Data and AI
Purpose
A Collection of resources for Microsoft practice building in the Data and AI solution area. For a view of other solution areas, please see the Taxonomy.
To contribute to the PartnerCrucible, see Contributor’s Guide.
Industry
| Source | Description | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Research Forum | Join us for a continuous exchange of ideas about science and technology research in the era of general AI. This series explores recent advances, bold new ideas, and important discussions with the global research community. | Microsoft Research |
| From vision to reality: Microsoft’s partners embrace AI to deliver customer value | For this State of the Partner Ecosystem moment, we’ll share how partners are seizing the opportunities that AI offers and making its promise real for organizations across the world | Blog |
| IDC - Business value and opportunity of AI | Microsoft commissioned a study through IDC that provides unique insights into how AI is being used to drive economic impact for organizations. IDC surveyed over 2,000 business leaders and decision makers from around the world who are responsible for bringing AI transformation to life within their organizations. | IDC November 2023 |
| The Total Economic Impact™ Of Migrating To Microsoft Azure For AI-Readiness | Forrester found that migrating from on-premises infrastructure to Azure can support AI-readiness in organizations with lower costs to stand up and consume AI services plus improved flexibility and ability to innovate with AI. | Forrester |
| The Total Economic Impact™ Of Microsoft Azure AI | Microsoft commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study and examine the potential return on investment (ROI) enterprises may realize by deploying Azure AI.4 The purpose of this study is to provide readers with a framework to evaluate the potential financial impact of Azure AI on their organizations. | Forrester April 2023 |
| Microsoft named a Leader in the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Analytics and BI Platform | Microsoft has been positioned as a Leader in the 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms. | June 2024 Gartner |
| Microsoft is a Leader in the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Data Science and Machine Learning Platforms | Microsoft is a Leader in this year’s Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Data Science and Machine Learning Platforms. | Gartner |
| Microsoft is a Leader in the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for AIS | Gartner | |
| IDC MarketScape: Worldwide General-Purpose Computer Vision AI Software Platform 2022 Vendor Assessment | Microsoft has been recognized as a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide General-purpose Computer Vision AI Software Platform 2022 Vendor Assessment (doc #US49776422, November 2022). | IDC MarketScape |
| IDC MarketScape: Worldwide MLOps Platforms 2022 Vendor Assessment | Microsoft has been recognized as a Leader in the IDC MarketScape Worldwide Machine Learning Operations (MLOps) Platforms 2022 Vendor Assessment. | IDC MarketScape |
| The Forrester Wave™: Content Platforms, Q1 2023 | Microsoft recognized as a Leader in Forrester Wave for Content Platforms | Forrester |
| IDC MarketScape for AI Governance Platforms | Microsoft is recognized as a Leader in the inaugural IDC MarketScape Worldwide AI Governance Platforms 2023 Vendor Assessment (doc #US50056923, November 2023). The study represents a vendor assessment of the 2023 AI governance platform market through the IDC MarketScape model. The IDC MarketScape looked at AI governance platforms that ensure AI and machine learning lifecycle governance, collaborative risk management, and regulatory excellence for AI across five key principles: fairness, explainability, adversarial robustness, lineage, and transparency. | IDC |
| 2023 IDC MarketScape for Worldwide General Purpose Conversational AI Software | Microsoft is a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide General Purpose Conversational AI Software 2023 Vendor Assessment. With Microsoft Copilot Studio, Microsoft brings together a set of powerful conversational capabilities, including generative AI, plugins, and custom GPTs, enabling organizations to both customize Copilot for Microsoft 365 and build standalone copilots | IDC |
| Microsoft Partners: Driving Economic Value and AI Maturity | This IDC white paper provides insight into the economic value partners realize in their relationship with Microsoft and its technology, with a particular focus on AI. Its findings highlight the revenue multiplier for partners when selling both their own services and software alongside Microsoft products, while navigating the transformational impact of AI on their customers. It’s clear that partners are bullish on the revenue growth and profitability inherent in AI and that this is the focus of their strategy and customer conversations.. | IDC |
| Prompting for for action | Prompting for for action - How AI agents are reshaping the future of work - November 2024 | Deloitte |
| Microsoft Ignite 2024 - Book of News - AI | Key announcements from Ignite 2024 in the areas of : Azure AI Foundry, Azure AI Models, Search, Content Understanding.. | Microsoft Ignite |
| 6 AI trends you’ll see more of in 2025 | Want to know what’s ahead? Here are six AI trends to watch — and how Microsoft will innovate on each — in 2025. | Microsoft News |
Partner Practice
| Source | Description | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Cloud Adoption Framework - AI on Azure | This AI guidance provides a structured approach for integrating AI into your organization using Azure. The guidance is relevant for organizations of any size and industry. It covers both generative and nongenerative AI adoption guidance. It is your roadmap for AI adoption and a central hub to find the resources you need. | Microsoft Learn |
| AI for Partner | Landing page - Get started with Microsoft AI today | Partner |
| Data and AI Partner Playbook | Describes Microsoft GTM Strategy, Solution Plays, Partner Priorities, and Key Resources | Partner FY24 |
| Microsoft AI Transformation for Partners | Includes platforms, products, resources, tools, and offerings designed to help you deliver high-performing, customer-centric AI solutions, explains how responsible AI can benefit society with our legal and regulatory blueprint for the future, and in-depth understanding of Azure OpenAI Service and further guidance for partners | Partner |
| AI Transformation Partner Playbook | No matter where you are in your AI transformation journey, the AI Transformation Partner Playbook will empower you to accelerate innovation and grow your AI practice. | Partner |
| Era of AI | With the Era of AI campaign, you can introduce your customers to the ways Microsoft integrates AI to help organizations become more productive, develop creative solutions, and drive exceptional value. As a partner, you’ll find the right information and guidance to become AI-savvy. | Partner |
| Azure Data & AI Partner Sales Acceleration Program (PSAP) | The Azure Data & AI Partner Sales Acceleration Program (PSAP) provides access to sales assets and video guidance on how best to use these in enterprise sales engagements. | Microsoft Partner |
| The data transformation game plan | Data democratization empowers employees at all levels with the necessary insights to expedite decision-making, allowing organizations to gain competitive advantage. | Microsoft |
| AI Platform Insiders Research Panel | Shape the future of machine learning platforms with Microsoft. Your insights and experiences will help us shape the future of AI Platform. Thank you for considering being a part of our research journey. | Microsoft UX |
| Building a Foundation for AI Success: A Leader’s Guide | This whitepaper will identify how to accelerate your company’s success with AI through insights from Microsoft, Microsoft customers and partners, industry analysts, and AI leaders—to help your organization thrive on your path to AI transformation. | Whitepaper |
| Guidelines for Human-AI Interaction | The Guidelines are evidence-based best practices for designing your AI user experiences. | Microsoft |
| Microsoft AI Use Case Explorer | With the Microsoft Use Case Explorer for AI Design Wins, access a curated collection of successful AI Design Wins across various industries and personas to tailor your pitch and drive growth | Microsoft |
| No Slides Attached: AI Stories with Microsoft Partners | a journey into the transformative world of AI and the Copilots helping us achieve more. We’ve designed this podcast for partners who are eager to gain insights, learnings, and inspiration from their peers. | Podcast |
| Consulting reimagined, powered by AI | Software and talent are converging to create new value. Are your consultants accelerating progress—or sticking to the status quo? | IBM |
Learning Journeys
| Source | Description | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| AI learning and community hub | Microsoft Learn is your trusted source to help you get skilled up and ready to power AI transformation with the Microsoft Cloud. Build AI skills, connect with the community, earn credentials, learn from experts, and discover upcoming events. | Microsoft Learn |
| Azure AI Bootcamp | Attend this bootcamp to learn about Azure artificial intelligence (AI) services designed for developers and data scientists to do more with less. Take advantage of responsible AI practices, decades of breakthrough research, and flexibility that Azure AI offers to build and deploy your own AI solutions. Engage with Microsoft leaders and product experts to acquire the knowledge to access and integrate high-quality vision, speech, language, and decision-making AI models through simple API (application programming interfaces) calls in your apps and services and create your own machine learning models with tools like Jupyter Notebooks, Visual Studio Code, and open-source frameworks like TensorFlow and PyTorch. | On-demand |
| Hands on with AI | Dive in to interactive demos that showcase a selection of the capabilities of the Microsoft AI platform | AI demos |
| AI & ML Academy | This academy includes 5 modules, all of which build on top of each other. It incorporates technical assets as well as best practices. We include common AI/ML scenarios that we have seen throughout various industries. The objective of the academy is to help you all move faster and build effective solutions | MSUS |
| AI and Machine Learning Partner Prep | On-demand videos - These sessions will allow your team to develop the capabilities of enabling customer adoption of AI and implementing Azure solutions for AI-powered apps and machine learning life cycles. | Events |
| Azure Data Engineer Learning Path | Learn more about Azure Synapse Analytics with videos, tutorials, and training modules. Use this 30-day learning path to grow your skills and prepare for the DP-203 Azure Data Engineer Associate Certification. | Azure Skills Navigator |
| AI: Zero to Hero in 4 weeks with Machine Learning | This guide will show you how to create the next generation of applications using Azure AI in only 4 weeks. By committing less than an hour each day—think coffeefueled morning ritual or mid-afternoon break— you’ll be able to build intelligent apps confidently with the tools and frameworks of your choice. | |
| Machine Learning: Zero to Hero in 4 weeks with Machine Learning | This learning journey will teach you how to create innovative solutions for complex problems with Machine Learning on Azure in 4 short weeks. With just an hour each day - think coffee-fueled morning ritual or mid-afternoon break - you’ll be able to collaborate and build models faster with the latest machine learning tools and frameworks. Regardless of where you are in your journey, we can propel you to the next level and prepare you for the Azure Data Scientist Associate certification | Azure Skills Navigator |
| Azure AI Learning Journey | Learn more about Azure AI solutions with videos, tutorials, and training modules. Use this 30-day learning path to grow your skills and prepare for the Azure AI Fundamentals Certification. | Azire Skills Navigator |
| Multi-Agent Framework Demos | Demos of multi-agent frameworks for multi-agent solutions | YouTube - Cozy AI Kitchen |
| MySQL Developer Learning Journey | Learn more about Azure Database for MySQL and application development in Azure with videos, tutorials, and training modules curated for MySQL Developers. Use this 30-day learning path to grow your skills and develop and deploy applications faster in Azure. | Azure Skills Navigator |
| Azure Database for MySQL Developer Guide | he Azure Database for MySQL Developer Guide is a comprehensive guide to developing MySQL-based applications in Azure. This guide contains actionable insights and proven best practices to successfully deploy cloud applications for MySQL in Azure. Towards the end of the guide, you can find links to tutorial jumpstarts, begin developing a sample PHP application, or select an evolved version utilizing a microservices architecture on AKS. | Azure Skills Navigator |
Microsoft AI Learning Curriculum
| Source | Description | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Artificial Intelligence for Beginners - A Curriculum | Azure Cloud Advocates at Microsoft are pleased to offer a 12-week, 24-lesson curriculum all about Artificial Intelligence. | GitHub |
| Machine Learning for Beginners - A Curriculum | Azure Cloud Advocates at Microsoft are pleased to offer a 12-week, 26-lesson curriculum all about Machine Learning | GitHub |
| Data Science for Beginners - A Curriculum | Azure Cloud Advocates at Microsoft are pleased to offer a 10-week, 20-lesson curriculum all about Data Science. | GitHub |
AI Red Teaming
| Source | Description | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Python Risk Identification Toolkit for generative AI (PyRIT) | Microsoft releases an open automation framework, PyRIT (Python Risk Identification Toolkit for generative AI), to empower security professionals and machine learning engineers to proactively find risks in their generative AI systems | Blog |
| Python Risk Identification Tool for generative AI (PyRIT) - GitHub | The Python Risk Identification Tool for generative AI (PyRIT) is an open access automation framework to empower security professionals and ML engineers to red team foundation models and their applications. | GitHub |
| Adversarial ML Threat Matrix | The goal of this project is to position attacks on machine learning (ML) systems in an ATT&CK-style framework so that security analysts can orient themselves to these new and upcoming threats. | Mitre |
| Counterfit | Counterfit helps organizations conduct AI security risk assessments to ensure that the algorithms used in their businesses are robust, reliable, and trustworthy. | Blog |
| Counterfit - GitHub | Counterfit is a generic automation layer for assessing the security of machine learning systems. It brings several existing adversarial frameworks under one tool, or allows users to create their own. | GitHub |
Azure OpenAI
This section has been regrouped here: Data & AI > Azure OpenAI
Small Language Models
| Source | Description | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Introducing Phi-3 | Phi-3 models are the most capable and cost-effective small language models (SLMs) available, outperforming models of the same size and next size up across a variety of language, reasoning, coding, and math benchmarks. | Azure Blog |
| Phi-3 fine-tuning | Serverless fine-tuning for Phi-3-mini and Phi-3-medium models, Updates to Phi-3-mini including significant improvement in core quality, instruction-following, and structured output | Azure Blog |
| Bringing GenAI Offline: running SLM’s like Phi-2/Phi-3 and Whisper Models on Mobile Devices | In this blog, we delve into the significance of enabling offline capabilities for LLMs and explore the practicalities of running SLMs on mobile devices, offering insights into the transformative potential of this technology. | Tech Community |
| Microsoft Phi-3 Cookbook | Phi-3, a family of open AI models developed by Microsoft. Phi-3 models are the most capable and cost-effective small language models (SLMs) available, outperforming models of the same size and next size up across a variety of language, reasoning, coding, and math benchmarks. | GitHub |
| Accelerate Phi-3 use on macOS: A Beginner’s Guide to Using Apple MLX Framework | This blog will share with you relevant knowledge, including how to use Apple MLX Framework to accelerate Phi-3-mini operation, fine-tune, and combine Llama.cpp for quantitative operation. | Tech Community |
| Visual Studio AI Toolkit | Run pre-optimized AI models locally: Get started quickly with models designed for various setups, including Windows 11 running with DirectML acceleration or direct CPU, Linux with NVIDIA GPUs, or CPU-only environments. Test and integrate models seamlessly: Experiment with models in a user-friendly playground or use a REST API to incorporate them directly into your application. Fine-tune models for specific needs: Customize pre-trained models (like popular SLMs Phi-3 and Mistral) locally or in the cloud to enhance performance, tailor responses, and control their style. Deploy your AI-powered features: Choose between cloud deployment or embedding them within your device applications. | Tech Community |
Synapse
| Source | Description | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Analytics end-to-end with Azure Synapse | This example scenario demonstrates how to use Azure Synapse Analytics with the extensive family of Azure Data Services to build a modern data platform that’s capable of handling the most common data challenges in an organization. | Azure Architecture Centre |
| Azure Synapse Influencer program | The Azure Synapse Influencer program recognizes Azure Synapse Analytics community members who actively support one another by sharing Synapse-related content, announcements, and product news via social media. | Github |
Purview
| Source | Description | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Purview Data Governance Roadmap | The roadmap describes functionality that may or may not have been | |
| released yet. | Microsoft 365 Roadmap | |
| A Guide to Data Governance | Data Governance is about ensuring that the data being used in your core business operations, reports and analyses is protected and can be trusted | Microsoft |
| Crash Course in Microsoft Purview | Crash Course in Microsoft Purview - A guide to securing and managing your data estate | eBook |
| Microsoft Purview Workshop | 16 Purview learning modules | by @tayganr on Github |
| Microsoft Purview Resource Provider Rest API | Documentation on the Purview Rest API capability | Microsoft Learn |
| Microsoft Purview YouTube | Collection of HowTo videos | Youtube |
| Build custom lineage with the REST APIs | In scenarios where the automatically generated lineage in Microsoft Purview is incomplete or missing, lineage can be custom built either manually in the Microsoft Purview portal or using the REST APIs. | Microsoft Learn |
| Report Manual Data lineage | With Manual lineage, data owners can report data lineage manually using asset curation experiences. Manual lineage can bridge the gap in coverage of end-to-end lineage, where automated lineage of the Data system is not natively supported in Microsoft Purview | Microsoft Community |
| Injecting lineage and attributes into Microsoft Purview | This two-part blog describes and demonstrates how to easily add lineage and attributes in order to improve the data consumer’s experience. | Industry Blog |
Azure Data Explorer
| Source | Description | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| ADX in a Day | One Day, Hands on workshop on Azure Data Explorer. Synapse Customer Success Engineering team is delighted to present this challenge based, discover by doing experience divided into 2 labs of 4 Hours each, a total of 8 hour | GitHub |
| When to use Azure Data Explorer | Tzvia Gitlin Troyna, Principal Program Manager at the Azure Data Explorer team, will give us a quick introduction on ADX, what it is, when to use it | |
| How to start with Azure Data Explorer | Tzvia Gitlin Troyna, Principal Program Manager at the Azure Data Explorer team, will explain how to get started with ADX | |
| Demystifying Data Explorer | Azure Data Explorer (ADX) is a high performance fully managed big data analytics platform for near real time analysis of large volumes of fresh and historical data (incl streaming data) to generate insights. It offers powerful ingestion, optimized and distributed storage, and intuitive querying capability using the Kusto Querying Language (KQL). | Microsoft Customer Success Engineering |
| Azure Data Explorer’s Twitter | ||
| Tech Community Blog | ||
| Tech Community Forum | ||
| StackOverflow | ||
| YouTube | ADX YouTube Channel |
Labs, Tools and Demos
| Source | Description | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| AI-Ready Infrastructure Design - A pattern for Enterprise Scale | The AI Hub Gateway Landing Zone is a solution accelerator that addresses key challenges by providing a centralized architecture for managing AI services within an organization. It serves as a single point of entry for AI services, enabling consistent management and governance. | Tech Community |
| Define an AI technology strategy | Microsoft AI Decision Tree - An AI technology strategy involves selecting the right tools and platforms for each AI use case you identified. Choose between software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), or infrastructure as a service (IaaS) based on your goals and technical needs. | Microsoft Learn |
| AI in a Box | AI-in-a-Box aims to provide an “Azure AI/ML Easy Button” for common scenarios within Azure ML, Edge AI, Cog Services and Azure OpenAI. Something that shows you how the pieces fit together in easy to deploy templates. Using the patterns available here, engineers will be able to quickly setup an Azure ML/AI Edge/Cog Services and/or Azure Open AI environment which optionally includes data ingestion, model training and creation, scaling patterns and edge deployments. So, if you’re seeking to shed some light into the realm of Azure ML/AI and Open AI, you’ve come to the right spot. | GitHub |
| WhatTheHack - Data and AI | What The Hack is designed to be a collaborative learning experience. Attendees “learn from” and “share with” each other. Without step-by-step instructions given for the challenges, attendees have to “figure it out” together as a team. This results in greater knowledge retention for the attendees. | WhattheHack |
| Data & AI Industry DREAM Demos & DREAM Demo in a Box | Data & AI Industry DREAM Demos are realistic clickable demos based on actual customer engagements that cover a range of industry scenarios in story form. These can be used to help both BDMs and TDMs envision how to bring Data & AI to life in their organization. The walkthrough material offers step by step guidance on how land this with customers. DREAM Demos in a Box are packaged Industry Scenario DREAM Demos with ARM templates that can be deployed in a customer’s subscription using the CAPE tool in just a few hours, enabling customers to test out the demo scenarios. | Partner |
| DREAM PoC Accelerators (DPoC) | DREAM PoC Accelerators (DPoC) are packaged Industry Scenario DREAM Demos with ARM templates (with a demo web app, Power BI reports, Synapse resources, AML Notebooks etc.). Partners can also deploy DREAM Demos in their own subscriptions using DPoC. | GitHub |
| The Full Guide to Packaging and Deploying ML Models to Production Using Azure: Step-by-Step Guide | In this blog, we will go through a step-by-step coding guide, from converting our model to ONNX format until we use it in our Power Apps application. | Tech Community |
| An Enterprise Design for Azure Machine Learning - An Architect’s Viewpoint | This Point-of-view provides an opinionated design for a “fit for purpose” enterprise data science platform, delivered with Azure Machine Learning. It covers infrastructure, identity, data and functionality, aligned to an MLOps delivery framework. | Tech Community |