Azure SQL becomes a first-class knowledge source in Foundry IQ
Microsoft has expanded Foundry IQ’s capabilities by integrating Azure SQL Database as a knowledge source, now in public preview. Enterprise developers building Copilot, RAG, and agentic experiences can expose authoritative SQL tables and views directly as grounding data for AI models. This solves a real pain point. Before this, getting structured relational data into an […]
MCP Toolkit for Azure Cosmos DB hits GA, standardizing agent-to-database access
Microsoft has shipped the MCP Toolkit for Azure Cosmos DB to general availability, giving developers a standardized way to expose Cosmos DB operations through the Model Context Protocol. If you have been wiring up custom API endpoints every time an AI agent needs to read or write database records, this one is for you. The […]
GPT-5.6 lands on Azure Databricks with Foundry integration
OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 is now generally available on Azure Databricks, giving developers a direct path to run the latest frontier model inside the Databricks environment without stitching together separate infrastructure. You purchase access through Microsoft Foundry, then deploy via the Databricks Model Serving Endpoint. The integration means your data pipelines, feature engineering, and inference all live […]
Claude Sonnet 5 Hits Azure Databricks
Enterprise Intelligence Meets Databricks Speed Azure Databricks has officially expanded its AI Model Serving capabilities by making Anthropic Claude Sonnet 5 generally available. This integration allows organizations to deploy one of Anthropic’s most capable models directly within their Databricks environment, bypassing the need for complex external API orchestration while maintaining enterprise-grade security. The Agentic Advantage […]
MCP Toolkit for Azure Cosmos DB Reaches General Availability
Microsoft has shipped the MCP Toolkit for Azure Cosmos DB as generally available (v1.1.2), turning your operational database into an AI-agent-accessible endpoint through the Model Context Protocol. [source] The toolkit acts as an MCP server that sits between your AI agents and Cosmos DB, handling authentication, query translation, and vector search without custom SDK wrappers. […]
Copilot Agent Mode Lands in SSMS Preview
Copilot Agent Mode Lands in SSMS Preview Microsoft has placed an Agent mode for GitHub Copilot inside SQL Server Management Studio, letting the AI work on database tasks autonomously. What this means: The preview shows Copilot moving beyond simple query suggestions to handling multi-step database workflows, executing queries, tuning performance and enforcing security under user […]
Defender for Cloud Now Covers Azure Container Apps
Azure Container Apps now shows up in Microsoft Defender for Cloud’s serverless container posture management. If you run production workloads on Container Apps, this is the kind of visibility you have been missing: misconfigurations, overly permissive identities, and exposed endpoints that do not need to be exposed. No agents to install. No sidecars. Just control-plane […]
Cosmos DB Gets an MCP Toolkit, and It Is Now GA
Azure Cosmos DB now has an official MCP toolkit, and it hit general availability this week. If you build AI agents that need to talk to databases, this is worth a look. The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard from Anthropic that lets AI models interact with external tools and data sources through […]
Network Security Perimeter Lands for Azure Event Hubs
Microsoft just flipped the GA switch on Network Security Perimeter (NSP) for Azure Event Hubs. If you run streaming data workloads, this matters: NSP gives you a way to lock down your Event Hubs namespace so that only resources inside a defined perimeter can reach it. Public internet? Blocked by default. Internal Azure services? Gated […]
Azure Cosmos DB Now Does Vector Search Natively
Azure Cosmos DB Now Does Vector Search Natively Azure Cosmos DB just made a significant move in the AI infrastructure space: vector indexing and search is now generally available. That means you can store embeddings alongside your operational data and run similarity searches directly in Cosmos DB, without exporting to a separate vector database like […]
Azure Site Recovery Now Handles 5x the Data Churn
Support 5x churn in Azure Site Recovery Azure Site Recovery has officially launched with support for up to 5x churn, empowering customers to confidently run high IOPS workloads with robust disaster recovery capabilities. The new High Churn feature expands the supported data change rate from 100 MB/s per VM up to 500 MB/s per VM, […]
Entra ID Makes Azure Blob SFTP Access Seamless for Everyone
Entra ID Makes Azure Blob SFTP Access Seamless for Everyone Microsoft just unlocked a game-changer for cloud storage security: Entra ID-based access for Azure Blob Storage SFTP is now generally available. This means organizations can authenticate users via Microsoft Entra ID, including guest accounts through Entra External Identities, to connect to blob storage over SFTP […]