and difficult to manage as complexity grows. The challenge becomes more pronounced when a single business domain exposes multiple APIs, or when the same APIs are consumed by multiple agents. This leads to duplicated configurations,...
23/04/2026
Automatic SSO Takeover in Azure AD B2C Custom Policies
<DisplayName>Azure Active Directory - SSO Control</DisplayName><!-- Override to surface a clear SSO-guidance message when local signup is blocked<!-- Step 10: Write new SSO user to directory if not already written -->
23/04/2026
Designing Outbound Connectivity for "Private Subnets" in Azure
With private subnets, outbound access is disabled by default.Azure NAT Gateway is a fully managed, zone‑resilient, outbound‑only SNAT service.It attaches at the subnet level and automatically handles all outbound flows from that subnet using one or more static public IP addresses or prefixes.
23/04/2026
A Coding Tutorial on OpenMythos on Recurrent-Depth Transformers with Depth Extrapolation, Adaptive Computation, and Mixture-of-Experts Routing
In this tutorial, we explore the implementation of OpenMythos, a theoretical reconstruction of the Claude Mythos architecture that enables deeper reasoning through iterative computation rather than increased parameter size. We build and analyze models using both GQA and MLA attention mechanisms, examine memory efficiency through KV-cache comparisons, and validate stability via the spectral properties of […] The post
23/04/2026
Modernizing DNS Security for Exchange Online Mail Flow
The Domain Name System (DNS) protocol is used by clients to find mail servers over the internet. DNS is unencrypted and unauthenticated by default, making it vulnerable to spoofing, tampering, and adversary‑in‑the‑middle attacks. As threat actors increasingly target the foundational layers of email delivery, modern DNS security protocols have become essential to protecting organizations. To address these gaps, Exchange Online has invested heavily in modern, standards‑based DNS ...
23/04/2026
GPT Capability in Understanding Coordinates: How GPT-5.4 Transforms Spatial Precision
Why I Ran This Experiment This work started not as a benchmarking exercise, but as a practical problem: I needed to automatically extract panel regions from PDF-format electrical Single-Line Diagram (SLD) drawings using OpenAI models . All experiments were conducted using OpenAI models in
23/04/2026
Enabling Agentic Data Governance with Hybrid Cloud Flexibility in Azure
He is a data governance officer at Contoso (a fictional but very representative enterprise). Mark’s day job is ensuring data governance and compliance across his company’s vast hybrid cloud estate – think around ~2 million data assets sprawled across 12+ datacenters on-premises and in different public clouds.Azure Function Endpoints
23/04/2026
Partner Blog | April skilling update: Preparing for what’s next
Move your customers from AI interest to execution by tapping into skilling opportunities designed to strengthen delivery readiness and sharpen sales execution. This month's skilling focus is about going beyond AI pilots to deliver real outcomes, securely and across teams. In May and June, Microsoft is delivering high-impact, in-person learning opportunities that can scale readiness across your broader team through role-based learning journeys, equipping you to drive AI-powe...
23/04/2026
Beyond the Playbook: Real-World Lessons from a Mission Critical Enterprise Security Assessment
The Enterprise Security Assessment (ESA) is a comprehensive, tenant-wide evaluation that helps to understand and improve the security posture across Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, and hybrid environments.Unlike workload-focused assessments such as the Well-Architected Security Assessment (WASA), ESA offers a holistic, enterprise-level perspective, helping organizations align priorities across teams and platforms.When we introduced the Enterprise Security Assessment (ESA) to a large, mission-critical financial services customer, we followed the playbook: A streamlined assessment using Secure Scores, three Data Sets, minimal effort, and a quick readout.
23/04/2026
Register today for the Microsoft 365 Archive + Orchestry webinar
Join us for a live webinar on May 7, 9:00 am PDT, with Trent Green, Microsoft, and David Francoeur, Orchestry, to learn more about what file-level archiving does, how it works, and how to turn it into a scalable, automated strategy across your tenant.Optimizing storage costs with file-level archivingWe recently launched the public preview of file-level archiving, a new way to help reduce additional Microsoft 365 storage costs, without deleting content.
23/04/2026
High Expert Summit 2026 - United by Community, Cloud, and AI
The summit delivered two intense days of immersion, combining technical depth, strategic discussions, and meaningful connections. With more than 150 in-person participants, attendees were highly engaged and focused on advanced Azure and AI topics—making it one of the most impactful community Azure events in Brazil.Over two days, participants explored strategic and technical content covering Azure architecture, DevOps, Artificial Intelligence, innovation, career development, market trends, and the real challenges organizations face today.To find an MVP and learn more about the MVP Program visit the MVP Communities website and follow our updates on LinkedIn or #mvpbuzz.
23/04/2026
Tenant Configuration Management APIs are now generally available
In our previous post, we introduced Microsoft Entra Tenant Governance and how it helps organizations secure and manage multi-tenant environments at scale.Today, we’re excited to announce that the Tenant Configuration Management (TCM) APIs are now generally available, providing the foundation for managing configuration at scale with greater consistency and control.The TCM APIs are the underlying Microsoft Graph API that powers Tenant Governance’s configuration management capabilities.
23/04/2026
Microsoft 365 multi-agent workflow with Microsoft Agent Framework
The response contains insights from all four agents: destination recommendations, cost breakdown, curated activities, and a synthesized itinerary from the coordinator, in one API call.The repo includes a Dockerfile and an agent.yaml manifest, everything you need to deploy the workflow to Microsoft Foundry as a hosted agent.Once your workflow logic works as a hosted endpoint, you can expose it to end users in Teams, Copilot, or any Microsoft 365 surface.
23/04/2026
Automate Prior Authorization with AI Agents - Now Available as a Foundry Template
Prior authorization (PA) is one of the most expensive bottlenecks in U.S. healthcare.Today we’re making the Prior Authorization Multi-Agent Solution Accelerator available as a Microsoft Foundry template.Health plan payers can deploy a working, four-agent PA review pipeline to Azure using the Azure Developer CLI (“azd”) with a single command in supported environments, then customize it to their policies, workflows, and EHR environment.
23/04/2026
Integrate Marketplace commerce signals to enforce entitlements in AI apps
AI apps and agents increasingly operate with runtime autonomy, dynamic capability exposure, and on‑demand access to tools and resources.This post explains how Marketplace fulfillment and entitlement models differ by offer type—and what that means when you’re designing AI apps and agents that must respond correctly to subscription state, plan changes, and cancellations.This post is part of a series on building and publishing well-architected AI apps and agents in Microsoft Marketplace.
23/04/2026
The Unified SecOps Transition — Why It Is a Security Architecture Decision, Not Just a Portal Change
Microsoft will retire the standalone Azure Sentinel portal on March 31, 2027.It is the platform foundation for a fundamentally different SOC operating model — one built on a 2-tier data architecture, graph-based investigation, and AI agents that can hunt, enrich, and respond at machine speed.The USX transition creates a structured progression for all partner types — from professional services that build trust and surface findings, to managed security services that deliver ongoing value.
23/04/2026
From Oversharing to Enforcement: A Practical Guide to AI Data Security with Microsoft Purview
Data Security Posture Management (DSPM)DSPM consolidates insights from Data Loss Prevention (DLP), Insider Risk Management, Information Protection, and Data Security Investigations into a single view for monitoring data risks, policy coverage, and posture trends.Now also in Public Preview, DSPM extends coverage to third-party SaaS and IaaS platforms such as Google Cloud Platform, Snowflake, and Databricks, and integrates with partner solutions including Cyera, BigID, and OneTrust for comprehensive risk insights.
23/04/2026
SharePoint Automatic Version History Cleanup (Intelligent Versioning)
What is SharePoint Automatic Version History Cleanup? SharePoint Automatic Version History Cleanup is a feature in Microsoft 365 (SharePoint Online and OneDrive) that
23/04/2026
Detectando Anomalias de Custo no Azure com FinOps Hub + SRE Agent
Introdução Um dos maiores desafios em ambientes cloud é manter a visibilidade sobre os custos. Picos inesperados podem passar despercebidos por dias e quando chegam na fatura, já é tarde demais. Neste artigo, vou mostrar como configurei uma análise automática diária de anomalias de custo usando o Azure SRE Agent, conectado ao FinOps Hub (Azure Data Explorer), com notificação automática no Microsoft Teams<...
23/04/2026
Uso de contextos no Entra ID
Com a crescente necessidade de segurança adaptativa, o Microsoft Entra ID oferece recursos avançados para aplicar políticas dinâmicas de acesso.É exatamente isso que os contextos de autenticação do Microsoft Entra ID resolvem.Neste artigo vou detalhar todo o processo, desde a habilitação do Continuous Access Evaluation (CAE), passando pela configuração dos contextos e das políticas de acesso condicional no portal do Entra ID, até a integração prática com uma aplicação .NET dividida em frontend web e API de backend.
23/04/2026
Building AI Agents with Local Small Language Models
The idea of building your own AI agent used to feel like something only big tech companies could pull off.
23/04/2026
Azure Monitor Pipeline: A Modern Approach to Telemetry Ingestion at Scale
As environments grow—across regions, clouds, and on‑premises sites—traditional log forwarding architectures struggle with scale, reliability, cost, and security.Azure Monitor Pipeline, now generally available, addresses these challenges by rethinking how telemetry enters Azure Monitor.Azure Monitor Pipeline introduces a centralized telemetry ingestion layer that sits between sources and Azure Monitor.
23/04/2026
How AI Agents Are Turning Threat Intelligence Into Validated Detections
Traditional benchmarks test whether models can recall MITRE ATT&CK techniques or classify threat actor tactics, but they miss the harder question—can an agent translate raw threat intelligence into production-ready detection rules that find real attacks?microsoftMicrosoft Research has addressed this gap with CTI-REALM (Cyber Threat Intelligence Real World Evaluation and LLM Benchmarking), an open-source benchmark that evaluates AI agents on end-to-end detection engineering workflows.Released in March 2026, CTI-REALM measures whether agents can read threat intelligence reports, explore telemetry schemas, iteratively refine KQL queries, and produce validated Sigma rules and KQL detection logic—exactly the workflow security analysts follow when building detections for platforms like Microsoft Sentinel.microsoft
23/04/2026
New MRCA Diagnostic: Teams Meeting Add-in For Classic Outlook
Teams Support team has added a new diagnostic to the Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzer — the Teams Meeting Add-in For Classic Outlook diagnostic.The Teams Meeting button is missing from the Outlook ribbonMicrosoft Teams Support
23/04/2026
New MRCA Diagnostic: Guest Invite to Teams
We're excited to share a new test now available in the Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzer — the Guest Invite to Team diagnostic.This new diagnostic is designed to help admins quickly identify exactly where the configuration has gone wrong.Manage guest access in Microsoft 365 Groups
23/04/2026
How to recover Azure SQL Managed Instance access when the admin SQL login is disabled
We have received support cases where customers lose administrative access to Azure SQL Managed Instance because the SQL login(s) are disabled, or because the login is no longer a member of the sysadmin fixed server role.In this article, we explore one possible way to recover access in this scenario by using a Microsoft Entra administrator.One possible recovery method is to configure, or reconfigure, a Microsoft Entra administrator for the managed instance and use that path to regain administrative access.
23/04/2026
Google Cloud AI Research Introduces ReasoningBank: A Memory Framework that Distills Reasoning Strategies from Agent Successes and Failures
A new memory framework from Google Cloud AI Research and UIUC gives LLM agents the ability to distill generalizable reasoning strategies from both successful and failed experiences — and combines that with test-time scaling to create agents that genuinely improve over time.The post Google Cloud AI Research Introduces ReasoningBank: A Memory Framework that Distills Reasoning Strategies from Agent Successes and Failures appeared first on MarkTechPost.
23/04/2026
AI Agent Race Finland 2026 – finalistit on julkistettu!
Vuoden 2026 AI Agent Race Finland - finalistit ovat: Helsingin kaupunki rakensi “Ohjeapuri”-AI‑agentin, joka muuttaa viralliset ohjeet nopeasti luonnollisella kielellä saataviksi vastauksiksi 40 000 työntekijälle.Kilpailun voittaja julkistetaan 28.4.2026 Microsoft AI Tour - tapahtuman "Yhdessä kohti älykkäämpiä ratkaisuja" -lavalla.
23/04/2026
Stop Experimenting, Start Building: AI Apps & Agents Dev Days Has You Covered
What Is AI Apps & Agents Dev Days?AI Apps & Agents Dev Days is a monthly technical series from Microsoft Reactor, delivered in partnership with Microsoft and NVIDIA.You’ll learn how to use services like Azure Container Apps to host resilient AI workloads, how Foundry IQ fits into agent architectures as a trusted knowledge source, and how to make architectural decisions that balance performance, cost, and scalability.
23/04/2026
Entra ID Login via Azure Bastion Fails After VM Recreation
An Entra ID user attempts to sign in to a Windows VM through Azure BastionThis blog walks through a real-world troubleshooting journey that exposes a non-obvious Entra ID device registration issue, explains the root cause, and provides a clean resolution.When a Windows VM is joined to Microsoft Entra ID, a device object is created in Entra ID, keyed to the VM’s Windows hostname.
23/04/2026
Xiaomi Releases MiMo-V2.5-Pro and MiMo-V2.5: Matching Frontier Model Benchmarks at Significantly Lower Token Cost
Xiaomi's MiMo team just dropped two new models that push open-source agentic AI closer to frontier territory than ever before. The post Xiaomi Releases MiMo-V2.5-Pro and MiMo-V2.5: Matching Frontier Model Benchmarks at Significantly Lower Token Cost appeared first on MarkTechPost.
23/04/2026
How to Design a Production-Grade CAMEL Multi-Agent System with Planning, Tool Use, Self-Consistency, and Critique-Driven Refinement
In this tutorial, we implement an advanced agentic AI system using the CAMEL framework, orchestrating multiple specialized agents to collaboratively solve a complex task. We design a structured multi-agent pipeline consisting of a planner, researcher, writer, critic, and rewriter, each with clearly defined responsibilities and schema-constrained outputs. We integrate tool usage, self-consistency sampling, structured validation […] The post
22/04/2026
Microsoft Marketplace 101: Insights from high performing software development company sellers
Microsoft Marketplace is probably the one topic that can give 'AI' a run for its money in terms of the number of mentions on LinkedIn, on cloud hyperscaler blogs, and in Partner Ecosystem presentations. But ask the average SaaS seller what a marketplace is, and you’ll probably get a different answer every time. That’s because marketplaces have become more than jus...
22/04/2026
Alibaba Qwen Team Releases Qwen3.6-27B: A Dense Open-Weight Model Outperforming 397B MoE on Agentic Coding Benchmarks
Alibaba’s Qwen Team has released Qwen3.6-27B, the first dense open-weight model in the Qwen3.6 family — and arguably the most capable 27-billion-parameter model available today for coding agents. It brings substantial improvements in agentic coding, a novel Thinking Preservation mechanism, and a hybrid architecture that blends Gated DeltaNet linear attention with traditional self-attention — all […] The post
22/04/2026
A Detailed Implementation on Equinox with JAX Native Modules, Filtered Transforms, Stateful Layers, and End-to-End Training Workflows
In this tutorial, we explore Equinox, a lightweight and elegant neural network library built on JAX, and show how to use it. We begin by understanding how eqx.Module treats models as PyTrees, which makes parameter handling, transformation, and serialization feel simple and explicit. As we move forward, we work through static fields, filtered transformations such […] The post
22/04/2026
Private subnets by default in Azure Virtual Networks: What changed and how to use NAT Gateway
Azure is evolving to better support secure‑by‑default cloud architectures. Starting with API version 2025‑...
22/04/2026
The flat-subscription problem
A real design review: management groups, policies, break-glass accounts, and the five things I'd tweak before going to production. Here's what I see at most startups when they first show up on Azure: one subscription, one Global Admin, everything in the same resource group, and everyone's an Owner. That works when you have three engineers and one environment. It stops working around the time you have a production workload, a dev environment, shared infrastructure, and a...
22/04/2026
AI-Powered Downtime Investigation for Azure VMs: Automating Root Cause Analysis
Co-authors: Jie Su, Abhinav Dua, Mukthar Ahmed, Dhruv Joshi In a previous post, we shared how Azure Automated VM Recovery works to minimize virtual machine downtime through a three-stage approach: Detection, Diagnosis, and Mitigation. This post goes one layer deeper int...
22/04/2026
Azure SQL (LTR): You Don’t Need to Copy LTR Backups Across Regions to Restore Them
Summary Customers sometimes attempt to copy Azure SQL Long-Term Retention (LTR) backups across regions using Copy-AzSqlDatabaseLongTermRetentionBackup, only to hit the error: LongTermRetentionMigrationRequestNotSupportedLTR backup migration copy feature is not supported on subscription This blog clarifies why this happens, when LTR backu...
22/04/2026
As vulnerability discovery moves at AI speed, keeping current is foundational to reduce exposure
Note: There’s a known issue with the Microsoft 365 Apps card on the dashboard that we’re actively working to address. Recent advances in automation and AI are accelerating vulnerability discovery and shortening the window between disclosure and exploitation. As Microsoft outlined in our recent Security blog, this shift raises the bar for how quickly organizations ne...
22/04/2026
News to Know – Volume 3, Edition 4, April 2026
This month’s newsletter brings you the latest updates, insights, and learnings to help you turn employee listening into action with Viva Glint & Pulse. As organizations continue to navigate AI-driven change, we’re focused on helping you measure what matters, understand impact, and sustain momentum across your employee experience strategy—with practical updates to support you every step of the way. New on your Viva Glint platfo...
22/04/2026
From Demo to Production: Building Microsoft Foundry Hosted Agents with .NET
The Gap Between a Demo and a Production Agent Let's be honest. Getting an AI agent to work in a demo takes an afternoon. Getting it to work reliably in production, tested, containerised, deployed, observable, and maintainable by a team. is a different problem entirely. Most tutorials stop at the point where the agent prints a response in a terminal. They don't show you how to structure your code, cover your tools with tests, wire up CI, or deploy to a managed run...
22/04/2026
Azure Data Sync: Fixing “Cannot find the user ‘DataSync_executor’” When Creating a New Sync Group
Summary When creating a new Azure SQL Data Sync group, customers may encounter the following error during setup—even when no active sync groups exist: “Failed to perform data sync operation: Cannot find the user 'DataSync_executor', because it does not exist or you do not have permission.” This failure typically occurs during certificate and symmetric key creation as Azure attempts to grant permissions to...
22/04/2026
The Microsoft Azure Infra Summit 2026 Schedule Is Live.
Hello Folks, I promised the full agenda would drop soon. Today’s the day. The schedule is locked in, the approved sessions are on the board, and I want to walk you through what three days of deep-technical, engineering-led Azure content looks like. A quick refresher before we get into the content: this event is free, it’s virtual, and it’s built by engineering for engineering. Most sessions are at the L300–L400 ...
22/04/2026
Next Leap to Harness Engineering: JiuwenClaw Pioneers ‘Coordination Engineering’
How to make multiple agents work together like an elite team — autonomously dividing tasks, communicating efficiently, and collaborating seamlessly? The openJiuwen community released the latest version of JiuwenClaw, which adds support for AgentTeam — a multi-agent collaborative capability. It proposes that the next leap beyond Harness Engineering is Coordination Engineering. In in-depth tests, this team […] The post
22/04/2026
Azure VNet Data Gateway for Secure Power BI & Power Platform Access in Enterprises
What Is a VNet data gateway? The VNet data gateway is a Microsoft‑managed gateway service that runs inside a delegated subnet of an Azure Virtual Network. It allows supported Microsoft cloud services—such as Power BI, Power Platform dataflows, and Microsoft Fabric workloads—to securely connect to data source...
22/04/2026
Microsoft 365 Copilot readiness and resiliency with SharePoint and M365 Backup/Archive
As AI becomes embedded in everyday work, governance shifts from being a back‑office function to a strategic enabler. Organizations that succeed with Copilot and agents aren’t just moving fast (70% of early Copilot users said they were more productive) – they are prepared, resilient, and deliberate in balancing AI-dr...
22/04/2026
Three tiers of Agentic AI - and when to use none of them
Every enterprise has an AI agent. Almost none of them work in production. Walk into any enterprise technology review right now and you will find the same thing. Pilots running. Demos recorded. Steering committees impressed. And somewhere in the background, a quiet acknowledgment that the thing does not actually work at scale yet. OutSystems surveyed nearly 1,900 global IT leaders and found that 96% of organizations are already running AI agents in some capacity. Yet only one i...
22/04/2026
Declutter and Defend: Reducing promotional mail noise with Microsoft Defender
Enterprise inboxes are overwhelmed with graymail — legitimate, bulk email like newsletters, vendor promotions, and product updates that isn't malicious but buries the messages that matter. When high volumes of these mails land in the inbox, it crowds out priority communications and can dull security vigilance. Employees conditioned to ignore repetitive emails may miss signs of a real threat. It also creates recurring work for admins and security teams who must continuously tu...
22/04/2026
Now generally available: License usage insights in Microsoft Entra
Organizations rely on Microsoft Entra to secure access in an ever‑changing identity threat landscape without sacrificing workforce productivity. As organizations adopt advanced identity and access capabilities, IT admins often ask for greater transparency into how those capabilities are being used, particularly around licensing. Today, I’m excited to announce the general availability of Microsoft Entra license usage insights: a redesigned experience in...
22/04/2026
Introducing Kimi K2.6 in Microsoft Foundry
We’re excited to welcome Moonshot AI’s Kimi K2.6 to Microsoft Foundry expanding the platform’s growing catalog of open and frontier models designed for real-world, production-grade AI systems. Kimi K2.6 represents a new class of
22/04/2026
Your Azure VM went down and nobody knew why. Here's how to fix that.
If you've ever had a production VM go unhealthy on Azure and found yourself scrambling to figure out what happened, you're not alone. I work with startups running production workloads on Azure, and this is one of the most common patterns I see: something goes wrong, the team opens a support ticket, and then everyone waits for a root cause while the CTO asks "how do we make sure we know about this before our customers do next time?" The good news: Azure already gives you the tools to an...
22/04/2026
Bringing transparency to AI-generated content with watermarks in Microsoft 365
As AI becomes part of everyday work, it’s more important than ever to clearly indicate when content has been generated or altered using AI. To help support transparency and responsible use, Microsoft 365 now includes watermarking options for AI‑generated content, giving organizations and individuals clearer signals about AI involvement while maintaining flexibility and control. Whether you’re an IT admin, an information worker, or a consumer using Microsoft 365 at home, here’s what you...
22/04/2026
Reimagining Cancer R&D with Agentic AI Using GigaTIME in Microsoft Discovery
@Alberto Santamaria-Pang, Principal AI Data Scientist, Industry Solutions Engineering HealthcareAdjunct Faculty at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine@Alexander Mehmet Ersoy, Dir. Industry Advisory, Healthcare & Life Sciences 1. Introduction: From Images to i...
22/04/2026
Empowering.Cloud Community Update – April 2026
The latest Microsoft Teams and Microsoft365 expert community briefings, podcasts and upcoming community events. Expert Briefings: Enterprise Voice Infrastructure Options On-Prem. Private Cloud and Cloud-Native with Ribbon and AWS https://empowering.cloud/enterprise-voice-infrastru...
22/04/2026
Introducing the Microsoft Sentinel Training Lab. Hands-On Security Operations in Minutes
A huge thanks to Paul Kew - this lab wouldn't have been possible without his contributions. Security operations is one of those things that’s hard to learn from slides alone. You need to feel what it’s like to triage a multi-stage incident, tune a noisy detection rule, or trace an attacker pivoting from an endpoint to the cloud. That’s exactly why we built the Microsoft Sentinel Training Lab. What Is It? The
22/04/2026
Connection Scaling in Elastic Clusters
As your applications grow, you need to manage database connections carefully to keep performance predictable and reliable. Azure Database for PostgreSQL Elastic Clusters, powered by Citus, support horizontal scaling by distributing data and queries across multiple nodes. This raises a key question: how do connections behave as you add more clients, grow the cluster, or upgrade node specifications? ...
22/04/2026
When cloud apps become a weak link: How FortiAppSec Cloud in Microsoft Marketplace bridges the gap
In this guest blog post, Srija Reddy Allam, Cloud Security/DevOps Architect, Fortinet, discusses the increase of attacks targeted at web applications and APIs and how FortiAppSec Cloud in Microsoft Marketplace provides a layer of adaptive security to address the challenge. Picture this: A global e-commerce company is gearing up for its biggest holiday sale of the year. Their storefront and application programming interfaces (APIs) are hosted on Microsoft Azure, t...
22/04/2026
Extracting BOMs from Electrical Drawings with AI: Azure OpenAI GPT-5.4 + Azure Document Intelligence
The Problem Electrical engineering drawings — especially single-line diagrams (SLDs) — are notoriously hard to parse programmatically. They combine dense symbols, small text, and complex geometric structures, all varying in style across documents and vendors. Figure 1. A typical electrical single-line diagram. A single page contains multiple panel regions (HV, TR, LV, GCP), each with dozens of ...
22/04/2026
Train, Serve, and Deploy a Scikit-learn Model with FastAPI
FastAPI has become one of the most popular ways to serve machine learning models because it is lightweight, fast, and easy to use.
22/04/2026
Building an Auditable Security Layer for Agentic AI
Most agent failures do not look like breaches. They look like a normal chat, a normal answer, and a normal tool call. Until the next morning, when a single question collapses the whole story: who authorized that action. You think you deployed an agent. In reality, you deployed an unbounded automation pipeline that happens to speak English. I’m
22/04/2026
Photon Releases Spectrum: An Open-Source TypeScript Framework that Deploys AI Agents Directly to iMessage, WhatsApp, and Telegram
For all the progress made in AI agent development over the past few years, one fundamental problem has remained largely unsolved: most people never actually interact with agents. They live behind developer dashboards, inside specialized apps that users are asked to download, and within chat interfaces that the majority of the world’s population will never […] The post
22/04/2026
NFS Permission Denied in Azure App Service on Linux: What It Means and What to Do
If your Azure App Service on Linux uses an Azure Files NFS share, you may sometimes see errors like Permission denied or Errno 13 when your app tries to write to the mounted path. Azure Files supports NFS for Linux and Unix workloads, and NFS uses Unix-style numeric ownership and permissions (UID/GID), which can behave differently from SMB-based file sharing.
22/04/2026
If You're Building AI on Azure, ECS 2026 is Where You Need to Be
Let me be direct: there's a lot of noise in the conference calendar. Generic cloud events. Vendor showcases dressed up as technical content. Sessions that look great on paper but leave you with nothing you can actually ship on Monday. ECS 2026 isn't that. As someone who will be on stage at Cologne this May, I can tell you the
22/04/2026
General Availability Refresh: Mirroring Azure Database for PostgreSQL in Microsoft Fabric
Introduction We are excited to announce the General Availability Refresh of Mirroring Azure Database for PostgreSQL in Microsoft Fabric. This update introduces several new capabilities designed to reduce friction, improve transparency, and increase trust in PostgreSQL data for analytics and AI workloads. Database professionals, DBAs, and developers can now leverage a more robust, flexible, and transparent solution for integrating PostgreSQL data in Microsoft Fabric. Mirroring ...
22/04/2026
Getting Started with the SUSE Multi-Linux Manager MCP Server and GitHub Copilot
Enterprise Linux environments are heterogeneous. That's not a problem statement - it's just the truth. SUSE, Ubuntu, RHEL, and their downstream variants coexist in every data center I've seen, and increasingly across Azure subscriptions too. AI assistants like GitHub Copilot can already connect to these machines, run commands, troubleshoot issues, apply patches one box at a time. But if you're managing a fleet of hundreds or thousands of systems across distributi...
22/04/2026
Data Migration - From SQL MI to SQL DB migration
Overview In this post, I’ll show you how to perform a data migration from Azure SQL Managed Instance (SQL MI) to Azure SQL Database (SQL DB) using a combination of schema + security migration steps and Azure Data Factory (ADF) for moving the data. In an earlier post (
22/04/2026
OpenAI Open-Sources Euphony: A Browser-Based Visualization Tool for Harmony Chat Data and Codex Session Logs
Debugging an AI agent that runs for dozens of steps: reading files, calling APIs, writing code, and revising its own output, is not like debugging a regular function.There is no single stack trace to read.The post OpenAI Open-Sources Euphony: A Browser-Based Visualization Tool for Harmony Chat Data and Codex Session Logs appeared first on MarkTechPost.
22/04/2026
The Network That Outlived Him: How MVP Min-gyu Ju's Community Keeps His Legacy Alive
By guest blogger YoungWook Kim In the Microsoft MVP community, technology is more than just a tool; it is a bridge that connects people. The late Min-gyu Ju—founder of Recursive Soft and a preeminent expert in the IoT field—was a master at building these bridges with both strength and warmth. He looked beyond cold hardware and li...
22/04/2026
Hugging Face Releases ml-intern: An Open-Source AI Agent that Automates the LLM Post-Training Workflow
Hugging Face has released ml-intern, an open-source AI agent designed to automate end-to-end post-training workflows for large language models (LLMs). Built on the company’s smolagents framework, the tool can autonomously perform literature review, dataset discovery, training script execution, and iterative evaluation — tasks that typically require significant manual effort from ML researchers and engineers. What […] The post
22/04/2026
A Coding Implementation to Build a Conditional Bayesian Hyperparameter Optimization Pipeline with Hyperopt, TPE, and Early Stopping
In this tutorial, we implement an advanced Bayesian hyperparameter optimization workflow using Hyperopt and the Tree-structured Parzen Estimator (TPE) algorithm. We construct a conditional search space that dynamically switches between different model families, demonstrating how Hyperopt handles hierarchical and structured parameter graphs. We build a production-grade objective function using cross-validation inside a scikit-learn pipeline, enabling […] The post
22/04/2026
A Practical Look at Device Analytics and Risk Signals with Microsoft Intune
As organizations increasingly rely on laptops, mobile devices, and cloud‑connected applications, visibility into device health, configuration, and security posture is critical. Performance degradation, outdated configurations, and elevated device risk can negatively affect productivity and increase exposure to security threats. Microsoft provides an integrated set of services—Microsoft Intune and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint—that support modern devi...
21/04/2026
Ingest at Scale, Securely — Azure Monitor pipeline Is Now Generally Available
Today, we're thrilled to announce the general availability of Azure Monitor pipeline — a telemetry pipeline built for secure, high-scale ingestion across any environment. But the best way to understand what makes it powerful isn't to start with features. It's to start with the problems that kept showing up, over and over, in our conversations with customers. So, let's dig in... Chances are, this sounds a lot like your environment...
21/04/2026
Introducing OpenAI's GPT-image-2 in Microsoft Foundry
Take a small design team running a global social campaign. They have the creative vision to produce localized imagery for every market, but not the resources to reshoot, reformat, or outsource that scale. Every asset needs to fit a different platform, a different dimension, a different cultural context, and they all need to ship at the same time. This is where flexible image generation comes in handy. OpenAI's GPT-image-2 is now generally available and rolling out toda...
21/04/2026
Turn upcoming Microsoft 365 pricing and packaging updates into renewal wins
Microsoft 365 pricing and packaging updates take effect July 1, 2026, with expanded security and management capabilities coming this year. Now is the perfect time to accelerate renewals, upsell to Microsoft 365 E3 or E5, and lock in pricing for Copilot Business bundles.
21/04/2026
Discover new ways to innovate—read the State of the Partner Ecosystem blog
The AI industry has rapidly moved from experimentation to production, and Microsoft partners play a critical role in helping organizations deploy AI responsibly and at scale. Today’s customers expect secure, governed, outcome-driven solutions from their providers. To support the partner ecosystem, Microsoft invests in offerings like incentives, skilling, and go-to-market resources,
21/04/2026
Focus on the Teams Phone calls that matter most with Copilot call delegation
Incoming calls don’t wait for a break in your day. Whether you’re leading a meeting or juggling back-to-back commitments, every new call creates the same dilemma: answer and risk losing momentum, or ignore it and risk missing something important. We're excited to announce that Microsoft 365 Copilot can now help answer your incoming Teams calls and schedule follow-up appointments on your behalf. This experience helps users focus on engaging with the calls that matter most and is availab...
21/04/2026
Introducing the New Microsoft Security Community Home!
We are excited to introduce the new home of the Microsoft Security Community! At aka.ms/securitycommunity, you can explore upcoming events, access technical content, and find new ways to connect with Microsoft experts and peers across the security ecosystem. The Microsoft Security Community Home is designed to help you: Discover live and on-deman...
21/04/2026
High Availability Testing
What is High Availability Testing? High Availability Testing ensures that your application remains accessible and functional even when components fail. It validates: Redundancy mechanisms (e.g., Availability Zones, Load Balancers) Failover processes (automatic/manual) Recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO) System behavior under partial outages In Azure, HA testing often involves se...
21/04/2026
Safeguarding Sensitive Data in Microsoft 365 Copilot Interactions: DLP for Microsoft 365 Copilot
Microsoft 365 Copilot is redefining how organizations work, bringing the power of generative AI directly into our secure productivity tools. As Copilot adoption accelerates, we’ve heard that you want more control over how your sensitive data can be used in interactions with Copilot. At Ignite 2025, Microsoft announced a major enhancement: Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention for Microsoft 365 Copilot to safeguard Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Chat prompts, now entering ...
21/04/2026
Partner Case Study | DEFEND
Modern cloud adoption can empower organizations to deliver services efficiently, safeguard sensitive information, and withstand an increasingly complex threat landscape. Yet for public‑sector agencies, where budgets are tightly controlled and compliance obligations are high, embracing the cloud can be challenging. Maintaining security, transparency, and cost efficiency is a delicate balance: the need to move forward with modernization while proving every investment is justified and resilient....
21/04/2026
Google Introduces Simula: A Reasoning-First Framework for Generating Controllable, Scalable Synthetic Datasets Across Specialized AI Domains
Training powerful AI models depends on one resource that is quietly running out: specialized data. While the internet provided a seemingly infinite supply of text and images to train today’s generalist models, the next wave of AI breakthroughs — in cybersecurity, legal reasoning, healthcare, and other niche domains — requires data that simply doesn’t exist […] The post
21/04/2026
Announcing public preview of redundant TCP support for RDP Multipath for Azure Virtual Desktop
Reliable connectivity is essential for ensuring consistent productivity in Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) environments. Network variability—whether due to packet loss, NAT misconfiguration, UDP‑restricted networks, or restrictive enterprise network policies—continues to be one of the most common causes of session interruptions across enterprise virtual desktop deployments. To improve connection resiliency across a broader set of network conditions, we’re excited to introduce redun...
21/04/2026
New Microsoft Certified: AI Agent Builder Associate Certification
Building agents for real-world workflows takes more than prompts. Show you are ready to design and manage secure, enterprise‑ready agents in Microsoft Copilot Studio with Exam AB-620 (beta). As organizations shift from early AI experiments to deploying agents in real business workflows, the need for builders who can create dependable, production‑ready agents is growing quickly. Teams are looking for professionals who know how to move beyond demos and build agents that are re...
21/04/2026
Strengthening Identity Resilience: A Deep Dive into Microsoft Entra Backup and Recovery
In the modern security landscape, we often say that "Identity is the new perimeter." We spend significant resources on Conditional Access, Phishing-Resistant MFA, and Identity Protection to keep the "bad guys" out. But what happens when the threat is already inside, or when a legitimate administrative action goes sideways? If our identity data the "brain" of our Microsoft 365 and Azure ecosystem is corrupted or maliciously altered, usr entire security posture collapses. Today, we’re ex...
21/04/2026
Innovations in OneDrive for collaboration, intelligence, and control
Agentic AI for files in SharePoint document librariesReview PDFs with Copilot in OneDrive and SharePoint for the webWe introduced a refreshed OneDrive sync experience on macOS, with a redesigned activity center and updated system dialogs that feel native on Mac. Built with technologies like SwiftUI, it aligns with modern macOS Liquid Glass design language and provides a cleaner, more responsive way to check sync status, recent activity, and issues that need attention.
21/04/2026
Introducing Markdown support in SharePoint and OneDrive
As AI moves from answering questions to carrying out real work, teams need a reliable way to store, manage, and refine the instructions and context that guide how AI operates. Markdown files are increasingly becoming that foundation, acting as durable AI artifacts that capture rules, preferences, and repeatable processes. Today, we’re introducing native Markdown support in SharePoint and OneDrive, now rolling out to general availability across both consumer and commercial audiences. As...
21/04/2026
AI Skills Are Now in Public Preview: Teaching AI in SharePoint What to Know and How to Act
In March, we shared our vision for AI in SharePoint: We’re transforming how teams build solutions, publish content, and organize information using AI. With AI in SharePoint, you start with intent, describe it in natural language, and move directly to working solutions that reflect how your business actually operates. It is a multi...
21/04/2026
Design tenant linking to scale selling on Microsoft Marketplace
Designing tenant linking and Open Authorization (OAuth) directly shapes how customers onboard, grant trust, and operate your AI app or agent through Microsoft Marketplace.This post explains how to design scalable, review‑ready identity patterns that support secure activation, clear authorization boundaries, and enterprise trust from day one.In Microsoft Marketplace, tenant linking and OAuth consent are not background implementation details.
21/04/2026
How Microsoft Planner helped build the Maia 200 AI Accelerator
Maia 200 is Microsoft’s second-generation first-party AI accelerator built to support large-scale AI inference workloads in Azure. As Maia 200 moved from pre‑silicon design toward deployment, work across multiple engineering organizations was managed within a single program responsible for bringing the accelerator into Azure. At its peak, that effort tracked over 700 active tasks spanning silicon, software, and datacenters...
21/04/2026
Customer review: TestMu AI HyperExecute is a game changer
TestMu AI HyperExecute, a solution published to Microsoft Marketplace, is an end-to-end smart test orchestration tool built on Microsoft Azure Functions and Azure App Services and integrated with Microsoft Teams, Azure Pipelines, GitH...
21/04/2026
Claim your IQ Series: Foundry IQ badge
The IQ Series kicked off with three Foundry IQ episodes, each paired with a hands-on cookbook. If you've worked through all three or you're planning to, there's now a digital badge waiting for you to claim! What the badge represents The IQ Series: Foundry IQ badge recognizes developers who've completed the full Foundry IQ curriculum end-to-end: not just watched the episodes, but deployed the Azure resources, run every notebook, and built working knowledge base...
21/04/2026
AI Agent Memory Explained in 3 Levels of Difficulty
A stateless AI agent has no memory of previous calls.
21/04/2026
Fix failover group creation errors with TDE CMK on Azure SQL Managed Instance
Overview We have received several support cases where customers encounter the error shown below when attempting to create a failover group for Azure SQL Managed Instance. In this article, we explore one of the possible causes of this error. Creating instance failover group failed. An unexpected error occured while processing the request. Tracking ID: 'XYZ' <...
21/04/2026
VS Code Agents Insiders: The AI-First Editor Built for Developers and Students
There is a new application on the block, and it is not just VS Code with a plugin. https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_115#_visual-studio-code-agents-previewis a dedicated, standalone editor application purpose-built for working with AI agents. Where regular VS Code treats the editor as the primary surface and adds AI on top, VS Code Agents flips that rel...
21/04/2026
Leveraging Azure Resource Graph Queries for Azure Redis Configuration
Azure Resource Graph Explorer offers a faster and more scalable alternative by enabling customers to query Redis configurations directly using Kusto Query Language (KQL).All queries in this document use the Resources table, filter on Redis resource types, and retrieve configuration properties from the Redis resource schema.Explanation:This query reviews authentication and access security settings for Azure Cache for Redis (OSS tiers).
21/04/2026
A Coding Implementation on Qwen 3.6-35B-A3B Covering Multimodal Inference, Thinking Control, Tool Calling, MoE Routing, RAG, and Session Persistence
In this tutorial, we build an end-to-end implementation around Qwen 3.6-35B-A3B and explore how a modern multimodal MoE model can be used in practical workflows. We begin by setting up the environment, loading the model adaptively based on available GPU memory, and creating a reusable chat framework that supports both standard responses and explicit thinking […] The post
21/04/2026
Leveraging Azure Resource Graph Queries for Azure Storage Configuration
Scenario Many times, we receive requests for a quick and reliable way to check which Azure Storage features are enabled across subscriptions—such as SFTP, Hierarchical Namespace (HNS), or default access tiers. For such scenarios, customers can use PowerShell, Azure CLI, or REST APIs; however, these approaches can be time‑consuming due to module setup, frequent updates, and script maintenance. Azure Resource Graph Explorer provides a faster and simpler alternative by allowing customer...
21/04/2026
How to Troubleshoot Azure Functions Host Startup Issue
Overview Azure Functions is a powerful serverless compute service that enables you to run event-driven code without managing infrastructure. When you deploy a Function App, the Azure Functions host is the runtime process responsible for discovering your functions, loading extensions and bindings, connecting to storage, and starting trigger listeners. A host startup issue oc...
21/04/2026
How to take copy only backups with SQL Managed Instance.
In Azure SQL Managed Instance, copy-only backups cannot be created for databases encrypted with service-managed Transparent Data Encryption (The default choice for all newly provisioned SQL MI).In this article, I will explain how to prepare your Azure SQL Managed Instance (SQL MI) to take copy-only backups to Azure Blob Storage by using Managed Identity together with customer-managed encryption keys.Finally, create a SQL credential that maps the Azure Blob Storage container to SQL MI’s managed identity.
21/04/2026
From Playwright Automation to Agent Driven Testing (GHCP in Action)
What Is Agent-Driven Testing? Agent-driven testing represents a revolutionary shift from traditional, hardcoded test automation to intelligent, adaptive testing powered by AI agents. Unlike conventional Playwright tests that rely on static selectors and predefined workflows, agent-driven testing leverages GitHub Copilot (GHCP) agents with Model Context Protocol (MCP) to dynamically analyze web pages, discove...
21/04/2026
Moonshot AI Releases Kimi K2.6 with Long-Horizon Coding, Agent Swarm Scaling to 300 Sub-Agents and 4,000 Coordinated Steps
Moonshot AI, the Chinese AI lab behind the Kimi assistant, today open-sourced Kimi K2.6 — a native multimodal agentic model that pushes the boundaries of what an AI system can do when left to run autonomously on hard software engineering problems. The release targets practical deployment scenarios: long-running coding agents, front-end generation from natural language, […] The post
21/04/2026
Service Bus SBMP Retirement: What BizTalk Server 2020 Customers Need to Know
On September 30, 2026, the Azure Service Bus team will retire support for the Service Bus Messaging Protocol (SBMP).To help customers maintain continuity while planning their transition to Azure Logic Apps, we’ve released a BizTalk Server 2020 hotfix that adds support for Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP) in the adapter.The hotfix will be available for BizTalk Server 2020 CU6 and CU7.
21/04/2026
A Coding Implementation on Microsoft’s Phi-4-Mini for Quantized Inference Reasoning Tool Use RAG and LoRA Fine-Tuning
In this tutorial, we build a pipeline on Phi-4-mini to explore how a compact yet highly capable language model can handle a full range of modern LLM workflows within a single notebook. We begin by setting up a stable environment, loading Microsoft’s Phi-4-mini-instruct in efficient 4-bit quantization, and then move step by step through streaming […] The post
21/04/2026
Planner Agent brings work management directly into Microsoft 365 Copilot
Work rarely lives in one place. Your priorities may be spread across personal tasks, shared plans, email follow-ups, meeting notes, and chats. Planner Agent can help bring that work together in Microsoft 365 Copilot, so you can see what needs attention, take action, and keep projects moving without constantly switching between apps. Planner Agent is currently available in Microsoft 365 Copilot through Frontier and can be added from the All agents menu once enabled by you...
20/04/2026
Announcing Windows Admin Center: Virtualization Mode Public Preview 2!
Download Windows Admin Center: Virtualization Mode Public Preview 2 here. Provide feedback on Public Preview 2 on our GitHub page. At Microsoft Ignite 2025
20/04/2026
Troubleshoot with OpenTelemetry in Azure Monitor - Public Preview
OpenTelemetry is fast becoming the industry standard for modern telemetry collection and ingestion pipelines. With Azure Monitor’s new OpenTelemetry Protocol (OTLP) support, you can ship logs, metrics, and traces from wherever you run workloads to analyze and act on your observability data in one place. What’s in the preview Direct OTLP ingestion into Azure Monitor for logs, metrics, and traces. Automated onboarding for AKS work...
20/04/2026
Secure, Keyless Application Access with Managed Identities - Now GA in Azure Files SMB
As enterprises modernize applications and strengthen their security posture, identity is central to how applications access shared storage. Traditional identity models relying on account keys, stored credentials, or domain‑joined infrastructure add operational overhead and introduce security risks such as credential leakage, lack of identity attribution, and excessive privilege if shared keys are compromised. Today, we are excited to announce the General Availability (GA) of Managed I...
20/04/2026
Detecting Plain‑Text Password Exposure Using Custom Regex in Microsoft Purview
Microsoft Purview helps organizations identify and protect sensitive information using Sensitive Information Types (SITs).This post walks through how to extend password detection using a custom regex pattern — allowing you to identify strong passwords stored in plain text and respond before exposure turns into an incident.By combining length validation, complexity enforcement, and contextual keyword proximity, Microsoft Purview enables precise and scalable password detection, helping organizations identify and protect sensitive credentials before they are misused.
20/04/2026
Effective, engaging events in communities and storylines
Whether you’re running a company-wide broadcast, a training session, a Reddit-style “ask me anything” (AMA) or an in-person gathering, Viva Engage and Microsoft Teams help you host and manage more effective and engaging events. Events have always been central to employee communications. Viva Engage and events play a critical role in building trust, encouraging authenticity, and listening at scale. From highly produced hybrid all-hands to asynchron...
20/04/2026
Change Optics Report released into Public Preview to showcase messages impacted by future changes
Change Management is an important part of managing the improvements we make to our service that may sometimes disrupt our customers. The key is empowering customers to identify if they have messages that will be affected when we announce changes to the service. To that end, we’d like to announce the Public Preview for the Change Optics Report. It will be the central location for finding messages that could be affected by future changes to the service. As we improve or identify issues i...
20/04/2026
What’s new in AI Skills Navigator: April 2026
Learn about recent improvements to playlists, skilling sessions, partner discovery, and credentials, based on what learners and team leaders told us they need to build skills with confidence. Priya Vaidyanathan is a Director of Product Management at Microsoft, where she leads the product management teams that are building AI Skills Navigator.
20/04/2026
Breaking the Shackles of Legacy Portals: Power Pages as Enterprise SaaS
It's time to stop building "Portals" and start deploying Enterprise SaaS. For years, enterprise teams building web portals have been shackled by rigid Dynamics 365 schemas and heavy, template-driven UIs. Traditional Power Apps Portals required developers to follow the portal's...
20/04/2026
Veeam and Celebal Technologies offer transactable partner solutions in Azure Marketplace
Microsoft partners like Veeam and Celebal Technologies deliver transact-capable offers, which allow you to purchase directly from Azure Marketplace. Learn about these offers below: Veea...
20/04/2026
Troubleshooting Microsoft Foundry Accessing On‑Premises APIs Over Private Networking
Audience: Azure solution architects, network engineers, and AI practitioners deploying Microsoft Foundry in enterprise, network‑isolated environments. Scenario: Foundry Agent Service must call an on‑premises (or privately hosted) API over VPN or ExpressRoute using on‑premises corporate DNS...
20/04/2026
Getting Started with Zero-Shot Text Classification
Zero-shot text classification is a way to label text without first training a classifier on your own task-specific dataset.
20/04/2026
Simplify On-prem File share Migration to Azure: Discover & assess suitability using Azure Migrate
Migrating on‑premises file servers to the cloud is a complex infrastructure transformation—not just a data move. Many organizations lack the visibility needed to decide whether to rehost or modernize file shares spread across Windows and Linux servers. Azure Migrate now extends its discovery and assessment capabilities to SMB and NFS file shares, enabling a data‑driven appro...
20/04/2026
Prompt Engineering for Spec-Driven Development with SpecKit
Introduction Charlotte Yeo, UCL MEng Computer Science https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlotte-yeo-627476294/ Supervisors: Janaina Mourao-Miranda (UCL) and Lee Stott (Microsoft). For my final-year MEng project at UCL, I investigated how to get the best results out of SpecKit, a spec-driven AI developmen...
20/04/2026
Dynamic Data Masking – What it is, What it isn’t, and How to use it effectively
In this post, we’ll explain the core purpose of Dynamic Data Masking (to ease application development), how it works, and its proper use cases – as well as its limitations. If you’re considering using Dynamic Data Masking or reviewing your data security strategy, this information will help you make informed decisions. What Dynamic Data Masking is designed for
20/04/2026
OpenAI Scales Trusted Access for Cyber Defense With GPT-5.4-Cyber: a Fine-Tuned Model Built for Verified Security Defenders
OpenAI is moving from a limited pilot to broad deployment of its Trusted Access for Cyber program, introducing GPT-5.4-Cyber — a variant of GPT-5.4 fine-tuned to be cyber-permissive — for thousands of vetted defenders. The post OpenAI Scales Trusted Access for Cyber Defense With GPT-5.4-Cyber: a Fine-Tuned Model Bu...
20/04/2026
Building an Enterprise HR Chatbot with Multi-Strategy RAG and Live Agent Handoff on Azure
HR teams deal with thousands of employee questions every day — policy lookups, leave balances, case escalations, and sensitive topics like harassment or misconduct. AI chatbots can handle the routine stuff and free up HR advisors for the hard cases. But most chatbot projects get stuck at basic Q&A. They can't handle multi-country policies, employee slang, or smooth handoffs to a real person. This post covers how we built Eva, a production HR chatbot using Micr...
20/04/2026
Moonshot AI and Tsinghua Researchers Propose PrfaaS: A Cross-Datacenter KVCache Architecture that Rethinks How LLMs are Served at Scale
For years, the way large language models handle inference has been stuck inside a box — literally. The high-bandwidth RDMA networks that make modern LLM serving work have confined both prefill and decode to the same datacenter, sometimes even the same rack. A team of researchers at Moonshot AI and Tsinghua University is making the […] The post
20/04/2026
Modernizing Digital Health Record Governance with Microsoft Entra Identity Governance
The digital transformation of healthcare continues to accelerate. Clinicians expect near-instant access to Electronic Health Records (EHRs), clinical workflows increasingly span cloud and on-premises systems, and regulatory pressures around identity, access, and auditability have never been higher. For healthcare security and IT leaders, one challenge consistently rises to the top: ensuring the right clinicians have the right access to EHR systems—no more, no less—throughout their life...
19/04/2026
Meet OpenMythos: An Open-Source PyTorch Reconstruction of Claude Mythos Where 770M Parameters Match a 1.3B Transformer
Anthropic has never published a technical paper on Claude Mythos. That has not stopped the research community from theorizing. A new open-source project called OpenMythos, released on GitHub by Kye Gomez, attempts something ambitious: a first-principles theoretical reconstruction of what the Claude Mythos architecture might actually be, built entirely in PyTorch and grounded in peer-reviewed […] The post
19/04/2026
How TabPFN Leverages In-Context Learning to Achieve Superior Accuracy on Tabular Datasets Compared to Random Forest and CatBoost
Tabular data—structured information stored in rows and columns—is at the heart of most real-world machine learning problems, from healthcare records to financial transactions. Over the years, models based on decision trees, such as Random Forest, XGBoost, and CatBoost, have become the default choice for these tasks. Their strength lies in handling mixed data types, capturing […] The post
19/04/2026
Network Connectivity Check APIs for Logic App Standard
Introduction When your Logic App Standard is integrated with a Virtual Network (VNET), you can use these APIs to troubleshoot connectivity issues to downstream resources like SQL databases, Storage Accounts, Service Bus, Key Vault, and more. The checks run directly from the worker hosting your Logic App, so the results reflect the actual network path your workflows use. API Overview
19/04/2026
A Coding Implementation to Build an AI-Powered File Type Detection and Security Analysis Pipeline with Magika and OpenAI
In this tutorial, we build a workflow that combines Magika’s deep-learning-based file type detection with OpenAI’s language intelligence to create a practical and insightful analysis pipeline. We begin by setting up the required libraries, securely connecting to the OpenAI API, and initializing Magika to classify files directly from raw bytes rather than relying on filenames […] The post
19/04/2026
AKS App Routing's Next Chapter: Gateway API with Istio
If you've been following my previous posts on the Ingress NGINX retirement, you'll know the story so far. The community Ingress NGINX project was retired in March 2026, and Microsoft's extended support for the NGINX-based App Routing add-on runs until November 2026. I've covered
19/04/2026
Step by Step Guide to Ontology and Plan for Financial Service
What We Will Build In this guide, we will construct a complete Fabric IQ solution that accomplishes the following: First, a Lakehouse that ingests publicly available data including bank financials, P2P lending statistics, borrower demographics, and licensing information. Second, a Semantic Model that defines the analytical layer with proper dimensions, measures, and relationships. Third, an Ontology that elevates these tables ...
19/04/2026
Azure Virtual Desktop in the Perth Azure Extended Zone: A Real‑World Production Deployment
Introduction Perth is one of the most geographically isolated major cities globally. For performance‑sensitive, graphics‑heavy engineering workloads, user experience can degrade significantly when desktops are hosted far from the user. For workloads such as subsurface modelling and GPU‑intensive analysis, reducing latency is critical not just for user experience but also for productivity. This makes Perth an ideal candidate for Azure Extended Zone deployments, where compute re...
19/04/2026
NVIDIA Releases Ising: the First Open Quantum AI Model Family for Hybrid Quantum-Classical Systems
Quantum computing has spent years living in the future tense. Hardware has improved, research has compounded, and venture dollars have followed — but the gap between a quantum processor running in a lab and one running a real-world application remains stubbornly wide. NVIDIA moved to close that gap with the launch of NVIDIA Ising, the […] The post NVIDIA Releases Ising: the First Open Quantum AI Model Family...
19/04/2026
xAI Launches Standalone Grok Speech-to-Text and Text-to-Speech APIs, Targeting Enterprise Voice Developers
Elon Musk’s AI company xAI has launched two standalone audio APIs — a Speech-to-Text (STT) API and a Text-to-Speech (TTS) API — both built on the same infrastructure that powers Grok Voice on mobile apps, Tesla vehicles, and Starlink customer support. The release moves xAI squarely into the competitive speech API market currently occupied by […] The post
19/04/2026
A Coding Tutorial for Running PrismML Bonsai 1-Bit LLM on CUDA with GGUF, Benchmarking, Chat, JSON, and RAG
In this tutorial, we implement how to run the Bonsai 1-bit large language model efficiently using GPU acceleration and PrismML’s optimized GGUF deployment stack. We set up the environment, install the required dependencies, and download the prebuilt llama.cpp binaries, and load the Bonsai-1.7B model for fast inference on CUDA. As we progress, we examine how […] The post
19/04/2026
A Coding Guide for Property-Based Testing Using Hypothesis with Stateful, Differential, and Metamorphic Test Design
In this tutorial, we explore property-based testing using Hypothesis and build a rigorous testing pipeline that goes far beyond traditional unit testing. We implement invariants, differential testing, metamorphic testing, targeted exploration, and stateful testing to validate both functional correctness and behavioral guarantees of our systems. Instead of manually crafting edge cases, we let Hypothesis generate […] The post
18/04/2026
Anthropic Releases Claude Opus 4.7: A Major Upgrade for Agentic Coding, High-Resolution Vision, and Long-Horizon Autonomous Tasks
Anthropic has launched Claude Opus 4.7, it’s latest frontier model and a direct successor to Claude Opus 4.6. The release is positioned as a focused improvement rather than a full generational leap, but the gains it delivers are substantial in the areas that matter most to developers building real-world AI-powered applications: agentic software engineering, multimodal […] The post
18/04/2026
Microsoft Fabric Operations Agent Step by Step Walkthrough
Fabric Capacity and Workspace You need a Microsoft Fabric workspace backed by a paid capacity. Trial capacities are not supported for Operations Agent. Your capacity must be provisioned in a supported region. As of April 2026, Operations Agent is available in all Microsoft Fabric regions except South Central US and East US. If your capacity is outside the US or EU, you will also need to enable cross geo processing and storage for AI through the tenant settings. Your workspace ...
18/04/2026
Google AI Releases Auto-Diagnose: An Large Language Model LLM-Based System to Diagnose Integration Test Failures at Scale
If you have ever stared at thousands of lines of integration test logs wondering which of the sixteen log files actually contains your bug, you are not alone — and Google now has data to prove it. A team of Google researchers introduced Auto-Diagnose, an LLM-powered tool that automatically reads the failure logs from a […] The post
18/04/2026
MCP Demystified: Tools vs Resources vs Prompts Explained Simply
Introduction When developers start working with Model Context Protocol (MCP), one of the most confusing parts is understanding the difference between MCP Tools, Resources, and Prompts. All three are important components in modern AI application development, but they serve completely different purposes. In real-world AI systems like chatbots, AI agents, and cop...
18/04/2026
A End-to-End Coding Guide to Running OpenAI GPT-OSS Open-Weight Models with Advanced Inference Workflows
In this tutorial, we explore how to run OpenAI’s open-weight GPT-OSS models in Google Colab with a strong focus on their technical behavior, deployment requirements, and practical inference workflows. We begin by setting up the exact dependencies needed for Transformers-based execution, verifying GPU availability, and loading openai/gpt-oss-20b with the correct configuration using native MXFP4 quantization, […] The post
18/04/2026
Deploy scalable ring‑fenced Purview operations with Administrative Units
Administrative Units (AUs) provide a native way to solve this by enabling ring‑fenced operations—allowing teams to operate independently within clearly defined boundaries, while preserving central oversight.This post focuses on the why behind using Administrative Units in Microsoft Purview, with a particular emphasis on scalable, ring‑fenced operations.We’ll walk through three reference architectures that illustrate how Administrative Units support real‑world operating models—without requiring multiple tenants or separate DLP platforms.
18/04/2026
Teams SMB at Microsoft 365 Community Conference
We are looking forward to meeting SMBs and SMB partners attending the Microsoft 365 Community Conference next week. 📅 Learn more about the conference and register today. We have a wonderful lineup of Teams SMB-focused events: 🎤
17/04/2026
Top 19 AI Red Teaming Tools (2026): Secure Your ML Models
As Generative AI matures, so do the threats against it. AI Red Teaming has evolved from a niche security practice into a regulatory requirement. Our 2026 guide breaks down the top 19 tools—including Mindgard, Garak, and Microsoft’s PyRIT—to help security teams identify vulnerabilities like data leakage and bias before they reach production. The post Top 19 AI Red Teaming Tools (2026): Secure Your ML Models ...
17/04/2026
Autonomous AKS Incident Response with Azure SRE Agent: From Alert to Verified Recovery in Minutes
When a Sev1 alert fires on an AKS cluster, detection is rarely the hard part. The hard part is what comes next: proving what broke, why it broke, and fixing it without widening the blast radius, all under time pressure, often at 2 a.m. Azure SRE Agent is designed to close that gap. It connects Azure-native observability, AKS diagnostics, and engineering workflows into a single incident-response loop that can investigate, remediate, verify, and follow up, without waiting for a human to ...
17/04/2026
A Coding Guide to Build a Production-Grade Background Task Processing System Using Huey with SQLite, Scheduling, Retries, Pipelines, and Concurrency Control
In this tutorial, we explore how to build a fully functional background task processing system using Huey directly, without relying on Redis. We configure a SQLite-backed Huey instance, start a real consumer in the notebook, and implement advanced task patterns, including retries, priorities, scheduling, pipelines, locking, and monitoring via signals. As we move step by […] The post
17/04/2026
Event Guide - European Collab Cloud & Biz Apps Summit - Cologne, Germany
Microsoft at the European Collaboration Summit 2026- Cologne, Germany | Micros...
17/04/2026
Resource Guide: Making Physical AI Practical for Real‑World Industrial Operations
Microsoft’s adaptive cloud approach enables organizations to turn operational technology (OT) data into intelligent actions, autonomously, without requiring everything to live in the cloud by unifying cloud-to-edge management plane, data plane, and intelligence platform. At the center of this approach are key foundational technologies:&nbs...
17/04/2026
Title Plan Update - April 17, 2026
📁April 17, 2026 - Title Plan Now Available Access the latest Instructor-Led Training (ILT) updates anytime at
17/04/2026
Copilot agents are scaling faster than most organizations expected
Copilot agents are easy to pilot. Across organizations, teams are building agents to automate tasks, surface insights, and streamline everyday work. Early results are positive—and encouraging. One agent leads to another. Interest spreads. Adoption grows. Then a different question starts to surface: What happens when Copilot agents move beyond experiments and start to scale across the organization? That’s where things are getting more complicated.
17/04/2026
Coming soon: the 2026 Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards
It's almost that time of year again: the Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards are quickly approaching. These awards recognize the exceptional work partners deliver across solution areas, industries, and regions. And they celebrate the many ways our partners are driving Frontier Transformation––turning AI ambition into high-impact business outcomes for customers. Winning an award is a meaningful achievement that highlights the ...
17/04/2026
Maintaining Azure Public IP Inventory by Retrieving Exact Deleted Public IP Using Activity Logs
However, when a Public IP address is deleted, the corresponding delete operation in Azure Activity Logs includes only the Resource ID of the Public IP — not the actual IP address that was assigned to the resource.This blog presents a production‑ready implementation approach that enables organisations to reliably capture and retain the assigned Public IP address of Azure Public IP resources — even after they are deleted — using Azure Activity Log alerts, Azure Automation, and a persistent resource mapping cache.This alert rule will detect Public IP lifecycle events and trigger the associated Action Group for downstream runbook execution.
17/04/2026
The Complete Guide to Inference Caching in LLMs
Calling a large language model API at scale is expensive and slow.
17/04/2026
Interim guidance for Egypt DST changes 2026
On April 24, 2026, Egypt will be observing DST changes. Earlier this month, Microsoft has identified an issue that affects Daylight Saving Time (DST) in Egypt between April 24 and April 30, 2026, inclusive of both dates. Calendar events and meeting times in Egypt will appear off by one hour for only certain Windows versions for the above-mentioned period. ...
17/04/2026
⚡Foundry Toolkit for VS Code: A Deep Dive on GA
As we shared in the announcement, Microsoft Foundry Toolkit for Visual Studio Code is now generally available. In this deep dive, we walk through everything that’s in the GA release — from the rebrand and extension consolidation, to model experimentation, agent development, evaluations, and on-device AI for scientists and engineers pushing the boundaries of edge hardware. Whether you’...
17/04/2026
🏆 Agents League Winner Spotlight – Reasoning Agents Track
Agents League was designed to showcase what agentic AI can look like when developers move beyond single‑prompt interactions and start building systems that plan, reason, verify, and collaborate. Across three competitive tracks—Creative Apps, Reasoning Agents, and Enterprise Agents—participants had two weeks to design and ship real AI agents using productio...
17/04/2026
Qwen Team Open-Sources Qwen3.6-35B-A3B: A Sparse MoE Vision-Language Model with 3B Active Parameters and Agentic Coding Capabilities
Qwen Team Open-Sources Qwen3.6-35B-A3B: A Sparse MoE Vision-Language Model with 3B Active Parameters and Agentic Coding Capabilities The post Qwen Team Open-Sources Qwen3.6-35B-A3B: A Sparse MoE Vision-Language Model with 3B Active Parameters and Agentic Coding Capabilities appeared first on
17/04/2026
Upcoming April 2026 Microsoft 365 Champion Community Call
Join our next community call on MApril 28, 2026, where we'll learn more about what's new with People Skills and the Skills Agent. Reminder: Our community calls are in the Teams webinar format, so you must register to receive the link to join. The join link will be sent to you in email with your webinar registration confirmation. https://aka.ms/M3...
17/04/2026
New in Azure SRE Agent: Log Analytics and Application Insights Connectors
Azure SRE Agent now supports Log Analytics and Application Insights as log providers, backed by the Azure MCP Server. Connect your workspaces and App Insights resources, and the agent can query them directly during investigations. Why This Matters Log A...
17/04/2026
Event-Driven IaC Operations with Azure SRE Agent: Terraform Drift Detection via HTTP Triggers
What Happens After terraform plan Finds Drift? If your team is like most, the answer looks something like this: A nightly terraform plan runs and finds 3 drifted resources A notification lands in Slack or Teams Someone files a ticket During the next sprint, an engineer opens 4 browser tabs — Terraform state, Azure Portal, A...
17/04/2026
Introducing the plugin marketplace for Azure API Center
Today, we're excited to announce the public preview of the plugin marketplace endpoint for Azure API Center. This new capability makes it easier than ever for developers to discover and install AI plugins — including MCP servers and skills — directly from the tools they already use, like Claude Code and GitHub Copilot CLI. The problem we're solving As AI plugins and MCP servers become core parts of the developer workflow, teams have struggled with a ...
17/04/2026
OpenAI Launches GPT-Rosalind: Its First Life Sciences AI Model Built to Accelerate Drug Discovery and Genomics Research
OpenAI has officially entered the specialized science race with GPT-Rosalind, a frontier reasoning model designed to slash the 10-15 year timeline of drug discovery through advanced biochemistry and genomic analysis. The post OpenAI Launches GPT-Rosalind: Its First Life Sciences AI Model Built to Accelerate Drug Discovery and Genomics Research appeared first on
17/04/2026
Introducing Control Over Driver Update Acceptance (DUA) Creation on Shared Driver Submissions
As part of Microsoft’s commitment to improving Windows quality through more predictable and reliable update delivery, we are introducing a new capability that will give submission owners control over Driver Update Acceptance (DUA) creation on shared submissions. This opt-in, per-sharing-shipping-label control will allow submission owners to explicitly block receivers from creating DUA submissions on shared content — providing greater flexibility and control over driver distribution. Receivers...
16/04/2026
Building Transformer-Based NQS for Frustrated Spin Systems with NetKet
Learn how to combine Transformer architectures with Quantum Physics using NetKet and JAX. This guide walks through building a research-grade VMC pipeline to solve the frustrated J1-J2 Heisenberg spin chain with Neural Quantum States. The post Building Transformer-Based NQS for Frustrated Spin Systems with NetKet appeared first on MarkTechPost.
16/04/2026
Act now: Unlock cloud security growth to drive stronger customer outcomes
When it comes to accelerating migration and modernization, security is no longer an add‑on for customers—it’s a baseline expectation. By embedding security earlier, you can deliver a built-in security approach, making it possible to drive more seamless adoption and stronger customer outcomes from day one. <...
16/04/2026
Introducing the Container Network Insights Agent for AKS: Now in Public Preview
We are thrilled to announce public preview of Container Network Insights Agent - Agentic AI network troubleshooting for your workloads running in Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).
16/04/2026
Cumulative Update #4 for SQL Server 2025 RTM
The 4th cumulative update release for SQL Server 2025 RTM is now available for download at the Microsoft Downloads site. Please note that registration is no longer required to download Cumulative updates.To learn more about the release or servicing model, please visit: CU4 KB Article: https://learn.micro...
16/04/2026
Microsoft Foundry Toolkit for VS Code is Now Generally Available
We are thrilled to announce that the Microsoft Foundry Toolkit for VS Code, formerly AI Toolkit, is now Generally Available (GA)! From first model prompt to production‑grade AI agents, Foundry Toolkit lets you build, debug, and ship AI end to end without ever leaving VS Code. Same Product. New Name. You may know this ex...
16/04/2026
New Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Apps and Agents Developer Associate
Ready to move from prototypes to production? Demonstrate your readiness to deliver scalable, real‑world AI apps and agents using Azure services and Microsoft Foundry with the new Exam AI‑103 (beta). As AI changes how work is done across many industries and roles, organizations are rapidly moving AI apps and agents from experimentation into operational use. These shifts create opportunities for software developers who can build generative AI app...
16/04/2026
Available today: Anthropic Claude Opus 4.7 in Microsoft 365 Copilot
Today we're expanding model choice in Microsoft 365 Copilot with the addition of Anthropic's latest model—Claude Opus 4.7—now available in Copilot Cowork (Frontier) and Copilot Studio early release cycle environments, and rolling out to Copilot in Excel. Opus 4.7 is des...
16/04/2026
Designing a reliable environment strategy for Microsoft Marketplace AI apps and agents
Technical guidance for software companies Delivering an AI app or agent through Microsoft Marketplace requires more than strong model performance or a well‑designed user flow. Once your solution is published, both you and your customers must be able to update, test, validate, and promote changes without compromising production stability. A structured environment strategy—Dev, Stage, and Production—is the architectural mechanism that makes this possible. This p...
16/04/2026
Explaining what GitHub Copilot Modernization can (and cannot do)
If you don’t know, GitHub Copilot Modernization is the new agentic tool that supports you to modernize older applications.GitHub Copilot modernization handles two big categories: upgrading .NET projects to newer versions and migrating .NET apps to Azure.Here's what the upgrade workflow handles in Visual Studio:
16/04/2026
Turn upcoming virtualization licensing changes into a growth opportunity
Seize the market shift driven by recent virtualization licensing changes by accelerating the move from Service Provider License Agreement (SPLA)-based licensing to a Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) model. Although these changes won't take full effect until 2027, planning now gives you more time to evaluate the right transition path, protect customer relationships, and build stronger long-term business relationships. By removing legacy cost constraints, you can drive growth across Azure-native, hybrid, and AI-ready solutions. The Microsoft Datacenter Optimization (DCO) initiative empowers you to move beyond legacy SPLA-based operations and build a stronger business so you can protect margins, modernize customer environments, and grow new revenue. Learn more by checking out the Microsoft Hybrid Cloud Partners Podcast (or watching below) and visiting the DCO page.
16/04/2026
Claude Opus 4.7 is available on Microsoft Foundry
Anthropic continues to push the frontier of AI for real-world, production work with its new model Claude Opus 4.7. Opus 4.7 is Anthropic’s most advanced generally available model. Teams building on Azure can access Claude Opus 4.7 through Microsoft Foundry , today.For organizations already building with Claude Opus 4.6, Opus 4.7 represents a powerful upgrade bringing stronger instruction following, better vision and office outputs, and improved memory capabilities to enable enhanced performance across complex, multi-step workflows..Microsoft Foundry is Microsoft's unified platform for building, deploying, and governing AI applications at scale.
16/04/2026
Bringing AI to the Factory Floor with Foundry Local - Now in Public Preview on Azure Local
Foundry Local exposes standard REST and OpenAI‑compatible APIs, enabling IT and AI teams to deploy and operate local AI workloads using familiar, cloud‑aligned patterns across edge and on‑prem environments.AKS on Azure Local as the deployment target, so Foundry Local runs as a containerized workload managed by Kubernetes - the same operational model you use for any other workload on the clusterThe Helm chart gives you full control over the deployment manifest.
16/04/2026
New Microsoft Certified: Azure AI App and Agent Developer Associate
Ready to move from prototypes to production? Demonstrate your readiness to deliver scalable, real‑world AI apps and agents using Azure services and Microsoft Foundry with the new Exam AI‑103 (beta). As AI changes how work is done across many industries and roles, organizations are rapidly moving AI apps and agents from experimentation into operational use. These shifts create opportunities for software developers who can build generative AI app...
16/04/2026
App attach in Azure Virtual Desktop now supports Windows Server 2025 and Windows Server 2022
Managing applications in virtualized desktop and server environments has traditionally required IT teams to bake apps directly into base images, driving image sprawl, slower updates, and higher operational overhead. App attach in Azure Virtual Desktop changes that model by enabling applications to be delivered dynamically to user sessions, without installing them on the session host. Since we ann...
16/04/2026
Celebrating Camille Pepper’s volunteer leadership this National Volunteer Month
Behind every act of volunteering is a story of heart, hope, and unseen effort. This National Volunteer Month, we’re proud to spotlight Camille Pepper, volunteer CEO of Everything Suarve (ESuarve) — an organization transforming the lives of young people who have grown up surrou...
16/04/2026
Making Physical AI Practical for Real-World Industrial Operations: Part 1
We’ve all read the headlines, but are companies really implementing AI with success, and at scale in manufacturing? The answer is yes - by replicating proven operational practices through simple, but highly practical AI implementations that help improve operational efficiency. For many years I helped industrial customers complete manual data analysis of root causes, lean black-belt style, using pareto charts and continuous improvement cycles to get results. Doing so required practical ...
16/04/2026
Making Physical AI Practical for Real-World Industrial Operations: Part 2
In my previous blog, I talked about how we collaborate with great partners such as Sight Machine, Litmus, Mesh Systems, Siemens, Rockwell, Schneider Electric, and others to deliver end to end value for the practical application of AI in manufacturing environments. These partners, along with forward-thinking customers like Chevron,
16/04/2026
Celebrating MVP Authors: The Books (and People) Helping the Community Level Up
At MVP Summit 2026, we put a special spotlight on MVP authors, community leaders who turn hard-won experience into practical, trustworthy resources. Their books don’t just share information; they help people everywhere build skills, solve real problems, and grow confidence with Microsoft technologies. A dedicated MVP Authors discussion was held, complemented by a “Book Nook” experience in the Community Hub, where authors were invited to bring copies of their books to share with attende...
16/04/2026
SQL Server enabled by Azure Arc Overview
Table of Contents What is Azure Arc-enabled SQL Server? Connecting SQL Server to Azure Arc (4-step onboarding) Your SQL Server is Now in Azure (unified management) SQL Best Practices Assessment Monitoring and Governance Troubleshooting Guide Azure Arc Demo What You Can Learn from This Article This article walks you through the end-t...
16/04/2026
Modernizing Change Management for Microsoft 365 Customers
Hi, Microsoft 365 Insiders! I’m Jim Barber, a Principal PM Manager on the Microsoft 365 Change Management team. I'm excited to share with you our first step in modernizing the change management release and communication processes for Microsoft 365. Microsoft 365 is constantly evolving, making it challenging for IT admins to keep up with continuous service change. This is especially true with AI-driven innovations accelerating beyond the pace that traditional change management processes...
16/04/2026
Cegeka, Infinitera, and Fortinet offer transactable partner solutions in Microsoft Marketplace
Microsoft partners like Cegeka, Infinitera, and Fortinet deliver transact-capable offers, which allow you to purchase directly from Microsoft Marketplace.Cegeka Quality Impact Recall Agent: Built for regulated industries and the manufacturing sector, this agent from Cegeka analyzes complaints, supplier issues, or failed quality orders, then launches a coordinated recall workflow inside Microsoft Dynamics 365.Defend against known and zero-day threats with machine learning-enhanced web app and API protection.
16/04/2026
Advancing Firmware Security: Fleet Visibility and New Capabilities in Firmware Analysis
When we announced general availability of firmware analysis enabled by Azure Arc last October, our goal was clear: help organizations gain deep visibility into the security of the firmware that powers their IoT, OT, and network devices.Leading into the Hannover Messe (HMI) 2026 conference, we’re excited to share the next wave of firmware analysis capabilities, delivering enhancements that help customers connect firmware risk to real-world fleet impact, prioritize vulnerabilities more effectively, scale to larger and more complex firmware images, and expand security analysis for UEFI-based platforms.We’re excited to announce a new preview integration between firmware analysis enabled by Azure Arc and Azure Device Registry, bringing fleet-level visibility of IoT and OT devices directly into the firmware analysis experience.
16/04/2026
Python Decorators for Production Machine Learning Engineering
You've probably written a decorator or two in your Python career.
16/04/2026
Understanding action_id discrepancies in Azure SQL Database Audit Logs (BCM vs AL / CR / DR)
Overview While working with Azure SQL Database auditing in enterprise environments, you may encounter an inconsistency in how the action_id field is captured across different PaaS SQL servers. In one such scenario, a customer observed: PaaS Server action_id observed for similar DDL statements
16/04/2026
UCSD and Together AI Research Introduces Parcae: A Stable Architecture for Looped Language Models That Achieves the Quality of a Transformer Twice the Size
The dominant recipe for building better language models has not changed much since the Chinchilla era: spend more FLOPs, add more parameters, train on more tokens.But as inference deployments consume an ever-growing share of compute and model deployments push toward the edge, researchers are increasingly asking a harder question — can you scale quality […]The post UCSD and Together AI Research Introduces Parcae: A Stable Architecture for Looped Language Models That Achieves the Quality of a Transformer Twice the Size appeared first on MarkTechPost.
16/04/2026
Announcing One‑Command Backup Configuration for AKS with Azure Backup
Running production workloads on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is becoming the norm for platform teams building cloud‑native applications at scale.Today, we’re excited to introduce an alternate simplified CLI‑based experience that allows customers to configure backups for AKS using Azure Backup with a single command.With this new experience, customers can now enable full‑cluster backup for AKS using a single CLI command:
16/04/2026
Building a modern digital workplace on Microsoft 365 - WebVine - SharePoint Partner Showcase
We are excited to share a new episode on our partner showcase series focused on SharePoint in Microsoft 365.WebVine is a Microsoft partner specializing in modern intranets, information management and digital workplace solutions built on Microsoft 365.Injio Docs is WebVine’s controlled document management solution built on Microsoft 365, designed to help organizations manage policies, procedures, and critical documents with confidence.
16/04/2026
Architecting Secure and Trustworthy AI Agents with Microsoft Foundry
Co-Authored by Avneesh Kaushik Why Trust Matters for AI Agents Unlike static ML models, AI agents call tools and APIs, retrieve enterprise data, generate dynamic outputs, and can act autonomously based on their planning. This introduces expanded risk surfaces: prompt injection, data exfiltration, over-privileged tool access, hallucinations, and undetected model drift. A trustworthy agent must be designed with defense-in-depth controls spanning p...
16/04/2026
Managing Multi‑Tenant Azure Resource with SRE Agent and Lighthouse
Azure SRE Agent is an AI‑powered reliability assistant that helps teams diagnose and resolve production issues faster while reducing operational toil. It analyzes logs, metrics, alerts, and deployment data to perform root cause analysis and recommend or execute mitigations with human approval. It’s capable of integrating with azure services across subscriptions and resourc...
16/04/2026
How to Build a Universal Long-Term Memory Layer for AI Agents Using Mem0 and OpenAI
In this tutorial, we build a universal long-term memory layer for AI agents using Mem0, OpenAI models, and ChromaDB.We design a system that can extract structured memories from natural conversations, store them semantically, retrieve them intelligently, and integrate them directly into personalized agent responses.We move beyond simple chat history and implement persistent, user-scoped […]
16/04/2026
A Coding Implementation to Build Multi-Agent AI Systems with SmolAgents Using Code Execution, Tool Calling, and Dynamic Orchestration
In this tutorial, we build an advanced, production-ready agentic system using SmolAgents and demonstrate how modern, lightweight AI agents can reason, execute code, dynamically manage tools, and collaborate across multiple agents.We start by installing dependencies and configuring a powerful yet efficient LLM backend, and then progressively design custom tools, including mathematical utilities, memory storage, […]The post A Coding Implementation to Build Multi-Agent AI Systems with SmolAgents Using Code Execution, Tool Calling, and Dynamic Orchestration appeared first on MarkTechPost.
16/04/2026
Azure IoT Hub + Azure Device Registry (Preview Refresh): Device Trust and Management at Fleet Scale
Today, we’re expanding the preview with new capabilities to strengthen security, improve fleet management, and simplify development for connected devices.The April 2026 Preview for Azure IoT Hub and Azure Device Registry (ADR) deliver key features to further standardize device identity and enable policy‑driven management for certificates at scale.In your Azure Device Registry namespace, you can define the public key infrastructure (PKI) that manage your X.509 certificates and certificate authorities (CAs).
16/04/2026
Using an AI Agent to Troubleshoot and Fix Azure Function App Issues
If the process involves restarting the Function App container or restarting related settings, communication between the user and the agent may be interrupted, and you will need to use /resume.However, to demonstrate the agent’s capabilities, you can also allow it to fix the problem directly, provided that you have granted the corresponding permissions through SAMI.After each repair, we can even extract the experience from that case into a skill and store it in a Storage Account for future reuse.
16/04/2026
Microsoft Global Community Initiative Newsletter (April)
The Microsoft 365 Community Conference is where community comes together in person.To support nonprofits and small businesses in our ecosystem, we’re offering a grant program for free or discounted tickets to the Microsoft 365 Community Conference in Orlando (April 21–23).Thankfully, the Global AI Community tours with local events around the world, organized by the community for the community.
16/04/2026
Evolving the Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Fundamentals Certification
The updated Microsoft Certification validates your knowledge of AI concepts and capabilities and your ability to implement AI solutions by using Azure and Microsoft Foundry.After June 30, 2026, to earn this Certification, you’ll need to pass Exam AI-901: Azure AI Fundamentals, currently in beta.The Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Fundamentals Certification focuses on the practical skills needed to build modern AI apps and agents by using Foundry.
16/04/2026
Production Cutover in Cloud-Native Migrations
Migration to container orchestration platforms such as Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) typically involves:Even with these practices in place, runtime validation often reveals issues that are not directly related to deployment or application code.Cloud migration success is no longer determined solely by where applications are deployed, but by how effectively runtime dependencies are aligned during production cutover.
16/04/2026
Databricks Delta Sharing: Enabling Cost Efficient Cross Cloud Data Access
Delta sharing is an open protocol for secure data sharing that allows organizations to share live data stored in Delta Lake with external consumers—across cloud providers such as Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud—while keeping the data in its original location.The diagram illustrates how Databricks Delta Sharing enables secure, real‑time data access across public clouds (Azure, AWS, GCP) without replicating data, helping reduce operational overhead and data‑egress costs.Databricks Delta Sharing enables organizations to provide secure, real‑time cross‑cloud data access without data duplication—helping reduce operational complexity and egress costs in multi‑cloud architectures.
16/04/2026
Announcing Log Monitor v2.2.0 Release Candidate
Log Monitor is an open-source tool that enables Windows containers to surface logs from multiple sources, Event Log, ETW providers, and log files, directly to the container's stdout, making them visible to container orchestrators like Kubernetes and Azure Container Apps.We've added a complete end-to-end example for running Log Monitor with IIS on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), including deployment manifests and step-by-step documentation.This release also includes a number of important bug fixes to the configuration file parser:
15/04/2026
Upcoming changes to driver metadata and publishing validations in Hardware Dev Center
We're making improvements to how the Windows Hardware Dev Center (HDC) handles driver OS compatibility.We are adding a new nullable string property, CeilingOSCode, to the per-PnP entries in the HardwareDriverMetadata asset (documented at Driver package metadata ).No resubmission is required, but if you want your existing packages to take advantage of the improved OS ceiling targeting, you should resubmit them after the rollout date.
15/04/2026
Guidance for Building Agents on the Microsoft Sentinel Platform
As a Senior Product Manager |Developer Architect on the App Assure team working to bring Microsoft Sentinel and Security Copilot solutions to market, I interact with many ISVs building agents on Microsoft Sentinel data lake for the first time. I’ve written this article to walk you through one possible approach for agent development – the process I use when building sample agents internally at Microsoft. If you have questions about this, or other methods for building your agent, App Assure offers guidance through our Sentinel Advisory Service.Throughout this post, I include screenshots and examples from Gigamon’s Security Posture Insight Agent.
15/04/2026
Exploring Agentic Uses Cases for Microsoft Sentinel
This blog will help you understand some common use cases for agent development that we’ve seen across our partner ecosystem.Microsoft Sentinel platform is a strong foundation for agentic experiences because it exposes a normalized security data layer, an investigation surface based on incidents and entities, and extensive automation capabilities.Read the full announcement here: Agentic Use Cases for Developers on the Microsoft Sentinel Platform
15/04/2026
RSAC 2026: New Sentinel Connectors Announcement
Microsoft Sentinel helps organizations detect, investigate, and respond to security threats across increasingly complex environments.With the rollout of the Microsoft Sentinel data lake in the fall, and the App Assure-backed Sentinel promise that supports it, customers now have access to long-term, cost-effective storage for security telemetry, creating a solid foundation for emerging Agentic AI experiences.These connectors bring diverse security signals together, enabling correlation at scale and delivering richer investigation context across the Sentinel platform.
15/04/2026
Announcing the Sentinel Advisory Service
As organizations move from legacy SIEM platforms to Sentinel, consistent access to high-quality third-party data remains essential, not only for detection and response, but increasingly for advanced analytics and AI-driven security experiences.With the introduction of Microsoft Sentinel data lake, customers and partners can now reason over security data cost-effectively and at greater scale.That’s why, as an extension of our Sentinel Promise, we’re excited to announce the Sentinel Advisory Service from App Assure.
15/04/2026
Debugging the future of work: Microsoft 365 Community Conference 2026
That’s exactly why we’re here to help you debug, refactor, and level up at the Microsoft 365 Community Conference, happening April 21–23, 2026 in Orlando, FL.We've lined up hands-on sessions and interactive workshops to help you build intelligent, adaptable agents and solutions across the Microsoft ecosystem, and supercharge your Copilot journey.Create custom agents for your company in Microsoft 365 Copilot
15/04/2026
Dissecting LLM Container Cold-Start: Where the Time Actually Goes
We decomposed cold-start for two architecturally different engines – vLLM (Python/CUDA, heavy JIT compilation) and llama.cpp (C++, minimal runtime) – running Llama 3.1 8B on A100 GPUs.Why gzip hurts: model weights are incompressibleThe AIKit image is 8.7 GB uncompressed, 6.6 GB with gzip (a modest 0.76x ratio).
15/04/2026
Save the date for Agent 365 live AMA
Microsoft Agent 365--generally available May 1, 2026--is a control plane that empowers IT admins, Security Operations analysts, Identity and Network Security admins, and Data Security & Compliance admins to observe, govern, and secure all agents for their organization. We’ll demonstrate how to get started and answer your questions about licensing and functionality in this live 'Ask Microsoft Anything' with product and engineering team experts! Register for the Microsoft Tech Community using your email if you haven’t already.
15/04/2026
Simplified controls for managing external collaboration in Teams admin center
To make external collaboration setup in Microsoft Teams easier for your SMB, we have introduced a new overview page in Teams admin center that consolidates settings into a single view and have simplified how we describe the settings you can apply.From the new settings, you can select from pre-configured modes that quickly set smart defaults that are right for your business.Learn more about how you can use these settings, Unified external collab settings management
15/04/2026
Enforce Cost Limits on KQL Queries and Notebooks in the Microsoft Sentinel Data Lake
Today, we're excited to announce threshold enforcement for KQL queries and notebooks in the Microsoft Sentinel data lake.With this release, you can go beyond notifications and automatically block new queries and jobs when your configured usage limits are exceeded.When enforcement is turned on and a threshold is exceeded, Microsoft Sentinel blocks new queries, jobs, and notebook sessions with a clear "Limit exceeded" error.
15/04/2026
March 2026 Recap: Azure Database for PostgreSQL
Premium SSD v2 is now generally available for Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server, delivering significant performance and cost-efficiency improvements for I/O‑intensive workloads.Azure Database for PostgreSQL Migration Service now supports EDB Extended Server as a migration source.We have rolled out two new blogs on PostgreSQL buffer cache analysis and PostgreSQL query rewriting and subqueries.
15/04/2026
When the shield becomes the sword: How misconfigured PAM bridges the tiering model
However, in Microsoft Incident Response – the Detection and Response Team (DART) engagements, we frequently encounter a paradox: the tool used to secure Tier 0 often becomes a quick path for threat actors to compromise it.A: PAM vendors are right that a well-configured session host with Credential Guard enabled, application control enforced, and remote management restricted is considerably harder to exploit than a stock Windows Server.By aligning your PAM deployment with the principles of Privileged Access Administration, treating session hosts and service accounts as the tier of the assets they manage, not the zone they physically sit in, you close the bridge before a threat actor finds it.
15/04/2026
New Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Fundamentals Certification
The updated Microsoft Certification validates your knowledge of AI concepts and capabilities and your ability to implement AI solutions by using Azure and Microsoft Foundry.After June 30, 2026, to earn this Certification, you’ll need to pass Exam AI-901: Azure AI Fundamentals, currently in beta.The Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Fundamentals Certification focuses on the practical skills needed to build modern AI apps and agents by using Foundry.
15/04/2026
A Technical Deep Dive into the Essential Stages of Modern Large Language Model Training, Alignment, and Deployment
Training a modern large language model (LLM) is not a single step but a carefully orchestrated pipeline that transforms raw data into a reliable, aligned, and deployable intelligent system.At its core lies pretraining, the foundational phase where models learn general language patterns, reasoning structures, and world knowledge from massive text corpora.The post A Technical Deep Dive into the Essential Stages of Modern Large Language Model Training, Alignment, and Deployment appeared first on MarkTechPost.
15/04/2026
Security Community Spotlight: Fabrício Assumpção
Meet Fabrício Assumpção, a Technical Specialist Architect for a Microsoft Security and Compliance Certified Partner, based in Brazil.Fabrício considers his involvement with the Microsoft Security Community defined by a dual approach: architectural innovation and technical enablement.As a Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) since 2021, he has been dedicated to bridging the gap between theory and real-world implementation for security professionals globally.
15/04/2026
What’s new in Microsoft Entra – March 2026
From January through March 2026, Microsoft Entra introduced key updates to help organizations strengthen identity security, simplify governance, and improve user experience.Starting February 2026, Microsoft Authenticator introduced jailbreak/root detection for Microsoft Entra credentials in the Android app.Microsoft Entra Connect security update to block hard match for users with Microsoft Entra roles
15/04/2026
From fragmented sites to consistent governance: Azure Arc patterns for adaptive cloud strategy.
Azure Arc addresses this as an architectural control‑plane pattern: it extends Azure management to infrastructure and Kubernetes outside Azure by projecting them into Azure Resource Manager (ARM) so they can be governed using Azure-native primitives such as policy, RBAC, and monitoring.This article describes three architecture patterns that consistently emerge in manufacturing and edge scenarios.Each pattern addresses a distinct set of constraints—ranging from centralized governance across hybrid estates, to plant‑adjacent platforms, to fully disconnected environments—and illustrates how Azure services can be composed to support these realities in a scalable, well‑governed way.
15/04/2026
Cracking the Code to Secure Productivity: How to Work Smarter Without Compromising Security
This is the idea behind secure productivity: empowering employees to work the way they need to while data, identities, devices, and systems are protected seamlessly in the background.A modern secure productivity strategy relies on AI‑powered, intelligent security that adapts to real‑world behavior.Supports remote, hybrid, and AI‑enabled work
15/04/2026
Google AI Launches Gemini 3.1 Flash TTS: A New Benchmark in Expressive and Controllable AI Voice
Google has introduced Gemini 3.1 Flash TTS, a preview text-to-speech model focused on improving speech quality, expressive control, and multilingual generation.Unlike previous iterations that prioritized simple conversion, this release emphasizes natural-language audio tags, native support for more than 70 languages, and native multi-speaker dialogue.This release signals a shift from ‘black-box’ audio generation toward […]
15/04/2026
Migrating Frontline Mobile Devices: Understanding the reality of your estate
As new workflows, apps, locations, and teams get added over time, device estates expand quickly, making it harder to maintain consistency and visibility.This creates a gap between what teams think they have, how they expect devices to be used, and what happens in the field.Understand how devices are used in practice
15/04/2026
Gemma 4 on Azure Container Apps Serverless GPU
What if you could spin up a fully private AI coding agent — running on your own GPU, in your own Azure subscription — with a single command?One azd up, 15 minutes, and you have Google's Gemma 4 running on Azure Container Apps serverless GPU with an OpenAI-compatible API, protected by auth, and ready to power OpenCode as your terminal-based coding agent.Azure Container Apps serverless GPU gives you on-demand GPU compute without managing VMs, Kubernetes clusters, or GPU drivers.
15/04/2026
Enterprise Cybersecurity in the Age of AI: Why Legacy Security Is Failing as Attackers Move Faster
But with the rise of AI‑enabled attacks, that imbalance has widened dramatically.The result is a dangerous gap: highly adaptive attackers versus static, legacy defences.Below are some of the most common outdated security practices still widely used by enterprises today - and why they are no longer sufficient against modern, AI‑driven threats.
15/04/2026
Hunting Infostealers - Trusted Platform Abuse
In this part of the “Hunting Infostealers” series, we explore the growing abuse of trusted communication services and software ecosystems—including messaging platforms like WhatsApp and seemingly benign PDF converter tools—to propagate malware and deploy credential stealers such as Eternidade Stealer, lowering user suspicion and complicating detection.Throughout the blog, we map observed activity to Microsoft Defender XDR coverage and provide actionable guidance to help organizations detect, mitigate, and respond to infostealers.During the third week of November 2025, Microsoft Defender Experts (DEX) identified a WhatsApp platform abuse campaign that leverages a multi-stage infection chain and worm-like propagation techniques to distribute malware.
15/04/2026
Enabling fallback to internet for Azure Private DNS Zones in hybrid architectures
Azure Private Endpoint enables secure connectivity to Azure PaaS services such as: Azure Private DNS Zones are then used to resolve this Private Endpoint FQDN within the VNet.When a DNS resolver receives a negative response (NXDOMAIN), it sends no DNS response to the DNS client and the query fails.
15/04/2026
Get more from Power Query in Excel with these little-known capabilities
If you use Excel or Power BI to work with data, you’ve likely encountered Power Query - and may already rely on it regularly across desktop and web.Turning queries into reusable functionsHow to use a folder connector with a robust sample file transform
15/04/2026
Announcing “Period 2” for Skype for Business Server 2015/2019 Extended Security Update (ESU) Program
While both Skype for Business (SfB) Server 2015 and 2019 have been out of Support since October 2025, some of our customers who needed more time to finalize migrations to SfB Server Subscription Edition (SE) or to Teams opted to enroll into the Extended Security Update program.Customers who wish to enroll in the Period 2 program will have to re-purchase the ESU for the SfB servers they need to cover during Period 2.Microsoft Learn) for Skype for Business Server 2015 and 2019.
15/04/2026
Announcing Period 2 Exchange 2016/2019 Extended Security Update (ESU) program
While both Exchange 2016 and 2019 are out of support since October 2025, some of our customers who needed more time to finalize migrations to Exchange Subscription Edition (SE) have opted to enroll into the Extended Security Update program.That ESU program started in October 2025 and is ending in April 2026 (“Period 1”).Starting today, customers can contact their Microsoft account team to get information about and purchase additional Period 2 Extended Security Update (ESU) for their Exchange 2016 CU23 or Exchange 2019 CU14/CU15 servers.
15/04/2026
How Microsoft Foundry and Elastic Agent Builder in Microsoft Marketplace are shaping enterprise AI
In this guest blog post, Brian Bergholm, Principal Product Marketing Manager at Elastic, covers the evolution of agentic AI and how enterprises can leverage context engineering via Microsoft Foundry and Elastic Agent Builder in the Microsoft Marketplace to operationalize agentic systems at scale.This is where context engineering and agentic AI come together and where platforms like Elastic Agent Builder and Microsoft Foundry (formerly known as Azure AI Foundry) are shaping what enterprise AI looks like in practice.But prompt-centric AI doesn’t naturally scale well in the enterprise.
15/04/2026
Tutorial: Building AI Agents That Talk to Your Azure Database for MySQL
In this tutorial, you'll build a Python-based AI agent that connects to Azure Database for MySQL server and uses OpenAI's function calling to translate natural language questions into SQL queries, execute them, and return human-readable answers.The agent can explore your schema, answer business questions, and even self-correct when it writes invalid SQL.In this tutorial, you built a Python AI agent that connects to Azure Database for MySQL and answers natural language questions by auto-generating SQL - complete with self-correction and security guardrails.
15/04/2026
Copilot Studio User Group • Contact Booklist
This List Is Not An Official CSUG Policy Or A CSUG Guideline Nor Is It A CSUG Help Page This Is An Booklist Of CSUG Staff To Contact If You Ever Need Help Or Have A Question On The Copilot Studio User GroupGeneral Contact ListUhLukas - Community Support & Questions & Moderation Reports & Applications To Be A CSUG Staff Member // “ Copilot Studio User Group “ ( CSUG )
15/04/2026
Azure SQL Migration Starts in SSMS—All in One Flow
Migrate SQL Server Using SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) provides a guided, end-to-end migration experience that works seamlessly for both Azure Arc–enabled and standalone SQL Server instances.In this blog, we’ll walk through how SSMS helps you assess, choose, and migrate your SQL Server workloads using the right Azure target and migration method.
15/04/2026
Netox on Microsoftin Security Partner of the Year 2025!
Yhteistyö käynnistyi pienestä Microsoft Autopilot ‑kokonaisuudesta ja on kasvanut vaiheittain kattamaan päätelaitteet, Microsoft 365 ‑ympäristön, tietoturvan ja jatkuvat IT-palvelut lähes 2 000 käyttäjälle.Tämä ajattelutapa, tiivis yhteistyö Microsoftin kanssa ja kyky tuoda uudet teknologiat, kuten Copilot, osaksi hallittua kokonaisuutta ovat keskeisiä syitä siihen, miksi Netox tunnetaan luotettavana Microsoft-kumppanina ja Partner of the Year ‑tason toimijana.Netox ei rakenna erillisiä, päälle liimattuja tietoturvaratkaisuja, vaan hyödyntää Microsoftin ekosysteemin mahdollisuuksia osana kokonaisuutta.
15/04/2026
Combining pgvector and Apache AGE - knowledge graph & semantic intelligence in a single engine
Inspired by GraphRAG and PostgreSQL Integration in Docker with Cypher Query and AI Agents, which demonstrated how Apache AGE brings Cypher based graph querying into PostgreSQL for GraphRAG pipelines.Two extensions pgvector for vector similarity search and Apache AGE extension for graph traversal bringing these capabilities natively into the database.The Azure PostgreSQL database ecosystem has quietly assembled the components for a unified semantic + structural analytics engine in form of extensions.
15/04/2026
A demonstration of Virtual Network TAP
Azure Virtual Network Terminal Access Point (VTAP), at the time of writing in April 2026 in public preview in select regions, copies network traffic from source Virtual Machines to a collector or traffic analytics tool, running as a Network Virtual Appliance (NVA).VTAP is an agentless, cloud-native traffic tap at the Azure network infrastructure level.it has no impact on the source VM's network performance and the source VM is unaware of the tap.
15/04/2026
Credential Exposure Risk & Response Workbook
Use the steps outlined in the Identify and Remediate Credentials article to get the right rules in place to start capturing credential data.This workbook transforms credential leakage detection into a measurable, executive-ready capability.To understand your licensing requirements and options for Microsoft Purview Information Protection, see the Information Protection sections from Microsoft 365 guidance for security & compliance and the related PDF download for feature-level licensing requirements.
15/04/2026
Google DeepMind Releases Gemini Robotics-ER 1.6: Bringing Enhanced Embodied Reasoning and Instrument Reading to Physical AI
Google DeepMind research team introduced Gemini Robotics-ER 1.6, a significant upgrade to its embodied reasoning model designed to serve as the ‘cognitive brain’ of robots operating in real-world environments.The model specializes in reasoning capabilities critical for robotics, including visual and spatial understanding, task planning, and success detection — acting as the high-level reasoning model […]The post Google DeepMind Releases Gemini Robotics-ER 1.6: Bringing Enhanced Embodied Reasoning and Instrument Reading to Physical AI appeared first on MarkTechPost.
15/04/2026
Supercharge Your Dev Workflows with GitHub Copilot Custom Skills
That's exactly what GitHub Copilot Custom Skills enable.When you ask Copilot something that matches the skill's description, it loads the instructions and executes the workflow autonomously.Custom Skills turn your documented procedures into executable AI workflows.
15/04/2026
Google Launches ‘Skills’ in Chrome: Turning Reusable AI Prompts into One-Click Browser Workflows
Google just announced the release of Skills in Chrome, a new feature built into Gemini in Chrome that lets users save frequently used AI prompts as reusable, one-click workflows called Skills.The rollout begins April 14, 2026, targeting Mac, Windows, and ChromeOS users who have their Chrome language set to English-US.The post Google Launches ‘Skills’ in Chrome: Turning Reusable AI Prompts into One-Click Browser Workflows appeared first on MarkTechPost.
15/04/2026
Security Update for SQL Server 2025 RTM CU3
The Security Update for SQL Server 2025 RTM CU3 is now available for download at the Microsoft Download Center and Microsoft Update Catalog sites.This package cumulatively includes all previous security fixes for SQL Server 2025 RTM CUs, plus it includes the new security fixes detailed in the KB Article.Microsoft Update Catalog: https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=5083245
15/04/2026
Security Update for SQL Server 2025 RTM
The Security Update for SQL Server 2025 RTM GDR is now available for download at the Microsoft Download Center and Microsoft Update Catalog sites.This package cumulatively includes all previous security fixes for SQL Server 2025 RTM, plus it includes the new security fixes detailed in the KB Article.Microsoft Update Catalog: https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=5084814
15/04/2026
Security Update for SQL Server 2022 RTM CU24
The Security Update for SQL Server 2022 RTM CU24 is now available for download at the Microsoft Download Center and Microsoft Update Catalog sites.This package cumulatively includes all previous security fixes for SQL Server 2022 RTM CUs, plus it includes the new security fixes detailed in the KB Article.Microsoft Update Catalog: https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=5083252
15/04/2026
Security Update for SQL Server 2022 RTM
The Security Update for SQL Server 2022 RTM GDR is now available for download at the Microsoft Download Center and Microsoft Update Catalog sites.This package cumulatively includes all previous security fixes for SQL Server 2022 RTM, plus it includes the new security fixes detailed in the KB Article.Microsoft Update Catalog: https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=5084815
15/04/2026
Security Update for SQL Server 2019 RTM CU32
The Security Update for SQL Server 2019 RTM CU32 is now available for download at the Microsoft Download Center and Microsoft Update Catalog sites.This package cumulatively includes all previous security fixes for SQL Server 2019 RTM CUs, plus it includes the new security fixes detailed in the KB Article.Microsoft Update Catalog: https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=5084816
15/04/2026
Security Update for SQL Server 2019 RTM
The Security Update for SQL Server 2019 RTM GDR is now available for download at the Microsoft Download Center and Microsoft Update Catalog sites.This package cumulatively includes all previous security fixes for SQL Server 2019 RTM, plus it includes the new security fixes detailed in the KB Article.Microsoft Update Catalog: https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=5084817
15/04/2026
A Coding Implementation of Crawl4AI for Web Crawling, Markdown Generation, JavaScript Execution, and LLM-Based Structured Extraction
In this tutorial, we build a complete and practical Crawl4AI workflow and explore how modern web crawling goes far beyond simply downloading page HTML.We set up the full environment, configure browser behavior, and work through essential capabilities such as basic crawling, markdown generation, structured CSS-based extraction, JavaScript execution, session handling, screenshots, link analysis, concurrent […]The post A Coding Implementation of Crawl4AI for Web Crawling, Markdown Generation, JavaScript Execution, and LLM-Based Structured Extraction appeared first on MarkTechPost.
15/04/2026
Security Update for SQL Server 2017 RTM
The Security Update for SQL Server 2017 RTM GDR is now available for download at the Microsoft Download Center and Microsoft Update Catalog sites.This package cumulatively includes all previous security fixes for SQL Server 2017 RTM, plus it includes the new security fixes detailed in the KB Article.Latest Updates for Microsoft SQL Server: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/sql/releases/download-and-install-latest-updates
15/04/2026
Security Update for SQL Server 2017 RTM CU31
The Security Update for SQL Server 2017 RTM CU31 is now available for download at the Microsoft Download Center and Microsoft Update Catalog sites.This package cumulatively includes all previous security fixes for SQL Server 2017 RTM CUs, plus it includes the new security fixes detailed in the KB Article.Latest Updates for Microsoft SQL Server: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/sql/releases/download-and-install-latest-updates
15/04/2026
Security Update for SQL Server 2016 SP3
The Security Update for SQL Server 2016 SP3 GDR is now available for download at the Microsoft Download Center and Microsoft Update Catalog sites.This package cumulatively includes all previous security fixes for SQL Server 2016 SP3, plus it includes the new security fixes detailed in the KB Article.Microsoft Update Catalog: https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=5084821
15/04/2026
Security Update for SQL Server 2016 SP3 Azure Connect Feature Pack
The Security Update for SQL Server 2016 SP3 Azure Connect Feature Pack is now available for download at the Microsoft Download Center and Microsoft Update Catalog sites.This package cumulatively includes all previous security fixes for SQL Server 2016 SP3 Azure Connect Feature Pack, plus it includes the new security fixes detailed in the KB Article.Latest Updates for Microsoft SQL Server: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/sql/releases/download-and-install-latest-updates
15/04/2026
Data Security Posture Reports (Custom Workspace and Charts)
Microsoft Purview Posture Reports provide a clear, outcome‑based view of how effectively data protection controls, such as Sensitivity Labels and Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies, are working across Microsoft 365.Posture Reports transform complex telemetry from Audit logs, Activity Explorer, and policy enforcement into measurable, defensible insights that security, compliance, and business leaders can act on with confidence.Unlike the built‑in reports, custom reports are designed to be adaptable to different audiences and questions.
14/04/2026
Internet Information Services Learning Path
Internet Information Services (IIS) is the modular web server and application platform that first shipped as an optional add-on for Windows NT 3.51 in 1995, evolving from basic HTTP and FTP services into a full-featured web stack tightly integrated with Windows Server and Client operating systems. Today, IIS remains a core component of Windows Server and client editions, used to host legacy and modern web applications, APIs, and services in on-premises and hybrid environments alongside newer cloud-native options. The following training modules on Microsoft Learn provide you with a structured curriculum to learn how to manage and maintain Internet Information Services.Understand how to configure, administer, and validate an IIS installation on Windows Server.
14/04/2026
Building a Scalable IoT Platform for Facility Management with Azure Serverless Services
The platform follows a microservices architecture with six independently deployable services, all built on Azure Functions v4 with TypeScript.A comprehensive code review uncovered critical security and resilience issues across all services.This IoT platform demonstrates how Azure serverless services can be composed into a production-grade IoT solution that handles multi-provider telemetry ingestion, real-time rule evaluation, and automated notifications — all while maintaining fine-grained access control and template-driven extensibility.
14/04/2026
Ep 39 | How Microsoft Partners Win More Deals Through Collaboration, AI Strategy, and Trust
There’s a quiet shift happening in the Microsoft partner ecosystem—and it’s not just about AI.It’s about how partners work together.it’s a real example of how partner-to-partner collaboration turns conversations into revenue and relationships into long-term growth.
14/04/2026
AI is a Team Sport – Announcing our first wave of Guest Speakers at M365 Community Conference 2026
That is why at the Microsoft 365 Community Conference in Orlando, Florida from April 21 to 23, 2026, we are bringing the spirit of collaboration to life in a whole new way by welcoming a dynamic lineup of guest voices from the worlds of professional sports, innovation strategy, and real-world AI adoption at scale.This year, we are proud to host legendary athletes Chasity Melvin and Kia Vaughn, alongside innovation thought leaders Dan Toma, Manjunatha Sivanna, Maral Taak, and Christopher Blakeley as they join Microsoft leaders on stage to explore how teamwork, leadership, experimentation, and trust are shaping the future of AI powered organizations.We’re excited to have him join the Director of Customer Advocacy for AI & Collaboration, Karuana Gatimu, in a fireside chat on real world adoption best practices at scale.
14/04/2026
Announcing SQL Server Management Studio 22.5
Welcome to April! In the northeast United States that means spring, holidays and observances, spring break trips, and unpredictable weather. Not to worry, the engineering teams for SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) and GitHub Copilot in SSMS have continued to make steady progress, culminating in the release of SSMS 22.5 today.With the retirement of Azure Data Studio, the migrations team has been enhancing the migration experience in SSMS. The 22.5 release introduces a new Migration Page which serves as a starting point for all things related to migrations. When you right-click on an instance and select Migrate SQL Server, the page opens and you can initiate an assessment, provision a target server, migrate your data, or monitor an in-progress migration.GitHub Copilot in SSMS now supports interactions with the results pane, including the grid, messages, and execution plan.
14/04/2026
TinyFish AI Releases Full Web Infrastructure Platform for AI Agents: Search, Fetch, Browser, and Agent Under One API Key
AI agents struggle with tasks that require interacting with the live web — fetching a competitor’s pricing page, extracting structured data from a JavaScript-heavy dashboard, or automating a multi-step workflow on a real site.The tooling has been fragmented, requiring teams to stitch together separate providers for search, browser automation, and content retrieval.The post TinyFish AI Releases Full Web Infrastructure Platform for AI Agents: Search, Fetch, Browser, and Agent Under One API Key appeared first on MarkTechPost.
14/04/2026
Azure Arc Server Mar 2026 Forum Recap
During the March 2026 Azure Arc Server Forum, we discussed:New MECM (SCCM) connector supporting Cloud Native Server Management, sign up for Private Preview at aka.ms/arc-mecm/previewOur April 2026 forum will be held on Thursday, April 16 at 9:30 AM PST / 12:30 PM EST.
14/04/2026
Data Security Posture Reports
Microsoft Purview Posture Reports help organizations prove (not just assume) that their data security controls are working.We designed Posture Reports to give security, compliance, and business leaders a defensible, measurable view of data security posture, especially critical as organizations adopt Copilot and other AI tools.Why are our DLP "Device Posture" reports are not in the Posture Reports and only on the DLP Overview page?
14/04/2026
TinyFish Launches Full Web Infrastructure Platform for AI Agents — Search, Fetch, Browser, and Agent Under One API Key
AI agents struggle with tasks that require interacting with the live web — fetching a competitor’s pricing page, extracting structured data from a JavaScript-heavy dashboard, or automating a multi-step workflow on a real site.The tooling has been fragmented, requiring teams to stitch together separate providers for search, browser automation, and content retrieval.TinyFish, a […]
14/04/2026
Partner Blog | What's new for Microsoft partners: April 2026 edition
Your voice continues to shape how the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program evolves.Leading Frontier Firm transformation with Microsoft 365 E7: The partner opportunity On March 9, 2026, we introduced Microsoft 365 E7 and announced general availability of Microsoft 365 E7 and Microsoft Agent 365 on May 1, 2026.
14/04/2026
Running KQL queries on Microsoft Sentinel data lake using API
By running KQL (Kusto Query Language) queries on Microsoft Sentinel data lake through APIs, you can embed analytics directly into automation workflows, background services, and intelligent agents, without relying on manual query execution.In this post, we explore API based KQL query execution, review some of the scenarios where it delivers the most value, and what you need to get started.Why run KQL queries on Sentinel data lake via API?
14/04/2026
Qurious About Quantum?
Today on April 14th, 2026 we celebrate World Quantum Day!Lecture 5 covering "Trade‑offs on the Path to Utility Scale" was published this morning as part of World Quantum Day covering multiple challenges that must be overcome to achieve utility-scale quantum computing.Leave a comment below with the quantum topics you'd like to see covered next!
14/04/2026
Your Oracle Data Is Sitting Next to Microsoft AI. Are You Using It?
That gap — caused by Oracle sitting on-premises, in OCI, or in a different cloud — literally kills enterprise AI on Oracle workloads.NOTE: Based on the desired degree of customization and deployment flexibility, the six patterns described in this series may be realized using Microsoft 365, Power Platform, Copilot Studio, Microsoft Fabric, and associated services.Most enterprises will run Path 1 (Copilot Studio) for rapid Teams access, Path 2 or 3 (ORDS) for production, and Path 6 (Select AI Agent) for complex reasoning — all against the same Oracle database, same security model, same audit trail.
14/04/2026
Partner Case Study | Infosys
Infosys, a Microsoft partner for over 25 years, has long been a leader in these secure modernizations and cloud transformations.This experience and collaborative history are part of what made Infosys a 2025 Microsoft Partner of the Year for Azure – Secure Migration and Modernization.It’s also what made the company so successful when they were tapped to stabilize, modernize, and migrate the SIS for one of the largest districts in the country to Azure—creating one of the largest SIS cloud deployments for any US school district in the process.
14/04/2026
No Exchange Server Security Updates for April 2026
Although Exchange 2016 and 2019 are now out of support, some customers have purchased the Exchange 2016 and 2019 Extended Security Update (ESU).We have therefore decided that until the end of this Exchange 2016 and 2019 ESU period (April 2026) we will make an explicit update related announcement even if we DO NOT release anything for that particular month.There are no security releases for any version of Exchange Server in April 2026, for customers with Exchange SE, or Exchange 2016 or 2019 ESU.
14/04/2026
No Skype for Business Server Security Updates for April 2026
We have therefore decided that until the end of this Skype for Business 2015 and 2019 ESU period (April 2026) we will make an explicit update related announcement even if we DO NOT release anything for that particular month. There are no security releases for any version of Skype for Business Server in April 2026, for customers with SfB 2015/SfB 2019 ESU, or SfB SE.The Skype for Business Team
14/04/2026
Microsoft Sentinel data federation: Expand visibility while preserving governance
Microsoft Sentinel data federation now in public preview, is designed to meet customers where their data already lives, while preserving governance.Powered by Microsoft Fabric, customers can federate data from Microsoft Fabric, Azure Data Lake Storage (ADLS) Gen 2, and Azure Databricks into Sentinel data lake—without copying or duplicating the data.Security teams can analyze data in place, unifying detections, investigations, and hunting across a broader digital estate, while data owners retain full ownership and policies remain intact.
14/04/2026
Gemma 4 now available in Microsoft Foundry
Today, we’re happy to announce that the Gemma 4 family, Google DeepMind’s newest model family, is now available in Microsoft Foundry via the Hugging Face collection.Azure customers can now discover, evaluate, and deploy Gemma 4 inside their Azure environment with the same policies they rely on for every other workload.Released by Google DeepMind on April 2, 2026, Gemma 4 is built from the same research foundation as Gemini 3 and packaged as open weights under an Apache 2.0 license.
14/04/2026
Research Drop: Tracking the Rise of Perceived AI Value at Work
The People Science team has conducted three cross-industry panel surveys on AI over the past two years (April 2024, July 2025, and November 2025), enabling us to look for signals of AI value trends over time.In our snapshots of AI-using managers and individual contributors, perceived value of AI has consistently risen across the three time periods, which is directional evidence that perceived value is rising as organizations move from experimentation toward more routine, integrated use.The more employees are exposed to, gaining familiarity with, and using AI at work, the more likely they are to perceive value of AI at an individual level.
14/04/2026
Introducing MAI-Image-2-Efficient: Faster, More Efficient Image Generation
Just last week, we celebrated a major milestone: the public preview launch of three new first-party Microsoft AI models in Microsoft Foundry: MAI-Image-2, MAI-Voice-1, and MAI-Transcribe-1.Together, they represent a comprehensive multimedia AI stack purpose-built for developers that spans image generation, natural speech synthesis, and enterprise-grade transcription across 25 languages.It’s up to 22% faster with 4x more efficiency compared to MAI-Image-2 when normalized by latency and GPU usage1. It also outpaces leading text-to-image models by 40% on average2.
14/04/2026
A new chapter for the Microsoft Student Ambassadors program, built for you
Join the reimagined Student Ambassadors program to learn and lead.By joining the Student Ambassadors program, you can learn to lead with AI in creative and responsible ways, so you can think bigger, build faster, and bring bold ideas to life.How to join the Student Ambassadors program
14/04/2026
Building Real-Time Speech Translation with AI Avatars with Azure Speech Services
We can use Azure Speech Translation and Avatar to address this: a speaker talks in one language, and listeners watch an AI avatar deliver the translated speech in their chosen language.In this blog, we will discuss a sample implementation that used Azure Speech, Translation and Avatar capabilities.📚 Ready to build your own real-time translation avatar application?
14/04/2026
Meet video recap: a new way to revisit key moments in Teams meetings
I am Anqi Chen, a Senior Product Manager on the Microsoft Teams team.Meet video recap: a new way to revisit key moments in Teams meetings To enable your Teams client for the Public Preview, IT administrators must enable Show preview features in their update policy.
14/04/2026
From Ignite Momentum to Build Readiness: How Communities Turn Announcements into Action
Through MVP-led initiatives, community leaders across the globe transformed Ignite announcements into local, hands-on learning experiences.Across Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America, MVPs and community organizers stepped up.These shared experiences are now shaping how local leaders prepare their communities for the next wave of announcements at Microsoft Build.
14/04/2026
Minecraft Education Lesson Plans in Teach: AI-powered lesson planning meets the world of Minecraft
Minecraft Education lesson plans are now generally available in Teach.Every generated Minecraft Education lesson plan includes:Minecraft Education lesson plans in Teach make it easier to create experiences by generating a complete, customized lesson from your topic and standards, with the Minecraft-specific materials, activities, and preparation guidance built in.
14/04/2026
Win Agent 365 Conversations with Facts, Not Assumptions
Many organizations still begin deployment planning without a complete readiness baseline: no trusted inventory of active agents, no clear governance ownership model, and no consolidated view of security controls.The challenge: limited agent inventory visibility, governance uncertainty, and security ambiguity.Agent 365 provides a control-plane model for managing agents at enterprise scale.
14/04/2026
W3C Web of Things (WoT) support in Azure IoT Operations
Azure IoT Operations is Microsoft’s edge platform for running IoT services on Kubernetes via Azure Arc.W3C Web of Things (WoT) standardizes machine-readable descriptions of an asset’s interface via a “Thing Model.”We’re announcing a key step toward open, model-driven interoperability in Azure IoT Operations: W3C Web of Things (WoT) is now a first-class modeling input for developer workflows, backed by the Azure IoT Operations SDKs and the code generation (codegen) v2 toolchain.
14/04/2026
Apply sensitivity labels with custom permissions in Office for the web
We’re excited to announce that support for applying sensitivity labels with user-defined permissions is now rolling out in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for the web.This feature enables organizations using sensitivity labels configured in the Microsoft Purview portal with encryption and user-defined permissions to apply these labels and manage permissions directly in the web versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.The licensing requirements for applying sensitivity labels with user-defined permissions in the Office web apps is that same as for using sensitivity labels that apply encryption in the Office desktop apps. For more information on licensing requirements, see Microsoft 365 licensing guidance for security & compliance.
14/04/2026
Continuity-of-care, clinically governed AI, and building on Microsoft Azure
In this installment of our Partner Spotlight series, we’re highlighting a partner building secure, scalable solutions on Microsoft Azure and delivering transactable offers on Microsoft Marketplace.I connected with Darren Booker, Founder and CEO of Tali Health, to learn how their clinically governed AI platform helps extend care beyond the clinic while keeping providers in control.[DB] Tali Health is a continuity-of-care platform that uses clinically governed AI to extend clinician-guided care beyond the walls of the clinic.
14/04/2026
Monitoring Azure SQL Data Sync Errors Using PowerShell
Azure SQL Data Sync is a powerful service that enables data synchronization between multiple databases across Azure SQL Database and on‑premises SQL Server environments.However, one of the most common operational challenges faced by support engineers and customers using Azure SQL Data Sync is:In this blog, we’ll walk through how to monitor Azure SQL Data Sync activity and detect synchronization errors using Azure PowerShell commands.
14/04/2026
F5, ProsperOps, and SoftGroup deliver transactable offers in Microsoft Marketplace.
Microsoft partners like F5, ProsperOps, and SoftGroup deliver transact-capable offers, which allow you to purchase directly from Microsoft Marketplace.F5 NGINXaaS for Microsoft Azure: Unlock advanced programmability, streamlined automation, and robust application delivery services (ADC) with F5 NGINXaaS for Microsoft Azure.Built on Microsoft Azure, the platform automates regulatory data exchange, reporting, and validation for pharmaceutical manufacturers.
14/04/2026
Simplifying Image Classification with Azure AutoML for Images: A Practical Guide
Azure AutoML for Images is a game-changer in the computer vision space.It’s a feature within Azure Machine Learning that automatically builds high-quality vision models from your image data with minimal code.The repository includes a third notebook demonstrating how to export your trained model to ONNX (Open Neural Network Exchange) format for edge deployment.
14/04/2026
NVIDIA and the University of Maryland Researchers Released Audio Flamingo Next (AF-Next): A Super Powerful and Open Large Audio-Language Model
While image-language models have rapidly scaled toward real-world deployment, building open models that robustly reason over speech, environmental sounds, and music — especially at length — has remained quite hard.NVIDIA and the University of Maryland researchers are now taking a direct swing […]The post NVIDIA and the University of Maryland Researchers Released Audio Flamingo Next (AF-Next): A Super Powerful and Open Large Audio-Language Model appeared first on MarkTechPost.
14/04/2026
From CI/CD to Continuous AI: The Future of GitHub Automation
For over a decade, CI/CD (Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment) has been the backbone of modern software engineering.This new paradigm is not just about automating pipelines—it’s about building self-improving, intelligent systems that can analyze, decide, and act with minimal human intervention.The Evolution: From CI to CI/CD to Continuous AI
14/04/2026
Google ADK Multi-Agent Pipeline Tutorial: Data Loading, Statistical Testing, Visualization, and Report Generation in Python
In this tutorial, we build an advanced data analysis pipeline using Google ADK and organize it as a practical multi-agent system for real analytical work.We set up the environment, configure secure API access, create a centralized data store, and define specialized tools for loading data, exploring datasets, running statistical tests, transforming tables, generating visualizations, […]The post Google ADK Multi-Agent Pipeline Tutorial: Data Loading, Statistical Testing, Visualization, and Report Generation in Python appeared first on MarkTechPost.
14/04/2026
Google AI Research Proposes Vantage: An LLM-Based Protocol for Measuring Collaboration, Creativity, and Critical Thinking
Standardized tests can tell you whether a student knows calculus or can parse a passage of text.These are the so-called durable skills — collaboration, creativity, […]The post Google AI Research Proposes Vantage: An LLM-Based Protocol for Measuring Collaboration, Creativity, and Critical Thinking appeared first on MarkTechPost.
14/04/2026
Microsoft Purview Referential Architecture Diagrams
The Microsoft Purview architecture diagrams provide a referential view of how data classification, sensitivity labeling, Data Loss Prevention (DLP) and Insider Risk operate across Microsoft 365 workloads.Rather than prescribing a single deployment model, the diagrams illustrate common architectural patterns used to protect sensitive data across endpoints, email, and collaboration services.This diagram illustrates how Microsoft Purview enforces DLP when users access managed applications from unmanaged devices or personal browsers. It highlights how organisations can reduce data exfiltration risk without blocking access entirely.
13/04/2026
Govern AI Agents on App Service with the Microsoft Agent Governance Toolkit
In December 2025, OWASP published the Top 10 for Agentic Applications — the first formal taxonomy of risks specific to autonomous AI agents, including goal hijacking, tool misuse, identity abuse, memory poisoning, and rogue agents.The Agent Governance Toolkit is an open-source project (MIT license) from Microsoft that brings runtime security governance to autonomous AI agents.With the Agent Governance Toolkit and Azure App Service, you can add production governance to your agents today.
13/04/2026
Quality and evaluation framework for successful AI apps and agents on Microsoft Marketplace
Why quality in AI is different — and why it matters for MarketplaceAI apps and agents that can demonstrate quality — with documented evaluation frameworks, defined release criteria, and evidence of ongoing measurement — are easier to evaluate, trust, and adopt.The next posts in this series explore what comes after the framework is in place: API resilience, performance optimization, and operational observability for AI apps and agents running in production environments.
13/04/2026
Now in Foundry: Microsoft Harrier and NVIDIA EGM-8B
Microsoft Research's harrier-oss-v1-0.6b from achieves state-of-the-art results on the Multilingual MTEB v2 embedding benchmark at 0.6B parameters through contrastive learning and knowledge distillation. NVIDIA's EGM-8B scores 91.4 average IoU on the RefCOCO visual grounding benchmark by training a small Vision Language Model (VLM) with reinforcement learning to match the output quality of much larger models.State-of-the-art on Multilingual MTEB v2 from Microsoft Research: harrier-oss-v1-0.6b is a new embedding model released by Microsoft Research, achieving a 69.0 score on the Multilingual MTEB v2 (Massive Text Embedding Benchmark) leaderboard—placing it at the top of its size class at release.
13/04/2026
How to Implement Tool Calling with Gemma 4 and Python
The open-weights model ecosystem shifted recently with the release of the
13/04/2026
Want to get more out of Microsoft Copilot Chat without adding another tool—or cost—to your stack?
Microsoft has released a free Copilot Chat learning pathway that helps users quickly build practical, everyday skills using Copilot Chat already built into Microsoft 365 apps.Even better, Copilot Chat is now available to users without a paid Microsoft 365 license, making this learning opportunity widely accessible.In under an hour, you’ll learn how to:
13/04/2026
Cascading Read Replicas Now Generally Available!
We’re excited to announce the General Availability of cascading read replicas in Azure Database for PostgreSQL.This capability allows you to create read replicas for your Azure Database for PostgreSQL instance not only from a primary server, but also from existing read replicas, enabling multi‑level replication chains.Cascading read replicas in Azure Database for PostgreSQL offer a scalable way to distribute your read traffic across the same and different regions, reducing the read workload on primary database.
13/04/2026
A Step-by-Step Coding Tutorial on NVIDIA PhysicsNeMo: Darcy Flow, FNOs, PINNs, Surrogate Models, and Inference Benchmarking
In this tutorial, we implement NVIDIA PhysicsNeMo on Colab and build a practical workflow for physics-informed machine learning.We start by setting up the environment, generating data for the 2D Darcy Flow problem, and visualizing the physical fields to clearly understand the learning task.The post A Step-by-Step Coding Tutorial on NVIDIA PhysicsNeMo: Darcy Flow, FNOs, PINNs, Surrogate Models, and Inference Benchmarking appeared first on MarkTechPost.