Azure Integration Services Unveils New Features at Microsoft Ignite 2024
In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, businesses are turning to AI to drive innovation and maintain their competitive edge. At Microsoft Ignite 2024, Azure Integration Services introduces groundbreaking features that seamlessly integrate AI into your workflows, without disrupting your operations. By putting AI at the forefront, Azure Integration Services helps enterprises streamline business processes, enhance customer experiences, and unlock new capabilities. While AI is a powerful driver of transformation, modernization of your integration platforms is equally critical. Azure Integration Services delivers both, empowering your organization to modernize integrations while tapping into AI innovation. In this blog, we’ll explore how the latest updates to Azure Integration Services equip your organization with the tools and knowledge to integrate AI into workflows, modernize integrations, and create a foundation that’s both scalable and adaptable to future business needs. Future-Proof Your Business: Embrace AI with Azure Integration Services Azure Integration Services continues to transform the way businesses leverage AI, enhancing Azure API Management and expanding Azure Logic Apps capabilities across diverse environments. Support for GPT4o (Text and Images) Across All GenAI Policies in Azure API Management Our expanded support for GPT-4o models (text and image) within Azure API Management’s Generative AI policies brings AI-driven innovation to your fingertips. New features like Token Limit Policy, Token Metric Policy, and Semantic Caching Policy help businesses manage GPT-4 models in Azure OpenAI deployments more effectively. Learn more about how these policies unlock new capabilities here. Generative AI Gateway Token Quota in Azure API Management This enhancement to the Token Limit Policy gives businesses greater flexibility with daily, weekly, or monthly token quotas. With the ability to control costs, track usage trends, and optimize token consumption, you can support dynamic AI-driven innovation while staying within your budget. Explore how this drives cost-controlled AI experimentation here. AI Capabilities in the Azure Logic Apps Consumption SKU We are excited to announce the public preview of AI capabilities in the Azure Logic Apps Consumption SKU, bringing AI directly into your workflows with the Azure AI Search Connector, Azure OpenAI Connector, and Forms Recognizer. These tools enable intelligent document processing, enhanced search, and language capabilities—all essential for creating dynamic and smarter workflows. By adding AI-powered connectors to the Consumption SKU, businesses of all sizes can innovate without the complexity of managing multiple environments. Ready to integrate AI into your workflows? Learn more about these AI capabilities here. Templates Support in Azure Logic Apps Standard Azure Logic Apps makes it easier than ever to launch integrations quickly, whether you're orchestrating simple data transfers or complex workflows. With pre-built workflow templates, you can accelerate integration scenarios—reducing development time while ensuring your workflows meet unique business needs. Explore how these templates can speed up your integration process here. Modernize Without Disruptions While innovation is crucial, maintaining operational stability is just as important. Azure Integration Services ensures that businesses can modernize their integration systems without causing disruptions, even during critical migrations or cloud transitions. Logic Apps Hybrid Deployment Model For businesses with specialized integration requirements, the new Hybrid Deployment Model allows workflows to run on customer-managed infrastructure—whether on-premises, in a private cloud, or a third-party public cloud. This ensures that businesses can meet regulatory, privacy, or network demands while benefiting from Azure's robust connector library for SaaS integration. Learn how this hybrid approach can help your organization meet unique integration requirements. Premium Integration Account in Azure Logic Apps The Premium Integration Account enhances B2B integrations with higher throughput, scalability, and support for advanced security like VNET integration. This offering is optimized for high-performance, mission-critical workloads and provides the reliability your business depends on. Discover how the Premium Integration Account can power your enterprise-grade integrations here. Deployment slots in Azure Logic Apps Standard This feature is designed to enable zero-downtime deployment for mission-critical Logic Apps, allowing you to update and deploy new versions seamlessly without disrupting end users. Deployment slots bring enterprise-grade availability to your Logic Apps, making it easier to meet high availability requirements. Learn more about setting up deployment slots and optimizing your deployment strategy in our documentation. Automate Build and Deployment for Standard Logic App Workflows with Azure DevOps This release streamlines the deployment process for single-tenant Logic Apps using Azure DevOps, ensuring consistency and efficiency across environments. Start optimizing your workflow deployments today and unlock the power of automated CI/CD for your Logic Apps! For setup details and best practices, check out our documentation here. Advanced Enterprise Features for API Management In addition to AI and integration capabilities, Azure API Management continues to evolve with advanced enterprise features designed to streamline operations, enhance security, and improve performance at scale. Let’s take a look at some of the key advancements that will transform your API management experience. Shared Workspace Gateways in Azure API Management This feature allows businesses to connect multiple workspaces to a single gateway, reducing operational costs and simplifying API management. By federating API management across up to 30 workspaces, organizations can maintain decentralized control while unifying oversight through a central developer portal. This means you can innovate rapidly without sacrificing the security and scalability your enterprise demands. Start simplifying your API management here. Azure API Management Premium v2 Tier For businesses managing APIs at scale, the new Premium v2 Tier offers unmatched performance. With higher entity limits, unlimited API requests, and flexible networking options, the Premium v2 Tier supports large-scale enterprise needs, all while offering greater stability and performance. Explore the power of Premium v2 and how it can drive your organization forward. Fully Managed API Analysis in Azure API Center Simplify API governance with fully managed API analysis in Azure API Center. Automatic linting ensures your API definitions align with company standards, helping to maintain high-quality APIs while reducing manual configuration. Learn more about API analysis and how it ensures consistency and quality across all your APIs here. Synchronization Between Azure API Center and Azure API Management This integration brings together the governance power of API Center with the management capabilities of API Management, offering a unified solution for API lifecycle management. With this integration, you can now easily sync your API Management instance directly with API Center for streamlined API discovery, centralized tracking, and enhanced governance. This solution simplifies the API lifecycle, improving operational efficiency while ensuring comprehensive oversight and governance across your organization’s APIs. API security posture management is now natively available in Defender CSPM We’re excited to announce that API security posture management is now natively integrated into Defender CSPM, offering comprehensive visibility and proactive risk analysis for Azure API Management APIs. This integration helps security teams identify vulnerabilities, prioritize best practices, and assess API exposure risks within the broader application context. Additionally, it expands sensitive data discovery to include API URLs, paths, and query parameters, enabling efficient tracking and mitigation of data exposure risks across cloud applications. Empower Your Business for the Future with Azure Integration Services With the latest innovations at Microsoft Ignite 2024, Azure Integration Services ensures that businesses can move forward with confidence—modernizing their integration systems without disruption while leveraging the power of AI. Whether you're managing legacy migrations, automating workflows, or optimizing for AI-driven business success, Azure Integration Services provides the flexibility, scalability, and stability to drive your future growth. Ready to future-proof your business? Start your AI and integration journey with Azure today!GPT-4o Support and New Token Management Feature in Azure API Management
We’re happy to announce new features coming to Azure API Management enhancing your experience with GenAI APIs. Our latest release brings expanded support for GPT-4 models, including text and image-based input, across all GenAI Gateway capabilities. Additionally, we’re expanding our token limit policy with a token quota capability to give you even more control over your token consumption. Token quota This extension of the token limit policy is designed to help you manage token consumption more effectively when working with large language models (LLMs). Key benefits of token quota: Flexible quotas: In addition to rate limiting, set token quotas on an hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly basis to manage token consumption across clients, departments or projects. Cost management: Protect your organization from unexpected token usage costs by aligning quotas with your budget and resource allocation. Enhanced visibility: In combination with emit-token-metric policy, track and analyze token usage patterns to make informed adjustments based on real usage trends. With this new capability, you can empower your developers to innovate while maintaining control over consumption and costs. It’s the perfect balance of flexibility and responsible consumption for your AI projects. Learn more about token quota in our documentation. GPT4o support GPT-4o integrates text and images in a single model, enabling it to handle multiple content types simultaneously. Our latest release enables you take advantage of the full power of GPT-4o with expanded support across all GenAI Gateway capabilities in Azure API Management. Key benefits: Cost efficiency: Control and attribute costs with token monitoring, limits, and quotas. Return cached responses for semantically similar prompts. High reliability: Enable geo-redundancy and automatic failovers with load balancing and circuit breakers. Developer enablement: Replace custom backend code with built-in policies. Publish AI APIs for consumption. Enhanced governance and monitoring: Centralize monitoring and logs for your AI APIs. Phased rollout and availability We’re excited about these new features and want to ensure you have the most up-to-date information about their availability. As with any major update, we’re implementing a phased rollout strategy to ensure safe deployment across our global infrastructure. Because of that some of your services may not have these updates until the deployment is complete. These new features will be available first in the new SKUv2 of Azure API Management followed by SKUv1 rollout towards the end of 2024. Conclusion These new features in Azure API Management represent our step forward in managing and governing your use of GPT4o and other LLMs. By providing greater control, visibility and traffic management capabilities, we’re helping you unlock the full potential of Generative AI while keeping resource usage in check. We’re excited about the possibilities these new features bring and are committed to expanding their availability. As we continue our phased rollout, we appreciate your patience and encourage you to keep an eye out for the updates.Get Ready for Azure Integration Services at Microsoft Ignite 2024
Microsoft Ignite 2024 is just around the corner, and we’re excited to share how Azure Integration Services is taking center stage this year! Whether you're attending in person in Chicago or virtually from anywhere in the world, this is your chance to dive deep into the latest innovations in enterprise integration, AI-powered automation, API governance, and much more. Mark your calendars for these must-see sessions: Breakout sessions Modernize Enterprise Integration with Azure Integration Services Date: Thursday, November 21, 2024 Time: 12:30 PM - 1:15 PM Pacific Standard Time Session Code: BRK150 Speakers: Divya Swarnkar, Kent Weare In today’s rapidly evolving digital world, modernizing enterprise integration is critical to maintaining a competitive edge. This session will explore how Azure Integration Services can streamline and automate your processes, ensuring business continuity while driving transformation. We’ll cover how hybrid deployment models seamlessly connect on-premises systems with the cloud and demonstrate how to transition from legacy platforms like BizTalk to Azure Integration Services—all while preserving your existing investments. Now that you have a solid foundation, we’ll showcase how Azure Logic Apps can integrate AI into your workflows, reshape every business process, and reinvent customer experiences. If you’re looking to modernize your enterprise integration, unlock new opportunities, and stay ahead without disrupting your business operations, this session is for you. Effective API Governance in the Era of AI with Azure API Management Date: Wednesday, November 20, 2024 Time: 3:00 PM - 3:45 PM Pacific Standard Time Session Code: BRK143 Speakers: Mike Budzynski, Julia Kasper As APIs continue to drive innovation, effective governance becomes more important—especially when it comes to managing the complexity of AI-driven workloads. In this session, we’ll dive into how Azure API Management can help you implement a robust API governance model that ensures security, compliance, and scalability for AI and other critical APIs. Learn how to leverage Azure’s powerful tools like Azure API Management, Azure Policy, and Microsoft Defender for Cloud to accelerate API development, enhance reliability, and stay ahead of evolving security requirements—all without slowing down innovation. Demo GenAI Gateway Capabilities in Azure API Management Date: Wednesday, November 20, 2024 Time: 9:00 AM - 9:15 AM Pacific Standard Time Session Code: THR509 Speakers: Nima Kamoosi, Fernando Mejia GenAI apps are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with APIs. This quick but impactful demo will show you how GenAI gateway capabilities in Azure API Management can help overcome scalability, security, and monitoring challenges in GenAI app development. We’ll demonstrate how you can configure Azure API Management to authenticate and authorize LLM (Large Language Model) endpoints, enforce token consumption limits, monitor usage, and implement load balancing—all within the familiar environment of Azure. Don’t miss this opportunity to see how these capabilities can streamline your GenAI app development. In-Person Expert Meetup at Microsoft Hub Want to dive even deeper into the world of Azure Integration Services? Join us at the Expert Meetup stations in the Microsoft Hub at Ignite for in-person demos and to ask questions directly to the product experts and team members. This is a great opportunity to engage with the people behind the solutions and get tailored advice on your integration challenges. Don’t Miss Out! Microsoft Ignite 2024 offers a unique chance to gain firsthand insights into the latest trends and solutions shaping the future of enterprise integration and API management. Register today to secure your spot and take advantage of these exciting sessions, demos, and expert meetups.Building Intelligent Workflows with Azure Integration Services: Session 2 Preview
Ourthree-part webinar series, Building Intelligent Workflows with Azure Integration Services, is in full swing! After a successful first session that covered foundational strategies for AI integration, we’re thrilled to dive even deeper into the second session: Integrating AI into Your Workflows with Azure Logic Apps. If you missed the first session, you can watch it on-demand here to learn how Azure Integration Services can transform your operations through intelligent automation. What to Expect in Session 2: Integrating AI into Your Workflows with Azure Logic Apps Session 2 will focus on using Azure Logic Apps to embed AI into your workflows, highlighting new features that simplify data ingestion and document processing for Generative AI applications. This session will show you how Azure Logic Apps accelerates AI-enhanced automation, helping you achieve more with less effort and complexity. We’ll also have live demos to bring these concepts to life! Joining us will be a special guest speaker, Mick Badran, Founder & Director of SolveIT.Today, a consulting company specializing in intelligent process automation and AI-driven solutions. Mick will share insights on the challenges and best practices for AI integration, explaining how Logic Apps can address these challenges while driving automation and business value. Here’s what you’ll learn: 1. Streamline Document Processing with Built-in Actions for AI Ingestion Discover the built-in actions in Logic Apps Standard (Public Preview) for document parsing and chunking, designed to simplify AI data ingestion using Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) patterns. Actions like “Parse a document” and “Chunk text” convert formats like PDFs, CSVs, and Excel into tokenized chunks that are compatible with Azure AI Search and Azure OpenAI, eliminating the need for complex coding. 2. Accelerate Development with Templates Support in Logic Apps With Templates Support now in Public Preview, Logic Apps offers a growing library of pre-built templates, covering scenarios from basic data transfers to intricate event-driven workflows. These templates provide robust solutions to help you start building and deploying applications faster than ever, whether you’re new to Logic Apps or experienced in enterprise workflows. 3.Leverage Built-In AI Connectors for Generative AI We’ll introduce the Azure OpenAI and Azure AI Search connectors, which bridge Logic Apps workflows with AI capabilities. These connectors support secure connections via multiple authentication methods, including AAD and managed identities, and they work even behind firewalls. You’ll see how these AI-driven tools power natural language processing, data retrieval, and document processing—transforming your workflows with minimal setup. Don’t Miss This Opportunity! Join Kent Weare, Divya Swarnkar, and Mick Badran for this insightful session, complete with live demos, to explore the latest in AI-powered automation with Azure Integration Services. Sign up now to secure your spot!Azure API Management Turns 10: Celebrating a Decade of Customer-Driven Innovation and Success
This September marks a truly special occasion: Azure API Management turns 10! Since our launch in 2014, we've been on an incredible journey, transforming how businesses connect, scale and secure their digital ecosystems. As the first cloud provider to integrate API management into its platform, Azure has led the way in helping organizations seamlessly navigate the evolving digital landscape.
Designing and running a Generative AI Platform based on Azure AI Gateway
Are you in a platform team who has been tasked with building an AI Platform to serve the needs of your internal consumers? What does that mean? It’s a daunting challenge to be set, and even harder if you’re operating in a highly regulated environment. As enterprises scale out usage of Generative AI past a few initial use-cases they will face into a new set of challenges - scaling, onboarding, security and compliance to name a few. In this article we outline a set of common requirements and provide a reference implementation for an AI Platform.
