Azure AI Updates

As part of a group of updates to Azure related to artificial intelligence (AI), Microsoft Azure Cognitive Search gained support for more than 50 languages for select users.

The tech giant launched updates to its Azure Cognitive Services suite, including invitation-only access to OpenAI’s GPT-3 models for security, compliance and other enterprise capabilities on Azure, according to Microsoft.

Microsoft now offers a commitment tier pricing model for the suite for more predictable costs for high-volume users instead of the current pay-as-you-go model. Microsoft will also give discounts to customers that make regular payments upfront for a set capacity, according to the company.

And Azure Cognitive Service for Language puts various language capabilities in one place, consolidating capabilities previously available in Language Understanding, QnA Maker and Text Analytics.

New Data Features

Microsoft has made various updates to Azure’s capabilities for databases and data analytics. One update includes new features for Azure Cosmos DB with the goal of making Apache Cassandra data migration easier, according to the company.

To accomplish this, Azure Managed Instance for Apache Cassandra is now generally available, with an automatic synchronization feature to allow hybrid data running in the cloud and on-premises, according to Microsoft.

All Azure Advisor users can now create alerts for throughput spending limits to control spending, according to Microsoft.

In terms of updates for Azure Synapse Analytics, a set of industry-specific database templates in the studio experience is now in preview. So far, templates for retail, consumer packaged foods and financial services industry are in preview, according to the company.

Also in preview are telemetry, time series and log data real-time analytics in Azure Synapse through a new data explorer capability. The capability gives users a dedicated query engine built for log and time series data workloads.