Announcing the availability of Azure Databricks connector in Azure AI Foundry
At Microsoft, Databricks Data Intelligence Platform is available as a fully managed, native, first party Data and AI solution called Azure Databricks. This makes Azure the optimal cloud for running Databricks workloads. Because of our unique partnership, we can bring you seamless integrations leveraging the power of the entire Microsoft ecosystem to do more with your data. Azure AI Foundry is an integrated platform for Developers and IT Administrators to design, customize, and manage AI applications and agents. Today we are excited to announce the public preview of the Azure Databricks connector in Azure AI Foundry. With this launch you can build enterprise-grade AI agents that reason over real-time Azure Databricks data while being governed by Unity Catalog. These agents will also be enriched by the responsible AI capabilities of Azure AI Foundry. Here are a few ways this seamless integration can benefit you and your organization: Native Integration: Connect to Azure Databricks AI/BI Genie from Azure AI Foundry Contextual Answers: Genie agents provide answers grounded in your unique data Supports Various LLMs: Secure, authenticated data access Streamlined Process: Real-time data insights within GenAI apps Seamless Integration: Simplifies AI agent management with data governance Multi-Agent workflows: Leverages Azure AI agents and Genie Spaces for faster insights Enhanced Collaboration: Boosts productivity between business and technical users To further democratize the use of data for those in your organization aren't directly interacting with Azure Databricks, you can also take it one step further with Microsoft Teams and AI/BI Genie. AI/BI Genie enables you to get deep insights from your data using your natural language without needing to access Azure Databricks. Here you see an example of what an agent built in AI Foundry using data from Azure Databricks available in Microsoft Teams looks like We'd love to hear your feedback as you use the Azure Databricks connector in AI Foundry. Try it out today – to help you get started, we’ve put together some samples here.Power BI & Azure Databricks: Smarter Refreshes, Less Hassle
We are excited to extend the deep integration between Azure Databricks and Microsoft Power BI with the Public Preview of the Power BI task type in Azure Databricks Workflows. This new capability allows users to update and refresh Power BI semantic models directly from their Azure Databricks workflows, ensuring real-time data updates for reports and dashboards. By leveraging orchestration and triggers within Azure Databricks Workflows, organizations can improve efficiency, reduce refresh costs, and enhance data accuracy for Power BI users. Power BI tasks seamlessly integrate with Unity Catalog in Azure Databricks, enabling automated updates to tables, views, materialized views, and streaming tables across multiple schemas and catalogs. With support for Import, DirectQuery, and Dual Storage modes, Power BI tasks provide flexibility in managing performance and security. This direct integration eliminates manual processes, ensuring Power BI models stay synchronized with underlying data without requiring context switching between platforms. Built into Azure Databricks Lakeflow, Power BI tasks benefit from enterprise-grade orchestration and monitoring, including task dependencies, scheduling, retries, and notifications. This streamlines workflows and improves governance by utilizing Microsoft Entra ID authentication and Unity Catalog suite of security and governance offerings. We invite you to explore the new Power BI tasks today and experience seamless data integration—get started by visiting the [ADB Power BI task documentation].Anthropic State-of-the-Art Models Available to Azure Databricks Customers
Our customers now have greater model choices with the arrival of Anthropic Claude 3.7 Sonnet in Azure Databricks. Databricks is announcing a partnership with Anthropic to integrate their state-of-the-art models into Databricks Data Intelligence Platform as a native offering, starting with Claude 3.7 Sonnet http://databricks.com/blog/anthropic-claude-37-sonnet-now-natively-available-databricks. With this announcement, Azure customers can use Claude Models directly in Azure Databricks. Foundation model REST API reference - Azure Databricks | Microsoft Learn With Anthropic models available in Azure Databricks, customers can use the Claude "think" tool with business data optimized promote to guide Claude efficiently perform complex tasks. With Claude models in Azure Databricks, enterprises can deliver domain-specific, high quality AI agents more efficiently. As an integrated component of the Azure Databricks Data Intelligence Platform, Anthropic Claude models benefit from comprehensive end-to-end governance and monitoring throughout the entire data and AI lifecycle with Unity Catalog. With Claude models, we remain committed to providing customers with model flexibility. Through the Azure Databricks Data Intelligence Platform, customers can securely connect to any model provider and select the most suitable model for their needs. They can further enhance these models with enterprise data to develop domain-specific, high-quality AI agents, supported by built-in custom evaluation governance across both data and models.Azure Stream Analytics Virtual Network Integration Goes GA!
We are thrilled to announce that the highly anticipated capability of running your Azure Stream Analytics (ASA) job in an Azure Virtual Network (VNET) is now generally available (GA)! This feature, which has been in public preview, is set to revolutionize how you secure and manage your ASA jobs by leveraging the power of virtual networks. What Does This Mean for You? With VNET integration, you can now lock down access to your ASA jobs within your virtual network infrastructure. This provides enhanced security through network isolation, ensuring that your data remains protected and accessible only within your private network. By deploying a containerized instance of your ASA job inside your VNET, you can privately access your resources using: Private Endpoints: These allow you to connect your VNET-injected ASA job to your data sources privately via Azure Private Link. This means that your data traffic remains within the Azure backbone network, reducing exposure to the public internet and enhancing security. Service Endpoints: These enable you to connect your data sources directly to your VNET-injected ASA job. This simplifies the network architecture by providing direct connectivity. Service Tags: These allow you to manage network security by defining rules that allow or deny traffic to Azure Stream Analytics. This helps in maintaining a secure environment by controlling which services can communicate with your ASA jobs. Overall, VNET integration enhances the security of your ASA jobs by leveraging Azure's robust networking features. Expanded Regional Availability We are also excited to announce that this capability is now available in additional regions! Along with the existing regions (West US, Central Canada, East US, East US 2, Central US, West Europe, and North Europe), you can now enable VNET integration in the following regions: Australia East France Central North-Central US Southeast Asia Brazil South Japan East UK South Central India These regions were added in response to customer feedback. If you have suggestions for additional regions, please complete this form: https://forms.office.com/r/NFKdb3W6ti?origin=lprLink This expansion ensures that more customers around the globe can benefit from the enhanced security and network isolation provided by VNET integration. Getting Started To get started with VNET integration for your ASA jobs, follow these steps: Set Up Your VNET: Create or use an existing Azure Virtual Network. Create a Subnet: Add a dedicated subnet for your ASA job within the VNET. Set Up Azure NAT Gateway or disable outbound connectivity: Enhance security and reliability by setting up an Azure NAT Gateway or disable default outbound connectivity. Associate a Storage Account: Ensure you have a General Purpose V2 (GPV2) Storage account linked to your ASA job. Configure Your ASA Job: Azure Portal: Go to Networking and select "Run this job in virtual network." Follow the prompts to configure and save. Visual Studio Code: In the 'JobConfig.json' file, set up the 'VirtualNetworkConfiguration' to reference the subnet. Check Permissions: Make sure you have the necessary Role-based access control permissions on the subnet or higher. For detailed instructions and requirements, refer to the official documentation Run your Stream Analytics in Azure virtual network - Azure Stream Analytics | Microsoft Learn. Join the Revolution Stay tuned for more updates and exciting features as we continue to innovate and improve Azure Stream Analytics. Our other Ignite releases include Azure Stream Analytics Kafka Connectors is Now Generally Available! If you have any questions or need assistance, feel free to reach out to us at askasa@microsoft.com. Happy streaming!Revolutionizing Data Intelligence: Azure Databricks Updates
Data Intelligence Platform in Azure Databricks is revolutionizing the Data and AI landscape. This fully managed service, which is built on Lakehouse architecture supported by Delta Lake, and is integrated with Microsoft Azure cloud capabilities, streamlines data, analytics, and AI initiatives by removing infrastructure concerns. The close partnership between Databricks and Microsoft enhances this integration, enabling users to focus on their data and AI goals and makes Azure the optimal public cloud for Databricks.Announcing Mosaic AI Vector Search General Availability in Azure Databricks
Today, at Microsoft Build, we are thrilled to announce the general availability of Mosaic AI Vector Search in Azure Databricks. Vector Search is a serverless vector database that helps customers build high-quality Generative AI applications using Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG). With its native integration in Azure Databricks, Vector Search supports automatic data synchronization from source to index, eliminating complex and costly pipeline maintenance. It also leverages the same security and data governance tools organizations have already built for peace of mind.AI/ML ModelOps is a Journey. Get Ready with SAS® Viya® Platform on Azure
Do you want easy answers to following set of questions? Then this article is for you. How many AI/ML models do we have? Where are they stored/inventoried? When was each model updated? By whom? How? Who manages our models? Are the right models being used in production? How do we know? What effort is needed to deploy models? Who’s responsible? Are there documented processes? How long does a model take to be deployed? How old is the data it was trained on? Is the data clean and trustworthy? How are models performing? How do we compare different models for the same use case over time? Does IT work with our analytics teams to create development environments that make it possible to create models that can be easily deployed?
