Azure Updates: Generative AI expands; Blob Storage Cold Tier; Storage Mover

Microsoft General Manager Nidhi Chappell, together with CVP Eric Boyd, explored some of the recent developments in generative AI. Microsoft has rapidly expanded its AI capabilities around Azure OpenAI Service in recent months, most recently making the GPT-4 and GPT-3S-Turbo models available in new regions. To support this growth with infrastructure, Microsoft announced the general availability of the ND H100 v5 VM series with NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core graphics processing units and NVIDIA Quantum-2 InfiniBand networking. The new VMs are available in the East US and South Central US regions, with plans to scale up to hundreds of thousands of GPUs in the coming year. Microsoft touted VM capabilities such as low latency, AI supercomputing, and optimization for GPU hosting.

“We are thrilled to announce the global expansion of Azure OpenAI Service, bringing OpenAI’s cutting-edge models, including GPT-4 and GPT-35-Turbo, to a wider audience worldwide. Our new live regions in Australia East, Canada East, East United States 2, Japan East, and United Kingdom South extend our reach and support for organizations seeking powerful generative AI capabilities,” the two executives stated.

So far Microsoft customers are leveraging the capabilities in a variety of ways. Mercedes Benz is using Azure OpenAI Service to upgrade its “Hey Mercedes” feature whereas KPMG is using the technology to support its coding lifecycle.