Microsoft Search, Ask Us Anything

Hi William. We see the differences between Microsoft Search and Azure Cognitive Service, both as persona and use case. Microsoft search enables unified search capability within the Microsoft 365 productivity apps and broader Microsoft ecosystem. Microsoft search helps users find the right answers, people, and content to complete their tasks in the app they’re already working in. Over time, Microsoft search will be available in more apps across Microsoft 365. With Microsoft search: Azure Search is a Search-as-a-Service (SaaS) cloud solution that gives developers Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and tools to add a rich search experience over private, heterogenous content in Web, mobile, and enterprise apps. Azure Search exposes functionality through a simple REST API or .NET SDK that masks the inherent complexity of information retrieval: You could further simplify to where is the data? Microsoft Search reasons over data that is in or ingested in Microsoft 365 whereas ACS reasons over data in or ingested in Data Lake or other Azure data stores. Near term, we'll offer federated search over the two so it becomes an 'and' versus 'or' discussion (I.e. better together).