Field notes from the edge.
What our engineers learned this week. Hands-on technical deep-dives, postmortems, and strategy frameworks.
The Platform Behind the Next AI Breakthrough
This article has been written and paid for by Microsoft. The content is not WIRED editorial content. The content does not necessarily reflect the views of WIRED, its affiliates, or owner, and does not reflect any endorsement direct or indirect of Microsoft, its affiliates, or other clients. The next frontier of AI is coming into focus as agents take on longer, more strategic wo
Introducing the Microsoft Copilot harness in Foundry Agent Service
A model can reason about a task. Completing that task takes more: the right context, tools, execution environment, and controls, and an agent loop that brings them together. Microsoft’s unified harness strategy brings a shared execution foundation across our agent experiences while preserving customer choice. In Microsoft Foundry, that means you can choose a supported model and
Azure Cloud HSM Hardware Audit Logging: Verifiable audit trails for security and compliance
Organizations running regulated and security-sensitive workloads need trusted evidence of which authenticated users performed management operations on their hardware security modules (HSMs), what actions they took, and when. Today, we are announcing Hardware Audit Logging for Azure Cloud HSM , which collects audit records generated by the HSM itself for supported management ope
Scale reservoir uncertainty analysis with agile reservoir modeling
Turn subsurface uncertainty into decision-ready insight Drilling campaigns are among the most expensive and operationally complex activities in the energy industry. Rigs, crews, equipment, and logistics are scheduled months in advance, leaving little room for delay. Every hour of downtime can carry significant costs. Geoscientists and engineers rely on reservoir models to under
Advancing digital sovereignty with greater control and choice
Across my conversations with leaders in government, critical infrastructure and regulated industries, one priority consistently rises to the top: putting technology to work on their most important systems while maintaining the control those systems require. This challenge is becoming more important as advanced cloud and AI capabilities move into public services, regulated proce
Managing open-weight model risk in enterprise deployments
The growing AI landscape is giving enterprises more choice in how they build, customize, and deploy increasingly capable models. Open-weight models are an important part of that landscape. They give enterprises access to model weights and greater flexibility to inspect, evaluate, modify, and run models within their own environments. While that flexibility can be valuable, it al
Designing for sovereign AI: A shared foundation from edge to cloud
As organizations apply AI to more business-critical and data-intensive workloads, AI processing is moving closer to where data is created, decisions are made, and operations take place. Manufacturers can analyze confidential production data next to the systems that generate it. Pharmaceutical companies can apply AI to clinical trials within controlled environments. Government a
Microsoft named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Server Virtualization Platforms
We’re proud to share that Microsoft has been named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Server Virtualization Platforms . We believe this recognition comes at an important moment for enterprise infrastructure. The question is no longer simply which hypervisor to run. It is how to create a consistent operating model across cloud, datacenter, edge, and sovereign envi
Evolving the cloud-native foundation for the next generation of AI
Building a cloud-native foundation for AI The relationship between model innovation and AI infrastructure has never been more clear; as AI becomes more capable, the platform underneath it matters even more. Agents are fundamentally changing how applications work, and with that, what organizations need from the cloud. Learn how to build a cloud-native AI foundation Cloud-native
Infrastructure for the frontier era: Scaling intelligence through open industry collaboration
At Microsoft, our vision is to build a Frontier Firm : one where people and technology work together, combining human expertise, context, and judgment with technology that can extend intelligence throughout everyday work. The potential is significant: helping people create, solve complex problems, and make progress on some of society’s most consequential challenges. But realizi
Advancing hardware security with open-source Integrated HSM technology
At this year’s OCP Global Summit , Microsoft announced Project Tessera, the evolution of the Azure Integrated Hardware Security Module (HSM), into a fully open-source initiative developed in collaboration with Marvell®, Oracle, and Open Compute Project (OCP) . Project Tessera advances our broader commitment to open, industrywide standards for platform security. The motivation b
Deep dive into Azure Maia 300 architecture
From its inception, Azure Maia has been built around a single architectural philosophy: optimize the entire system for LLM inference so that every watt and every dollar delivers more intelligence. Now in its third generation , Maia 300 is the fullest expression of that philosophy. Maia 300 is built as a complete system, with software, silicon, physical rack infrastructure, netw
Microsoft named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Global Industrial AIoT Platforms
We’re proud to share that Microsoft has been named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Global Industrial AIoT Platforms. We believe this recognition reflects our vision for the future of industrial operations: moving toward intelligent systems that continuously learn, adapt, and improve business outcomes. Read the full 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Global Indu
AI transformation across the infrastructure lifecycle: From supply chain to fleet operations
AI infrastructure is a system, and every part of that system is connected. Decisions made in silicon and systems design influence how infrastructure is sourced, deployed, and operated across the fleet. And what we learn once that hardware is running can inform what we build next. This feedback matters because the system never stands still. Demand shifts, component constraints e
Responsible infrastructure at hyperscale: Managing the full lifecycle of Azure hardware
Every new generation of cloud infrastructure creates two jobs. We must deploy more capable systems quickly, and we must manage the hardware they replace responsibly. Even though these jobs happen behind the scenes, the results matter to Microsoft Azure customers. Newer systems deliver more compute capacity from the space and power available in a datacenter. At the same time, th
FabCon and SQLCon 2026 in Barcelona: Building the data foundation for Microsoft Copilot and agents
In this article Enabling Frontier Transformation with Microsoft Copilot and Microsoft Fabric The next evolution of Power BI: Agentic app creation Move from idea to production faster with Fabric Apps Building an AI-ready data foundation with Microsoft Fabric Create and manage agents in Fabric Operate Fabric with greater visibility and control Manage, optimize, and scale your dat
SQL Server on Azure Local is now generally available
Some of the world’s most critical databases run in places where cloud connectivity cannot be assumed. A remote industrial site, for example, may need production systems to continue operating when external connectivity is unavailable. A regulated organization may need sensitive data and processing to remain within sovereign boundaries. Today, SQL Server on Azure Local is general
Ship agents faster with expanded model choice, voice agents, and continuous optimization
The best model for your business will keep changing. Adopting it should move your business forward, not send your team back to rebuild the architecture around it. As models advance, organizations need the freedom to choose the right model for each workload, and an agent foundation that can evolve with those choices. Microsoft Foundry provides that model—and harness—agnostic fou
Designing agent-first platforms: What changes when agents do the work
For decades, applications have been designed to wait. A user clicks, a request arrives, code runs, a response goes back. And we got very good at this. We learned to forecast traffic, scale on demand, wrap everything in enterprise controls, and run it all with the operational discipline that keeps critical business systems available around the clock. That model is being turned o