-- Microsoft continues commitment to building the most productive platform for 
developers, enables developers to take advantage of the latest computing trends

On Thursday, Microsoft Corp. announced a series of new Azure services and 
developer technologies that put advanced capabilities spanning AI, mixed 
reality, IoT and blockchain in the hands of developers. The company will share 
these and additional advancements in hybrid cloud and edge computing at its 
Microsoft Build conference to empower developers. 

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"It's an incredible time to be a developer. From building AI and mixed reality 
into apps to leveraging blockchain for solving commercial business problems, 
developers' skillsets and impact are growing rapidly," said Scott Guthrie, 
executive vice president, Microsoft Cloud and AI Group. "Today we're delivering 
innovative Azure services for developers to build the next generation of apps. 
With 95% of Fortune 500 customers running on Azure, these innovations can have 
far-reaching impact."

Furthering Microsoft's commitment to building the most productive AI platform

Microsoft announced a new set of Azure AI technology aimed to help developers 
and data scientists apply AI to any solution. 

    - Azure Cognitive Services power applications to see, hear, respond, 
      translate, reason and more. Microsoft is launching a new Cognitive 
      Services category, called "Decision," that delivers users a specific 
      recommendation for more informed and efficient decision-making. This 
      category includes Content Moderator, the recently announced Anomaly 
      Detector, and a new service called Personalizer, which uses reinforcement
      learning to provide users with a specific recommendation to enable quick 
      and informed decision-making.  
    - Microsoft is bringing AI to Azure Search with the general availability 
      of the cognitive search capability, enabling customers to apply Cognitive
      Services algorithms to extract new insights from their structured and 
      unstructured content. In addition, we are previewing a new capability 
      that enables developers to store AI insights gained from cognitive 
      search, making it easier to create knowledge-rich experiences leveraging 
      Power BI visualizations or machine learning models.

New innovations in Azure Machine Learning simplify the process of building, 
training and deploying machine learning models:
    - MLOps capabilities with Azure DevOps integration provides developers
      with reproducibility, auditability and automation of the end-to-end
      machine learning lifecycle.
    - Automated ML advancements and an intuitive UI make developing high-
      quality models easier. 
    - Visual machine learning interface provides no-code model creation and 
      deployment experience with drag-and-drop capabilities. 
    - To enable extremely low latency and cost-effective inferencing,
      Microsoft is announcing the general availability of hardware-accelerated
      models that run on FPGAs, as well as ONNX Runtime support for NVIDIA
      TensorRT and Intel nGraph for high-speed inferencing on NVIDIA and Intel
      chipsets.

Expanding opportunity at the Intelligent Edge

The company introduced several new products and solutions today that continue 
to address the existing and emerging needs of hybrid cloud and edge computing: 

    - Microsoft introduced Azure SQL Database Edge to support the spectrum of 
      edge compute needs. A SQL engine optimized for lower compute
      requirements with built-in AI, the product combines data streaming with
      in-database machine learning and graph capabilities to enable
      intelligence on the edge. Because Azure SQL Database Edge shares the
      same programming surface area with Azure SQL Database and SQL Server,
      developers can easily take applications to the edge without having to
      learn new tools and languages, providing a consistent programming
      experience. 
    - Microsoft also announced IoT Plug and Play, a new open modeling language 
      to seamlessly connect IoT devices to the cloud, enabling developers to 
      navigate one of the biggest challenges they face -- deploying IoT 
      solutions at scale. Previously, software had to be written specifically 
      for the connected device it supported, limiting the scale of IoT 
      deployments. IoT Plug and Play will offer customers a large ecosystem of 
      partner-certified devices that can connect quickly. 
    - For mixed-reality development, Microsoft is making it easier to create 
      for HoloLens 2 with the HoloLens 2 Development Edition, which provides 
      the community of mixed-reality developers with access to solutions to 
      help them build and run mixed-reality experiences across a range of 
      devices. 
    - Unreal Engine 4 support for streaming and native platform integration 
      for HoloLens 2 will be available for developers by the end of May to
      create high-quality, photo-realistic renders and immersive, mixed-
      reality experiences for solutions spanning architecture, product design,
      manufacturing and more.

Doubling down on investments to empower blockchain developers

Last year, Microsoft announced Azure Blockchain Workbench, which gave 
developers a simple UI to model blockchain applications on a preconfigured 
Azure-supported network. Today's announcements take it even further.

    - Azure Blockchain Service simplifies the formation, management and 
      governance of consortium blockchain networks, allowing businesses to 
      focus on workflow logic and app development. Azure Blockchain Service 
      deploys a fully managed consortium network and offers built-in
      governance for common management tasks, such as adding new members,
      setting permissions and authenticating user applications. 
    - Microsoft also announced this week that J.P. Morgan's Ethereum platform, 
      Quorum, is the first ledger available in Azure Blockchain Service,
      giving Microsoft and J.P. Morgan customers the ability to deploy and
      manage scalable blockchain networks in the cloud.  

More than 6,000 developers and content creators will join Microsoft in Seattle 
next week for the conference to learn about the latest advancements in cloud 
and developer technologies, as well as get hands-on experience with them. 
Today's announcements give developers of all kinds new cutting-edge tools to 
create the next generation of applications for intelligent cloud and 
intelligent edge. There will be even more showcased next week at Build.

Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT" @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era 
of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower 
every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

SOURCE: Microsoft Corp.

CONTACT: Microsoft Media Relations, WE Communications, +1 (425) 638-7777, 
rrt@we-worldwide.com