Jessica Hawk delivers a complete breakdown of all Azure announcements from Microsoft Ignite 2025, covering AI, data, security, and infrastructure advances set to redefine the intelligent cloud landscape.

Azure at Microsoft Ignite 2025: All the Intelligent Cloud News Explained

By Jessica Hawk

At Microsoft Ignite 2025, Azure unveiled a comprehensive set of innovations empowering organizations to build, scale, and secure intelligent applications. Here’s a breakdown of the key announcements and what they mean for your technology strategy.

TL;DR – Ignite Highlights

  • Enterprise AI agents: Microsoft Fabric IQ, Foundry IQ, and Agent Factory make it simpler to create and scale AI agents with enterprise context.
  • Modern data services: Launch of HorizonDB, Azure DocumentDB, and SQL Server 2025, alongside integration with Microsoft Fabric and SAP BDC Connect.
  • Integrated security & DevSecOps: Built-in support for Defender for Cloud, GitHub Advanced Security, Foundry Control Plane, and Entra Agent ID.
  • Next-gen infrastructure: Announcing Azure Boost high-performance subsystems and Cobalt 200 ARM-based servers.

Key Innovations

1. Smarter AI and Enterprise Agents

  • Microsoft Fabric IQ: Unifies enterprise data under a semantic framework for real-time action by AI agents. Leverages analytics, time-series, and operational data—all managed in OneLake.
  • Foundry IQ: Streamlines AI agent access to data sources like SharePoint, Fabric IQ, and the web via Azure AI Search; enables agentic retrieval, knowledge bases, and prebuilt APIs.
  • Agent Factory: Integrates Work IQ, Fabric IQ, and Foundry IQ, letting organizations deploy agents via Microsoft Foundry and Copilot Studio—even within Microsoft 365 Copilot.
  • Model expansion: Anthropic Claude and Cohere models now available in Foundry, alongside OpenAI, Meta, and others—Azure uniquely offers both OpenAI and Anthropic models.

2. Modernize and Extend Data for AI

  • Azure HorizonDB: New enterprise-grade, managed PostgreSQL database. Delivers high speed and scale, supports up to 15 replicas, and integrates native AI.
  • Azure DocumentDB: Fully managed, open-source NoSQL compatible with MongoDB drivers; supports search, vector embeddings, and multi-cloud deployments.
  • SQL Server 2025: Enhanced for AI-powered apps—supports advanced search, real-time insights, T-SQL improvements, and deep integration with Fabric.
  • SAP BDC Connect for Microsoft Fabric: Enables zero-copy, bi-directional data sharing for unified analytics and AI workloads.
  • Integration with Cosmos DB: Fabric now supports native transactional and NoSQL workloads in a single platform.

3. Secure and Govern with AI-Powered Control

  • Foundry Control Plane: Centralized management, real-time security, and lifecycle visibility for agent platforms; native integration with Microsoft security suite, Entra Agent ID, Defender runtime protection, and Purview governance.
  • Azure Copilot: Agentic cloud management interface for chat, command line, and console; newly introduced agents for migration, deployment, operations, and optimization, all enforcing Azure Well-Architected best practices.
  • DevSecOps Tools: Built-in integration for Defender for Cloud and GitHub Advanced Security delivers security from code through to cloud, facilitating collaboration between development and security teams.

4. Build on an AI-Ready Foundation

  • Azure Boost: New subsystem accelerates storage and network throughput for demanding workloads; supports up to 20GBps storage, 1M IOPS, and 400Gbps bandwidth.
  • Azure Cobalt 200: Next-gen ARM-based server for efficient, secure, AI and data-intensive compute. Designed for confidentiality, reliability, and scalable performance.
  • AI superfactories: Large-scale datacenters powering next-gen AI scenarios for enterprises of all sizes.

Continuous Innovation

Azure continues to converge AI, data, security, and infrastructure. These latest offerings—a blend of software, services, and hardware—accelerate organizations’ journeys to intelligent cloud platforms and AI-first solutions.

Useful Resources

Real-World Impact

Case studies like Kraft Heinz and Premier League highlight Azure’s new AI and data capabilities delivering measurable outcomes.

Next Steps

  • Explore Azure Essentials for methodologies and tooling
  • Read latest software company announcements
  • Visit Microsoft Marketplace for trusted cloud and AI solutions

Jessica Hawk’s summary gives an at-a-glance view of all critical Azure Ignite 2025 innovations. Dive into linked blogs for further technical deep-dives and practical resources.

This post appeared first on “The Azure Blog”. Read the entire article here