Azure Updates: AI infrastructure; Container management; Agentic AI models

Microsoft General Manager Mike Hulme looked at the business case for AI and cloud modernization. Dubbed Frontier Firms by the Microsoft 2025 Work Trend Index, these are organizations “powered by intelligence on tap” with combined human-agent teams and embracing scaled transformation. 

CTO Mark Russinovich explored ways to protect Azure infrastructure. Microsoft launched the Secure Future Initiative, or SFI, a company-wide commitment to security by design. As part of this new comprehensive approach, the company offers services like Azure Boost to isolate control and data planes, Azure Integrated HSM, a custom security chip, and confidential computing to protect data with hardware-based trusted execution environments. 

In a related effort, Microsoft is contributing to the open-source community with Caliptra, a silicon root-of-trust designed to support security with hardware. Additionally, Microsoft has embraced Code Transparency Services using a ledger technology, and Systematic Security Reviews.