Azure Updates: Serverless Compute; AI Center of Excellence; Container Apps

Microsoft VP Scott Hunter looked at the ways that customers can use Serverless Compute on Azure. According to Hunter, Microsoft was recently recognized as a leader in the Forrester Wave: Serverless Development Platforms, Q2 2025. 

He wrote about how the company's vision has progressed:

With Azure’s end-to-end serverless platform, we have moved beyond function-as-a-service to a comprehensive environment where containers, event-driven architectures, AI, and cloud-native patterns come together seamlessly.

Increasingly, the company emphasizes AI integration in every layer with native support for Azure OpenAI, AI toolchains, and serverless GPUs, as well as retrieval-augmented generation patterns and agentic workflows, Hunter stated. It supports developers with GitHub Copilot for Azure, Visual Studio and VS Code while offering enterprise-grade security and flexible pricing and hosting arrangements. 

Hunter shared the example of Coca Cola using Microsoft serverless capabilities to create its AI-powered Santa or the NFL’s use of Container Apps for its NFL Combine scouting platform.

Microsoft VP Cyril Belikoff explored ways to scale AI transformation with AI Center of Excellence guidance. Recent Microsoft research suggests that 99 percent of organizations face difficulties with scaling AI, with only 33 percent of leaders reporting sufficient AI skills. In 2024, the company launched comprehensive AI adoption guidance within Azure Essentials, viewed over 160,000 times since its release. More recently, the company published AI Center of Excellence guidance in Essentials.