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Supercharge your AI app development through cloud modernization

The advent of generative AI has ushered in a new era of intelligent applications that can understand natural language, generate human-like content, and augment human capabilities. However, as companies across industries begin to recognize the potential of AI to revolutionize their operations, a crucial first step is often overlooked: modernizing their on-premises application infrastructure.

If your organization aspires to harness the power of AI to enhance customer experiences and drive growth, cloud migration far outpaces on-premises alternatives. Many of the early-adopter customers such as H&R Block and TomTom have reiterated that what set them up for success in the AI era was the fact that they had already begun modernizing their app infrastructure on Azure. A commissioned study by IDC, “Exploring the Benefits of Cloud Migration and Modernization for the Development of Intelligent Applications,” based on interviews with 900 IT leaders worldwide about their experiences migrating apps to the cloud, threw up additional insights to connect these dots. In this blog, I will walk you through some of the takeaways.

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Modernize or fall behind: The AI-driven urgency for cloud migration

Let’s state the obvious: AI is a powerful technology, capable of creating content, code, and even entire applications. The rapid advancements in generative AI technologies, such as OpenAI’s GPT-4, have transformed how businesses operate and interact with customers.

But generative AI models, like those powering ChatGPT or image-generating tools, are data-hungry beasts. They require massive computing resources, flexible scaling, and access to vast datasets to deliver their transformative capabilities. On-premises legacy systems and siloed data stores simply cannot keep pace with the compute and data demands of modern AI workloads.

Cloud platforms provide the robust infrastructure and storage solutions necessary to support AI workloads, all fully managed by the provider. They offer virtually unlimited scalability, ensuring applications can handle fluctuating demand and deliver consistent performance. The IDC study’s key finding revealed that organizations were primarily motivated to migrate applications to the cloud by numerous business advantages, including improved security and data privacy, streamlined integration of cloud-based services, and cost savings. Additionally, the cloud’s inherent agility allows businesses to experiment, iterate, and deploy AI models quickly, accelerating innovation.

The .NET platform, with its latest version, is equipped to leverage AI in cloud environments. Developers can integrate AI functionality into their applications using tools like the Semantic Kernel and libraries such as OpenAI, Qdrant, and Milvus. The integration with .NET Aspire ensures that applications can be deployed to the cloud with optimal performance and scalability. For example, H&R Block’s AI Tax Assistant, developed using .NET and Azure OpenAI, demonstrates how businesses can create scalable, AI-driven solutions to enhance user experiences and operational efficiency. By incorporating .NET into your cloud migration strategy, you can streamline development and accelerate the realization of AI’s potential across your business operations.

Migrating and refactoring legacy on-premises applications to be cloud-optimized unlocks the ability to exploit AI services, vast data repositories, and scale compute seamlessly. This can enable your company to not only create generative AI apps, but to fully integrate generative AI across all facets of their intelligent systems and data pipelines.

Accelerate your AI ambitions in the cloud

The recent IDC study makes clear a strong correlation between a company’s desire to leverage generative AI and the realization of its full value through cloud migration. Let’s break down some key considerations:

Data accessibility: Cloud environments make it easier to consolidate and access data from various sources, providing AI models with the information they need for training and refinement.

Computational power: The cloud’s elastic computing resources can be dynamically allocated to meet the demands of complex AI algorithms, ensuring optimal performance and cost efficiency.

Collaboration: Cloud-based tools facilitate seamless collaboration among data scientists, developers, and business stakeholders, streamlining the AI development and deployment process.

Beyond just enabling generative AI, cloud migration also accelerates overall innovation velocity. Cloud platforms provide a wealth of ready-to-use services like machine learning, IoT, serverless computing, and more that allow companies to rapidly develop and deploy new intelligent capabilities into their apps.

Embrace AI in the cloud to outpace the competition

The urgency to migrate and modernize applications isn’t just about keeping up with the times—it’s about gaining a competitive edge. Businesses that embrace the cloud and AI are better positioned to:

Attract top talent: The most talented data scientists and developers are drawn to organizations with cutting-edge technology stacks.

Adapt to change: The cloud’s flexibility allows businesses to pivot quickly in response to evolving market conditions or customer needs.

Drive revenue growth: AI-powered applications can open new revenue streams and deliver exceptional customer experiences.

Spark AI-powered innovation by modernizing your cloud

To maintain a competitive edge, cloud migration must go beyond simply lifting and shifting applications. It’s about modernization—rearchitecting and optimizing applications for the cloud to unlock new levels of agility, scalability, and innovation. By modernizing your applications to cloud-native architectures, your business can:

Enhance functionality: Integrate AI-powered features like chatbots, personalized recommendations, and intelligent automation into existing applications.

Improve performance: Leverage cloud-native technologies to optimize application speed, responsiveness, and scalability.

Reduce costs: Pay only for the resources you use, eliminating the need for costly on-premises infrastructure.

The majority of respondents in the IDC survey chose to migrate applications to the cloud because it empowered them to innovate on application development and realize a multitude of commercial benefits as a result more rapidly.

Fuel your intelligent app development with a cloud-powered AI transformation

The migration and modernization of applications to the cloud is not just an option but a necessity in the era of generative AI. Companies that act swiftly to embrace this transformation will be well-positioned to harness the full potential of intelligent applications, driving innovation, operational efficiency, and customer engagement. The synergy between cloud computing and generative AI is creating unparalleled opportunities for businesses to redefine their strategies and achieve sustained growth in a competitive landscape.

By recognizing the urgency and quantifying the benefits, companies can make informed decisions about their cloud migration and modernization journeys, ensuring they remain at the forefront of technological advancement and market relevance.

Get the full rundown of the IDC’s survey by downloading the whitepaper
Exploring the benefits of cloud migration and modernization

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AI on the road: Azure OpenAI Service helps drive better decision making for the transportation sector

Since the invention of the wheel in 3500 BCE, the world has become an increasingly fast-moving place. The Industrial Revolution introduced steam-powered trains and ships, revolutionizing land and sea travel. The 20th century saw the advent of automobiles and airplanes, drastically reducing travel time and transforming global connectivity. And today, AI is supporting how quickly, and intelligently businesses can move both goods and people and there is no slowing down in sight: global AI in transportation is expected to reach $23.11 billion by 2032.1

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Azure OpenAI Service is driving change in transportation

Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service is supporting the transportation industry through innovative business applications. TomTom’s Digital Cockpit, powered by Azure, offers an immersive in-car infotainment system, enhancing driver interaction that the company claims reduces costs. CarMax uses Azure OpenAI Service to streamline content creation for its car research pages. Fraport integrates AI with Azure OpenAI Service to automate operations and assist employees, preparing for future growth despite workforce reductions, and Alstom leverages AI to enhance operational efficiency across its value chain, supporting its vision of Engineering 4.0 and improving specification quality and project management. All four mark significant strides towards smarter, more efficient transportation solutions. Read on to learn how each Microsoft customer below uses Azure OpenAI Service to improve business operations.

TomTom brings AI-powered, talking cars to life with AzureTomTom has developed the Digital Cockpit, an immersive in-car infotainment system that automobile manufacturers can customize, potentially reducing costs by up to 80%. This system utilizes Azure OpenAI Service, Azure Cosmos DB, and Azure Kubernetes Service to provide seamless control and interaction for drivers. TomTom’s goal is to surpass the smartphone experience by enabling conversational infotainment.The development group for Digital Cockpit was reduced from 10 to 3 people, and query response times improved significantly from 12 seconds to just 2.5 seconds. In evaluating 300 different scenarios, the AI assistant correctly understood and answered 95% of complex driver requests. TomTom Digital Cockpit is now available to car manufacturers, enabling them to customize the system to their brand—accelerating time-to-market and retaining brand ownership of the driver experience.

CarMax puts customers first with car research tools powered by Azure OpenAI ServiceSince its inception in 1993, CarMax has evolved from a groundbreaking startup to the leading used car retailer in the United States, selling over 11 million vehicles. To continue its trajectory of innovation, CarMax has leveraged Azure OpenAI Service to streamline content creation for its car research pages. This collaboration has significantly enhanced CarMax’s digital tools and capabilities, allowing the company to produce AI-generated content that not only aids customers in their car-buying research but also boosts search engine rankings. For example, generating summaries for 5,000 car pages, which would have taken about 11 years manually, was accomplished in just a few months using Azure OpenAI Service. This efficiency also resulted in an 80% editorial review approval rate for the AI-generated content.The integration of Azure OpenAI Service has brought substantial benefits, including cost and time savings, improved content management, and the ability to scale and deploy custom models. The service has enabled CarMax to summarize extensive customer reviews into concise, readable sentences, enhancing user experience and driving more traffic to the website through improved SEO performance. As a result, CarMax’s search engine metrics have seen an upward trend.

FraportGPT leads the way to the airport of the future: Fraport makes employees’ daily tasks easier with the help of Azure OpenAI ServiceFraport AG, which operates Frankfurt Airport in Germany and holds stakes in 30 other airports worldwide, is integrating AI to automate and streamline operations. FraportGPT, a chatbot powered by Azure OpenAI Service, is designed to assist employees across an array of different specialized areas. The chatbot helps programmers create code statements, it summarizes lengthy texts for legal staff, and it assists human resource and administrative personnel with drafting emails and documents. By utilizing AI, Fraport aims to address the challenge of a projected 30% workforce reduction due to aging while simultaneously planning for a 30% growth in operations over the next few years.FraportGPT’s deployment has been met with enthusiasm from employees, who have begun using it in diverse areas such as rental management and administrative functions, enhancing efficiency and productivity.

Alstom integrates generative AI to its business processes with Azure AI technologiesAlstom, a global leader in the railway sector, has integrated Microsoft generative AI into its operations to enhance efficiency, meet its unprecedented backlog, and improve customer satisfaction. This AI-driven approach aims to streamline processes across all stages of Alstom’s value chain—including business opportunities, contract specifications, design, manufacturing, testing, supply chain, installation, and maintenance. Since 2020, Alstom has been leveraging AI to support its vision of Engineering 4.0 and the Augmented Workforce, ensuring that employees can use AI copilots to generate engineering assets more quickly and cost-effectively. For instance, AI helps in writing specifications for railway systems, and can improve specification quality by 25% and reduce costs associated with poor-quality requirements. Alstom’s in-house AI tool, supported by Azure OpenAI Service, facilitates a wide range of business functions—including human resource, finance, and project management—with over a thousand users conducting more than 15,000 operations monthly. The tool’s capabilities in content generation, translation, and document intelligence enable massive data processing, thereby enhancing operational efficiency.

Azure OpenAI Service is proud to support Microsoft customers like TomTom, CarMax, Fraport, and Alstom in enhancing navigation, optimizing logistics, and improving operational efficiency, and bolstering better customer support, research, and project management.

Our commitment to responsible AI

Organizations across industries are leveraging Azure OpenAI Service and Microsoft Copilot services and capabilities to drive growth, increase productivity, and create value-added experiences. From advancing medical breakthroughs to streamlining manufacturing operations, our customers trust that their data is protected by robust privacy protections and data governance practices. As our customers continue to expand their use of our AI solutions, they can be confident that their valuable data is safeguarded by industry-leading data governance and privacy practices in the most trusted cloud on the market today.  

At Microsoft, we have a long-standing practice of protecting our customers’ information. Our approach to responsible AI is built on a foundation of privacy, and we remain dedicated to upholding core values of privacy, security, and safety in all our generative AI products and solutions.   

Get started with Azure OpenAI Service 

Apply for access to Azure OpenAI Service by completing this form. 

Learn about Azure OpenAI Service and the latest enhancements. 

Get started with GPT-4 in Azure OpenAI Service in Microsoft Learn. 

Read our partner announcement blog, Empowering partners to develop AI-powered apps and experiences with ChatGPT in Azure OpenAI Service. 

Learn how to use the new Chat Completions API (in preview) and model versions for ChatGPT and GPT-4 models in Azure OpenAI Service.

Learn more about Azure AI Content Safety.

Explore capabilities and solutions with Azure OpenAI Service

1 Precedence Research, Artificial Intelligence in Transportation Market Size to Reach USD 23.11 Bn by 2032, September 2023.
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Enable location analytics with Azure Maps

Imagine unlocking a treasure trove of insights from your existing data sets, that makes you look at the physical world differently. That’s what location analytics enables. Any data that has a geographic aspect to it is often called “location data” and is already present in about 80% of enterprise data. It is generated from customer databases, smartphones, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, connected vehicles, GPS units, credit card transactions, and more—this data is everywhere. Location analytics is the science of adding and analyzing layers of location data alongside your existing enterprise data to derive unique insights.  

Organizations use location analytics to create many of the experiences you use every day—like when you are booking a hotel in a different country, often hotel prices are automatically available to you in your currency. Behind the scenes, hotel companies are using location services to convert your IP address to your country and to display hotel locations on a map. This helps them to seamlessly provide the relevant information for you, enhancing your online booking experience.   

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Organizations across industries leveraging Azure Maps APIs  

With Microsoft Azure Maps, organizations worldwide are using location data to create similar applications and experiences for mobile and web to gain unique insights, solve critical challenges, and improve their businesses. Azure Maps provides a suite of location services that enable developers and enterprises to build scalable, location-enabled, and map-based experiences. 

Services available through Azure Maps APIs unlock a wide variety of use cases across different sectors. Here’s a quick highlight of few of our services and how they are being used:  

Did you know Azure Maps is HIPAA compliant?

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Data enrichment services enable adding more information to the data that you already have. The Geocoding service is used to convert physical addresses into coordinates, and to convert coordinates into addresses (known as reverse geocoding). Azure Maps Geocoding API enables users to also save the geocoded addresses for as long as they have an active Azure account, so they don’t have to reuse the service each time and incur incremental costs. Once converted, addresses can be visualized on a map using the Get Map Tiles API service for further analysis. A popular use case for these location services is in the healthcare industry where organizations use the geocoding API to convert patients’ addresses into coordinates, and then use the Map Tiles service to visualize where patients are located on a map to find the nearest health care facilities for patients. Further, certain ambulance operators are leveraging location analytics to pre-emptively place ambulances at predictive ‘hot spot’ locations to reduce emergency response times. Azure Maps is built on Microsoft Azure and is fully compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) providing healthcare companies with peace of mind when dealing with highly sensitive and confidential patient information. 

Routing services are used to calculate the distance or time required to get from one point to another. One of the most prominent use cases for routing is in the logistics industry where organizations use routing APIs to create the most efficient vehicle routes to deliver goods. Optimized routes help businesses in saving time and costs—enabling operational efficiencies. Recently, Azure partnered with Nvidia to use Nvidia cuOpt for multi-itinerary optimization. Often big logistics companies are dealing with hundreds of drivers and dropping locations and need to create a matrix of possible routes to pick the most efficient ones. With Nvidia’s cuOpt, a state-of-the-art, graphics processing unit (GPU) accelerated engine, the time taken to create and analyze the matrix of routes is reduced from multiple minutes to sub seconds.  

Weather data services provide daily, historical, normal, and actuals for any latitude and longitude while also providing temperature, air quality, and storm information. The weather service also provides valuable data to inform prediction and modeling based on current and forecasted data enabling development of applications that are weather-informed. A popular use case is seen in the retail industry where organizations use historical and current weather data to forecast weather conditions. This information helps them make informed sales and operational decisions such as inventory planning and pricing. Retailers also use weather data to create more targeted ads and promotions, improving their overall marketing campaign effectiveness. 

Get started with Azure Maps

Azure Maps is designed for compatibility, enabling you to connect with a range of Azure services like Azure IoT, Power BI, Microsoft Azure Active Directory, Azure Data Explorer, Power Apps, Synapse ML, and more. With minimal coding required, you can effortlessly enhance your applications with powerful mapping and location analytics capabilities.    

Visit the Azure Maps product page to learn more.

Explore our collection of hundreds of Azure Maps samples that have been made open source on GitHub. Build your location-aware solutions with a seamless development experience.

Leverage the Azure Maps Tech Community blog page to stay abreast of all new tools and technologies being added to Azure Maps.   

 If you already have an Azure subscription, you just need to add an Azure Maps resource to your project and use that instance to call Azure Maps APIs. Visit the Azure Maps pricing page to explore pricing options. Pay only for what you use and easily deploy your Azure Maps service into an existing Azure subscription.

If you don’t have an Azure subscription, sign up for it here and follow the steps above. 

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Docker Desktop 4.32: Beta Releases of Compose File Viewer, Terminal Shell Integration, and Volume Backups to Cloud Providers

In this post:

Compose File Viewer (Beta)

Terminal integration (Beta)

Enterprise-grade Volume Backup to cloud providers (Beta) 

Docker Desktop MSI Installer and new login enforcement alternatives (Early Access)

Docker Desktop 4.32 includes a series of powerful enhancements designed to streamline data workflows and elevate user productivity. The latest Docker Desktop release enhances the experience across development teams of all sizes and emphasizes our commitment to providing a secure hybrid development platform that enables efficient building, sharing, and running of innovative applications anywhere. 

Key features of the Docker Desktop 4.32 release include: 

Improving developer’s experience with Compose File Viewer (Beta)

Enhancing developer productivity with Terminal in Docker Desktop (Beta)

Simplifying data management with Volume Backups to Cloud Providers (Beta) 

Streamlining administration with Docker Desktop’s MSI Installer (Early Access) 

Compose File Viewer (Beta) now available

Launched as Beta rolled out to limited customers during our Docker Desktop 4.31 release, Compose File Viewer has now been rolled out to all customers. Users can now see enhanced instructions for setting up Compose Watch when launching the viewer from the Compose CLI. 

Configuring multi-container applications can be complex, so  Compose File Viewer helps developers see their Docker Compose configuration file in Docker Desktop with information about each section a click away. This makes it simpler for developers to orient on basic Compose concepts and learn to set up Compose Watch, making it easier to sync code changes into running containers. 

Check out this new File Viewer through the View Configuration option in the Compose command line or by viewing a Compose stack in the Containers tab, then clicking the View Configuration button.

These enhancements are another step forward as we continue improving Compose to help you get the benefits of containerized development faster.

Terminal experience in Docker Desktop  (Beta)

We are excited to introduce the new terminal feature in Docker Desktop. This enhancement integrates a terminal directly within the Docker Desktop GUI, enabling seamless transitions between CLI and GUI interactions within a single window. By incorporating a terminal shell into the Docker Desktop interface, we significantly reduce the friction associated with context switching for developers. 

This functionality is designed to streamline workflows, accelerate delivery times, and enhance overall developer productivity.

Figure 2: Terminal integrated in Docker Desktop.

Enterprise-grade Volume Backup to cloud providers (Beta) 

We are pleased to announce the release of an advanced Beta feature for interacting with volumes data within Docker Desktop. Building on our previously introduced Volumes Backup & Share functionalities, we are now introducing the capability to back up volumes to multiple cloud providers. 

With a Docker Business subscription, users can seamlessly back up their volumes to various cloud storage services, including AWS, Azure, and GCP. 

This new Volume Backup to cloud providers feature represents the latest enhancement in our ongoing efforts to streamline data management capabilities within Docker Desktop.

Figure 3: Quickly export data to external cloud storage.

Docker Desktop MSI Installer and new login enforcement alternatives (Early Access)

We have made it easier to enforce login for your organization and deploy using the MSI Installer, available for early access. These key enhancements aim to streamline administration, improve security, and enhance the user experience for Docker Business subscribers.

Docker is committed to helping enterprises of all sizes with enhanced Docker sign-in enforcement across Windows and macOS to help increase user logins, simplify administration, and reduce learning curves for IT administrators.

The Docker Desktop MSI Installer helps with mass deployments and customizations with standardized silent install parameters. 

Figure 4: Where to download the new MSI Installer in the Docker Admin Console.

Although these updates are currently available only for early access, they reflect Docker’s commitment to simplifying deployment and streamlining administration for organizations of all sizes. With more of these administrative offerings becoming available soon, we encourage IT teams and administrators to start planning for these changes to enhance their Docker experience.

Conclusion 

The Docker Desktop 4.32 release brings significant improvements aimed at streamlining workflows and boosting productivity for development teams of all sizes. With features like the Compose File Viewer, Terminal integration, and volume backups to cloud providers, Docker Desktop continues to simplify and enhance the developer experience. The new MSI Installer for easier administration also underlines our commitment to streamlining administration.

We look forward to seeing how these enhancements will help you build, share, and run innovative applications more effectively.

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