Announcing AI building blocks in Logic Apps (Consumption)
We’re thrilled to announce that the Azure OpenAI and AI Search connectors, along with the Parse Document and Chunk Text actions, are now available in the Logic Apps Consumption SKU! These capabilities, already available in the Logic Apps Standard SKU, can now be leveraged in serverless, pay-as-you-go workflows to build powerful AI-driven applications providing cost-efficiency and flexibility. What’s new in Consumption SKU? This release brings almost all the advanced AI capabilities from Logic Apps Standard to Consumption SKU, enabling lightweight, event-driven workflows that automatically scale with your needs. Here’s a summary of the operations now available: Azure OpenAI connector operations Get Completions: Generate text with Azure OpenAI’s GPT models for tasks such as summarization, content creation, and more. Get Embeddings: Generate vector embeddings from text for advanced scenarios like semantic search and knowledge mining. AI Search connector operations Index Document: Add or update a single document in an AI Search index. Index Multiple Documents: Add or update multiple documents in an AI Search index in one operation. *Note: The Vector Search operation for enabling retrieval pattern will be highlighted in an upcoming release in December.* Parse Document and Chunk Text Actions Under the Data operations connector: Parse Document: Extract structured data from uploaded files like PDFs or images. Chunk Text: Split large text blocks into smaller chunks for downstream processing, such as generating embeddings or summaries. Demo workflow: Automating document ingestion with AI To showcase these capabilities, here’s an example workflow that automates document ingestion, processing, and indexing: Trigger: Start the workflow with an HTTP request or an event like a file upload to Azure Blob Storage. Get Blob Content: Retrieve the document to be processed. Parse Document: Extract structured information, such as key data points from a service agreement. Chunk Text: Split the document content into smaller, manageable text chunks. Generate Embeddings: Use the Azure OpenAI connector to create vector embeddings for the text chunks. Select array: To compose the inputs being passed to Index documents operation Index Data: Store the embeddings and metadata for downstream applications, like search or analytics Why choose Consumption SKU? With this release, Logic Apps Consumption SKU allows you to: - Build smarter, scalable workflows: Leverage advanced AI capabilities without upfront infrastructure costs. - Pay only for what you use: Ideal for event-driven workloads where cost-efficiency is key. - Integrate seamlessly: Combine AI capabilities with hundreds of existing Logic Apps connectors. What’s next? In December, we’ll be announcing the Vector Search operation for the AI Search connector, enabling retrieval capability in Logic Apps Consumption SKU to bring feature parity with Standard SKU. This will allow you to perform advanced search scenarios by matching queries with contextually similar content. Stay tuned for updates!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!Announcing General Availability of Shared Workspace Gateways in Azure API Management
Shared workspace gateways reduce the cost of federating API management Workspaces enable organizations to boost developer productivity and enhance API governance by federating API management. They provide API teams with the autonomy to independently manage APIs, while allowing the API platform team to centralize monitoring, enforce API policies and compliance, and unify API discovery within a developer portal. When we announced the general availability of workspaces in August, each workspace required a dedicated workspace gateway, providing a high degree of isolation for increased API security and reliability. This new capability allows you to associate up to thirty workspaces with a workspace gateway, offering the advantages of federated API management at a lower cost when runtime isolation between workspaces is not necessary. Balance reliability, security, and cost when using workspaces In Azure API Management, workspaces enable API teams to manage APIs, policies, subscriptions, and related resources independently from other teams. Each workspace requires a workspace gateway to run its APIs. Gateway settings—including scale, networking, and hostname—and computing resources, such as CPU and memory, are shared by all workspaces on a gateway. Since workspaces share gateway’s computing resources, resource exhaustion caused by a single API impacts APIs from all workspaces on that gateway. Therefore, it’s important to consider reliability, security, and cost when choosing a deployment model for workspaces. Use dedicated gateways for mission-critical workloads: To maximize API reliability and security, assign each mission-critical workspace to its own dedicated gateway, avoiding shared use with other workspaces. Balance reliability, security, and cost: Associate multiple workspaces with a gateway to balance reliability, security, and cost for non-critical workloads. Distributing workspaces across at least two gateways helps prevent issues, such as resource exhaustion or configuration errors, from impacting all APIs within the organization. Use distinct gateways for different use cases: Group workspaces on a gateway based on a use case or network requirements. For instance, separate internal and external APIs by assigning them to different gateways. Prepare to quarantine troubled workspaces: Use a proxy, such as Azure Application Gateway or Azure Front Door, in front of shared workspace gateways to simplify moving a workspace that’s causing resource exhaustion to a different gateway, preventing impact on other workspaces sharing the gateway. Get started with workspaces The ability to associate multiple workspaces with a workspace gateway will continue to release in December and January, with pauses in the release rollout around the winter holidays. If you created a workspace gateway before the new release is rolled out to your service, you will need to recreate it to associate it with multiple workspaces. Updated documentation will be released in December, alongside pricing page updates that reflect the cost of associating more than five workspaces with a gateway. Get started by creating your first workspace.
