Microsoft Adds More AI, IoT, and Blockchain Services to Azure

Microsoft today announced several new Azure cloud services spanning artificial intelligence (AI), IoT, and blockchain ahead of its annual Build developers’ conference next week. “With Azure, we are delivering the best cloud for AI, ML (machine learning), and computing at the edge,” said Frank Shaw, corporate vice president of communications for Microsoft, on a call with reporters. This, of course, is also how Microsoft’s competitors Amazon and Google are positioning their clouds to encourage developers to build on top of their respective platforms using their cloud services. Microsoft introduced a new set of Azure AI technology, which includes a new Azure Cognitive Services category called “Decision,” which gives users a specific recommendation for more informed decision making. This category “includes those services that not just observe the world – image recognition for example – but build in a sophisticated decision process,” Shaw said. The Decision category includes Content Moderator, the recently announced Anomaly Detector, and a new service called Personalizer, which uses reinforcement learning to provide users with a specific recommendation.