Frontier Transformation and Azure Innovation
At Microsoft Ignite 2025, we explored what it means for organizations to move into the era of Frontier transformation. This shift is focused on embedding AI across every part of the business to improve decision-making, increase speed, and create new value. Organizations leading in AI make it foundational. They rethink processes and integrate new technologies from the start to improve efficiency.
For partners, this move toward Frontier represents a significant opportunity to lead customers into this new era. By building AI-powered solutions, connecting data for intelligent insights, and deploying Microsoft Azure's cloud-ready platforms, partners can deliver value faster and scale confidently through the Microsoft ecosystem.
Microsoft Ignite came with a significant number of announcements, so we've gathered the Azure updates that matter most for partners.
Azure Copilot: Now in Private Preview
Azure Copilot introduces specialized agents to the Azure portal, PowerShell, and CLI. Powered by Azure Resource Manager (ARM)-driven scenarios and advanced AI models from Microsoft and partners, Azure Copilot streamlines migration, assessment, and modernization activities with data-driven insights, guided workflows, and improved governance across customer environments.
For partners, this creates a unified way to deliver intelligent automation for cloud workloads, accelerate modernization projects, reduce operational overhead, and strengthen governance through integrated agentic workflows across Azure and GitHub Copilot.
Foundry Control Plane: Now in Public Preview
Microsoft Foundry Control Plane extends Agent 365 by bringing unified visibility, security, and control to AI agents operating across the Microsoft Cloud. It centralizes policy management, lifecycle governance, and observability, offering a consistent way to manage agent behavior and performance.
By providing enterprise-grade governance and security capabilities that support safe, scalable, and efficient agent management for customers across varied environments, Control Plane empowers confident deployment and operation of AI-powered solutions.
Foundry IQ: Now in Public Preview
Foundry IQ provides a unified endpoint for agent knowledge, automating source routing and retrieval workflows through Azure AI Search. It equips agents to work with enterprise content securely and with greater contextual grounding by connecting a unified knowledge base to multiple data sources.
For partners, this creates a streamlined way to build retrieval augmented generation (RAG) solutions, link agents to customer-specific knowledge sources, and deliver consistent, context-rich capabilities that empower organizations to unlock more value from their data.
Fabric IQ: Now in Public Preview
Microsoft Fabric IQ offers a live, unified view of enterprise data and AI agents, organizing information by business concepts and using OneLake to support real-time analytics across hybrid and multicloud environments.
For partners, Fabric IQ creates a foundation for building intelligent, context-aware solutions that align to business processes, accelerate analytics performance, and strengthen governance to improve reliability and efficiency across customer deployments.
Microsoft Agent Factory: Now Available
Microsoft Agent Factory is a new program designed for organizations that want to move from experimentation to execution faster. At the heart of this program is the Microsoft Agent Pre-Purchase Plan (P3), which streamlines procurement and reduces complexity.
With P3, partners can offer their customers access to 32 Microsoft services through one flexible pool of funds, eliminating the need to manage multiple contracts or choose between platforms. This single metered plan not only reduces upfront licensing and provisioning but also supports greater predictability for organizations investing in AI innovation.
Microsoft Foundry: Anthropic Claude Models Available
Microsoft Foundry now offers Anthropic Claude models that support advanced reasoning for research, coding, and agentic workflows, all within the Microsoft unified governance and observability framework.
For partners, this expands choice across model capabilities to develop multistep agents using the right model per task while maintaining governance and deployment consistency across Azure, Foundry, and Microsoft 365 Copilot environments.
Azure HorizonDB for PostgreSQL: Now in Private Preview
Azure HorizonDB is a new PostgreSQL cloud database for mission-critical applications and modern AI workloads, offering auto-scaling storage, rapid compute scale out, advanced vector indexing, and integration with the Microsoft AI and analytics ecosystem.
For partners, HorizonDB supports the development of intelligent and resilient applications, modernization of legacy systems, and creation of high-performance data platforms designed for security, scale, and future AI workloads.
Continue the Journey
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Source: Microsoft Partner Blog