NVIDIA and Microsoft host Azure Percept on Azure Stack HCI Bootcamp

Amiyouss · ‎Aug 01 2022

NVIDIA and Microsoft recently completed a four-hour Azure Percept on Azure Stack HCI Private Preview Bootcamp to show our customers and partners a glimpse of how they will soon be able to accelerate edge AI with Azure Percept, Azure Stack HCI, and other Azure services that simplify AI and machine learning training and deployment at scale.

Those who took part represented 56 different partner and customer organizations, including DataON, Avanade, Neal Analytics, Arrow, and Lenovo. Below we highlight the value of the Azure Percept on Azure Stack HCI Private Preview Bootcamp best summed up by attendees:

This is one of the BEST bootcamps I've ever attended. It gave me the exact depth level of knowledge I needed and saved me tons of time from navigating, filtering, and reading hundreds of article/blog/doc links myself. Karena Li, DataON

Valuable insights from the team on where things are headed from a strategy perspective. Helps the partner ecosystem to know how to adapt and what is upcoming so we can better collaborate with key customers in the market. Edwin Webster, Neal Analytics

It's a very insightful and valuable session. Seeing multiple good relevant demands in our clients. Larry Ye, Avanade

Learned more about how the platform fits into the larger AI ecosystem, and more detail on how to talk about the solution to customers. Richard Jenkins, Lenovo

Azure Percept Overview

Azure Percept is a comprehensive, fully integrated, easy-to-use platform with added security for solution builders and developers of all skill levels and technical capability who want to prototype and create edge AI solutions and applications, in minutes. It includes hardware accelerators that integrate seamlessly with Azure AI and Azure IoT Services, helps lower development time, and reduces the time to ship edge AI hardware and software by reducing the complexity of operating the solution.

Azure Percept's fully integrated platform combines three primary components to simplify creating, managing, and securely deploying AI solutions resources at the edge, The following three components work together to create an ecosystem scale through third-party or first-party devices and applications:

Building solutions. Azure Percept Solution Development paths provides the building blocks developers need to reduce the time and complexity of creating and operating edge AI applications with solution, device, and security management capabilities across multiple device types.

Building devices. The Azure Percept Edge AI Device Development Kit (DDK) includes the software, tools, and guidance for designing, building, and supporting Azure edge AI-enabled endpoints. It expedites prototyping so device builders can quickly assemble, train, and deploy ML modules that tackle multiple outcomes, like detecting workplace hazards and shopper analytics.
Certification. The Azure Certified Device program makes it easy to discover and differentiate IoT devices built to run on Azure.

NVIDIA and Microsoft Partnership

Microsoft and NVIDIA have been long-term strategic partners with the vision to democratize AI on the edge for our customer and partner ecosystem. Together, Azure Stack HCI with the powerful NVIDIA GPU and Azure Percept form a better-together hybrid solution that allows enterprises to connect their existing on-premises assets with cloud capabilities. Alvin Clark, from NVIDIA, puts it very succinctly:

I am passionate about democratizing AI and enabling developers of all backgrounds with the tools they need to take advantage of this revolutionary technology. NVIDIA's partnership with Microsoft Percept is an important step in that direction.

Azure Percept Bootcamps are a great opportunity for our customers and partners to gain practical knowledge and empower them to strategize and accelerate edge AI solution development with Azure Percept. Jesper Hauge, from Arrow best sums up the benefits of the Azure Percept Bootcamp:

Understanding of the upcoming features and the direction that Azure Percept is taking. This gives us an idea about what direction we need to take our partners so we can prepare for this when the features are released.