Don’t miss out: Copilot Studio advanced customization webinar on December 8
Our dynamic four-part webinar series, Agentic AI + Copilot Partner Skilling Accelerator, empowers you to harness the Microsoft AI ecosystem to unlock new revenue streams and enhance customer success. Across the four sessions, Microsoft partners can expect to learn how to apply AI tools across no-code, low-code, and pro-code scenarios to build intelligent chat and workflow solutions, extend and customize capabilities, and create advanced, custom AI functionality. Don't miss out on the third session in the series, where you'll dive into advanced customization with Copilot Studio to create sophisticated agents. The live virtual event is scheduled for December 8, 2025. Sign up to sharpen your AI skills. Register today to reserve your spot.Partner Blog | Building an AI app and agent factory with Microsoft Foundry
AI is shaping how we live and work. Its potential feels limitless, constrained only by what we can imagine. According to the Microsoft Work Trend Index, 82% of leaders say they’re confident that they’ll use digital labor to expand workforce capacity in the next 12–18 months. AI is emerging as a clear differentiator, fueling creativity, accelerating productivity, and unlocking breakthrough innovation. For organizations delivering AI-powered solutions and services, this is your moment to lead. The demand is shifting from pilot projects to AI transformations at scale, and Microsoft partners who can deliver AI apps and agents at scale will define the future of this dynamic market. According to a survey by IDC, partners with mature Microsoft AI practices outperform others in overall gross margin, 36% vs. 30%. Continue reading hereSecure migration starts with trusted cloud and AI expertise
Modernizing legacy IT environments and moving securely to the cloud are top priorities for customers today. With the cloud migration market projected to reach $1.03 trillion 1 by 2030, representing an approximate 28% compound annual growth rate (CAGR), 2 organizations everywhere seek to strengthen their digital foundations—and they expect migrations to be secure, efficient, and tied to business outcomes. This is where partners make the difference. Your expertise speeds transformation and empowers customers to realize the full value of Microsoft Azure. Why modernizing legacy IT environments is essential Modernization is critical across industries. As software and hardware reach end of support, the risk of disruption rises. Unsupported systems create security gaps and operational challenges because they no longer receive essential updates. Meanwhile, regulatory pressure is mounting. Regulations like the EU’s Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) and mandates in financial services and data management demand secure, up-to-date infrastructure to stay compliant and avoid costly penalties. Modernization isn’t just about reducing risk; it’s about seizing the moment of innovation. Modern platforms support AI, automation, and advanced data capabilities. Customers can move faster, operate more efficiently, and respond rapidly to new opportunities by updating legacy systems. Your expertise positions them competitively at the frontier of AI and intelligent operations. Continue reading hereDon't miss session two, Adopting Copilot Chat and Agent Builder. Sign up now!
Our dynamic four-part webinar series, Agentic AI + Copilot Partner Skilling Accelerator, empowers you to harness the Microsoft AI ecosystem to unlock new revenue streams and enhance customer success. Across each of the four sessions, experts will deliver practical guidance, best practices, and proven strategies for applying AI tools across no-code, low-code, and pro-code scenarios. Tune in to the second session, Adopting Copilot Chat and Agent Builder, to learn how Copilot and agents can help your business design, position, and sell AI solutions that drive customer success and revenue growth. This live virtual event is scheduled for December 1, 2025. Register today to reserve your spot.Build and connect Microsoft Foundry agents to MongoDB Atlas with new native integrations
MongoDB Atlas is a leading document database that’s rapidly gaining traction among Azure customers due to various deep integrations available across Microsoft platforms. In Aug 2025, we announced the General Availability (GA) of native integration for MongoDB Atlas — a milestone that marked a new era for developers and enterprises building AI-powered applications on Azure. Alongside this, we introduced Semantic Kernel connectors and other integrations to further enhance the developer experience. At last year’s Ignite, we announced the Microsoft Foundry integration with MongoDB Atlas to enable developers to reference vector stores. At Microsoft Ignite 2025, we are announcing the availability of MongoDB Atlas as one of the supported tools in Microsoft Foundry Tool Catalog (preview), allowing agents to connect to live enterprise data and operational systems. With the support of MongoDB MCP Server in the agent building experience, developers can now build agents that leverage MongoDB for both vector search and database operations. This unlocks new possibilities for intelligent automation and contextual decision-making, empowering organizations to create agents that are not only smarter but also deeply integrated with their operational data. Build Agents in Microsoft Foundry and add MongoDB as a Tool The goal is for enterprises to build and deploy agents quickly that can connect to their MongoDB Atlas collections. Discover MongoDB MCP Server in the Microsoft Foundry Tool Catalog Start by browsing the Microsoft Foundry Tool Catalog (preview), which features a growing list of enterprise-ready tools. Search for MongoDB MCP Server to find the landing page. Deploy the MCP Server The local MCP Server can be deployed to Azure Container Apps by following the documentation. Once hosted, copy the remote endpoint for the MCP Server. Add the tool to your agent In Microsoft Foundry, click on create a new agent, provide agent instructions and then click on ‘Tools’ Provide the remote endpoint in the custom tool option to connect to MongoDB Atlas. That’s it! Your Agent is now ready to query your databases. Access more Microsoft Foundry features Agents built in Microsoft Foundry can access a wide range of monitoring and governance capabilities. Organizations can automatically enforce security, compliance, and operational best practices. Every agent-to-tool interaction is authenticated, authorized, and monitored at scale, with unified telemetry and logging available through Azure Monitor and Microsoft Foundry analytics. This gives IT teams full visibility and control, while developers can confidently build and deploy agents knowing that enterprise standards are enforced by default. What Can Agents Do with MongoDB Atlas? Contextual Retrieval: Agents can ground their reasoning in fresh, operational data from MongoDB Atlas, supporting vector search and RAG workflows. Autonomous Database Operations: Agents can go beyond simple queries to perform end-to-end data exploration and management including creation of projects, clusters and database users while adhering to enterprise-grade compliance and security standards. Conclusion The MongoDB MCP Server integration for Microsoft Foundry is a major milestone in enterprise AI enablement. By bridging powerful document and vector data capabilities with secure, governed agent workflows, organizations can unlock new levels of automation, intelligence, and operational agility. Try the integration today Learn more about MongoDB Atlas on Azure. Try out the free cluster today! Get started with MongoDB MCP Server Link to MongoDB BlogPartner Blog | Partners leading the AI transformation: Microsoft Ignite 2025 recap
This week at Microsoft Ignite, we are defining what it means to be a Frontier Firm—organizations that embed AI across every layer of their business. A Frontier Firm is a next-generation organization built for the AI era. These companies blend human judgment with AI agents to scale faster, make smarter decisions, and deliver more value. The foundation for success for Microsoft partners begins with becoming Customer Zero. These partners go beyond selling AI. They internalize and operationalize it and bring meaningful credibility to every customer engagement. This approach builds real-world experience, insights, and transforms the partner’s go-to-market with capability and expertise that differentiates them with customers. By leading as Frontier Firms, these Customer Zero partners enrich employee experiences, reinvent customer engagement, reshape business processes, and bend the curve on innovation with AI, Copilots, and agents across their own organizations. Continue reading herePartner Blog | Securing the future: How Microsoft partners are powering AI-ready organizations
The world of agentic AI is evolving quickly. According to the Microsoft 2025 Work Trend Index Annual Report, 82% of leaders say they’re confident they’ll use AI agents as digital team members to expand workforce capacity in the next 12 to 18 months. That pace of innovation introduces new challenges. As the AI landscape grows, so does the threat surface. This shift creates a critical opportunity for Microsoft partners: to lead with security as the foundation of every AI transformation. By doing so, you enable customers to innovate responsibly and position your organization at the center of lasting trust and growth. In recognition of Cybersecurity Awareness Month, this blog post explores how you can build a stronger security practice and empower your customers to innovate safely, backed by Microsoft partner resources, incentives, and solutions. Security is the foundation of innovation Innovation without strong security isn’t sustainable. The average cost of a data breach now exceeds $4.4 million globally, and beyond the financial cost, weak security erodes trust. As Amy Webb, CEO of Future Today Strategy Group, noted in this year’s Work Trend Index, “As multi-agent systems redefine the workplace, the challenge will be to integrate and manage them securely and effectively.” When partners lead with security, they unlock real business outcomes. Organizations using Microsoft Security Copilot are already seeing tangible results, including a 17% reduction17% reduction in breaches and up to 60% in cost savings. Our own Customer Zero journey at Microsoft reinforces that security and innovation go hand in hand. When security is embedded into every layer of AI transformation, it strengthens the relationship between IT and engineering. It enables teams to co-develop solutions and deliver innovation faster while reducing risk. As a Microsoft partner, you play an essential role in helping customers build secure foundations for AI transformation. We’re committed to supporting you with playbooks, tools, and incentives you need to turn security expertise into customer outcomes. Accelerate secure AI transformation at every stage Partners who lead with security become trusted guides for their customers. Through the Microsoft Security Customer Win Formula, you can access practical resources mapped to each stage of the customer journey—from early discovery to long-term management—and position yourself as a strategic resource your customers can turn to as their business needs and challenges evolve. 1. Build trust as Customer Zero Differentiate your practice by attaining a Solutions Partner designation for Security, and further validate your expertise through certifications and specializations. Plus, achieving an MXDR verification signals to customers that you have the skills to safeguard their AI and cloud environments. Continue expanding your capabilities through the Partner Skilling Hub, where you’ll find self-paced learning paths and instructor-led training to stay current in a constantly evolving threat landscape. 2. Develop an informed pipeline with customer insights Effective security transformation starts with listening. Leverage Microsoft intelligent propensity tools to identify customers ready for secure AI adoption: SPARK: Intelligent data models that predict customer propensity for Microsoft solutions CloudAscent: AI-powered targeting for small and medium-sized business (SMB) customers Microsoft 365 Lighthouse: ML-driven recommendations for customer acquisition, retention, and growth You can also accelerate demand generation with ready-to-launch, customizable campaigns in a box tailored for Security solution plays. Partners using these campaigns are already generating high-quality leads and engaging decision-makers faster. Explore the Partner Marketing Tool Guidance for more information. Continue reading hereGPT‑5.1 in Foundry: A Workhorse for Reasoning, Coding, and Chat
Azure AI Foundry is unveiling OpenAI’s GPT-5.1 series, the next generation of reasoning, analytics, and conversational intelligence. The following models will be rolling out in Foundry today: GPT-5.1: adaptive, more efficient reasoning GPT-5.1-chat: chat with new chain-of-thought for end-users GPT-5.1-codex: optimized for long-running conversations with enhanced tools and agentic workflows GPT-5.1-codex-mini: a compact variant for resource-constrained environments Learn more here!OpenAI’s open‑source model: gpt‑oss on Azure AI Foundry and Windows AI Foundry
Open-weight models give customer decision makers control and flexibility - no black boxes, fewer trade-offs, and more options across deployment, compliance, and cost. With OpenAI’s gpt-oss open-weight models on Azure AI Foundry, you can: Fine-tune and distill the models using your own data and deploy with confidence. Mix open and proprietary models to match task-specific needs. Spin up inference endpoints using gpt oss in the cloud with just a few CLI commands. And Foundry Local makes gpt‑oss-20b usable on a high-performance Windows PC – enabling use-cases in offline settings, buildings in a secure network, or running at the edge. Check out more here!Now Generally Available: Azure Native Pure Storage Cloud for Azure VMware Solution
Co authored by: vjirovsky Azure Native Integrations enable you to easily provision, manage, and tightly integrate Independent Software Vendors (ISV) SaaS with a unified billing on Azure. By leveraging the power of Azure, Pure Storage Cloud Service offers you the same trusted Pure Storage capabilities in the cloud, without the complexity of refactoring or rearchitecting your VMware environments. You can easily discover and sign up for this via the Azure Marketplace. Azure Native Integrations enable you to easily provision, manage, and tightly integrate Independent Software Vendors (ISV) SaaS with a unified billing on Azure. By leveraging the power of Azure, Pure Storage Cloud Service offers you the same trusted Pure Storage capabilities in the cloud, without the complexity of refactoring or rearchitecting your VMware environments. You can easily discover and sign up for this via the Azure Marketplace. “We’re excited to announce Microsoft’s strengthened partnership with Pure Storage through the Azure Native Integrations program. With the service now generally available, customers can seamlessly deploy enterprise-grade block storage on Pure directly from the Azure portal. This seamless integration with Azure VMware Solution enables elastic capacity, flexible performance, and instant resizing – all while unlocking the full power of Azure’s cloud and AI capabilities.” - Scott Hunter, Vice President Product Management, Microsoft Developer Division Key Benefits of Azure Native Pure Storage Cloud on AVS Enterprise customers migrating VMware workloads to the cloud have long faced challenges with storage scalability, cost inefficiencies, and operational overhead. With this GA release, Pure Storage removes those barriers and delivers: Decoupled Scalability & Flexibility: across Compute and Storage solutions, so you pay only for what you need. Seamless Native Azure Experience: Provision Pure Storage Cloud resources via the client of your choice - Azure portal, CLI, PowerShell or SDK. Multi-Region support: Enjoy the support for your Pure Storage resource across East US, East US 2, West US 2, Central US and Australia East regions, with many more coming in shortly! Cost Efficiency: Achieve up to 40% Total Cost of Operations (TCO) savings through best-in-class data reduction and compression solutions. Streamlined VMware Migration: Simplify the transition of VMware workloads from on-premises or hybrid and multi-cloud environments onto Azure with consistent storage performance, nearly zero downtime, and minimal business disruption. Easy management: Perform all daily operations on AVS from a single VMware vSphere client directly via built-in plugin for Pure Storage Cloud Robust performance and reliability for mission-critical workloads with enterprise-grade Data protection and Data resilience support, with solutions such as Pure Snapshots and Hybrid Disaster Recovery in the pipeline. Fig 1: Pure Storage benefits of decoupled storage scalability. Why Pure Storage? Gartner report from Sept 2025 states that by 2029, consumption-based storage as a service (STaaS) will replace 50% of on-premises enterprise storage and data services infrastructure capital expenditure (capex), an increase from 15% in early 2025. Pure Storage® is a pivotal storage player among the Enterprise customers in revolutionizing the storage, management and resiliency while ensuring flexibility. From AI to archive, Pure Storage delivers a seamless cloud migration experience with one unified Storage as-a-Service (STaaS) platform across on-premises, private and public cloud, and hybrid environments. Pure has been named a Leader in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Enterprise Storage Platforms, with highest rating in Execution & Vision. An enterprise-favorite, some key customers for Pure Storage include ServiceNow, NASA, Comcast and many more! Fig 2: Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Storage Platforms, Sep 2025, Gartner Inc. Get Started with Azure Native Pure Storage Cloud Getting started is simple and fully integrated into the Azure experience. You can now start your journey quick and easy, and you pay only for the storage you use. For a detailed step-by-step visual guide, check out this YouTube playlist. Search and Provisioning the Pure Storage Cloud Resource Look for “Pure Storage Cloud” in the Azure portal or Azure Marketplace and sign up to subscribe. Select the service and create a new Pure Storage resource. Follow the instructions in the QuickStart to easily spin up your Pure Storage resource. Fig 3: Searching for Azure Native Pure Storage via Azure portal Create Storage Pools Using your Vnet and a delegated subnet to PureStorage.Block/storagePools, use the Overview blade navigation or the Action tile in the bottom to create and configure your storage pools. Fig 4: Newly created Pure Storage resource Overview in Azure portal Fig 5: Create Storage pool blade in Azure portal Connect to an Azure VMware Solution (AVS) resource Once created, you can use the Connect button up top to link your storage pool to AVS. In a few minutes, your storage pool is coupled with your VMware resource and ready to use! Fig 6: Connect AVS button establishes connection between storage pool and AVS resource Also, it automatically installs the Pure Storage Cloud plugin into your VMware resource, so you can manage everything, including the storage, from a single place, vSphere Client. Fig 7: Creation of a Datastore within the vSphere Client – this maps to a Storage container on your Pure Storage Cloud resource We’re excited for you to try out our solution! If you have suggestions or questions, contact us at azurenative@purestorage.com Resources Sign up for the service via Azure marketplace here. For a detailed visual guide on the step-by-step process to create a Pure Storage resource on Azure, check out this YouTube playlist. To learn more about the service, FAQ, and how to create your resource, check out the Microsoft docs as well as the Pure docs. Learn about how to create datastores and volumes and manage your Pure Storage here. Check out Azure Storage's blog and Pure’s press release for more excitement around the Pure-Microsoft partnership.
