Microsoft Copilot for Azure—Your AI Key to Letting the Light In

In IT we love acronyms.  An oldie but a goodie is KTLO or Keeping the Lights On.  KTLO refers to basic systems and infrastructure maintenance.  Did you know that some IT organizations spend as much as 80% of their resources and budget on simply supporting the infrastructure and apps that are already in place. 

While KTLO is essential, it’s a balancing act for IT leaders who are under constant pressure to reduce their budget, maintain current systems but yet allow for innovation that will increase the value of what IT offers to the organization.

Many of the IT leaders I speak to believe its crucial to design infrastructure footprints that are AI ready.  They see the benefit of harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to drive innovation, efficiency, and competitive advantage.

Leveraging Microsoft Azure for this transformation offers robust, scalable, and secure cloud solutions that seamlessly integrate AI capabilities and could represent a solution

With Azure Copilot as your AI assistant and companion, you gain access to intelligent insights, automated workflows, and personalized support, empowering your team to focus on strategic initiatives and achieve greater productivity.

Microsoft thinks of AI as a kind of copilot, an expert helper empowering a person who is trying to accomplish a complex task.

Let’s take an example.  Today, thousands of software developers use GitHub Copilot, an AI service from Microsoft subsidiary GitHub, to write basic programming code using everyday language. At last count, developers use Copilot to write 46% of the lines of code they produce, on average. Since Copilot handles many of the most repetitive, time-consuming tasks, developers can create software 55% faster, freeing them to spend time on higher value and more interesting work. Three out of 4 say their job is more fulfilling as a result.

This is just one example of what AI copilots can do.

So lets fast forward and say that your organization is ready to get started but being a diligent IT leader you want to ensure that you embrace responsible, secure AI and cloud - native technologies.  Where exactly can you get guidance on that?

Azure meets you where you are on your cloud journey with a 284% ROI with Azure AI services and a 219% ROI on security consolidation.  This type of ROI, done at your pace, is what helps you deliver outcomes across applications, databases and infrastructure.

But how does Azure cloud and Copilot in Azure get you there cost effectively and securely?  It’s the foundational elements that are in place that help you like

·       2x faster throughput per GPU compared to competitors

·       150% increase in work output for AI infused workloads 

·       100+ compliance certifications – the most in the industry.

To ensure your AI success, Microsoft has built a foundational infrastructure with 4 key features in mind:

1.    Ensured that you can create next-generation AI solutions with Azure’s secure, reliable, AI-optimized infrastructure

2.    Enabled you to accelerate business results and time to value by integrating Azure OpenAI, ChatGPT, AI Services, and Azure Machine Learning

3.    Built and deployed enterprise-grade models and streamline AI/ML operations and the management of thousands of models across production environments to reduce operational costs

4.    Infused responsible AI practices throughout the development lifecycle to build fair, explainable, and responsible AI that are designed for the future

Now that we’ve chatted about the foundational elements of Copilot in Azure and how Microsoft has built a cloud AI environment that your organization can rely on, let’s talk about some of the ways that Copilot in Azure can help you and your IT team do more than Keep the Lights On.

Copilot in Azure is an AI companion that simplifies how you design, operate, optimize, and troubleshoot apps and infrastructure from cloud to edge.

Here are 4 ways that you and your team can streamline cloud operations and management with generative AI:

1.    Design--Use Copilot to configure the right services for your applications and environment while aligning with organizational policies.

2.      Operate--Use Copilot to answer questions, author complex commands, and act on your behalf using natural language.

3.      Optimize--Improve costs, scalability, security, and reliability through recommendations for your environment.

4.      Troubleshoot--Orchestrate data across Azure services for insights to summarize issues, identify causes, and suggest solutions.

From a high level, the ability to design, operate, and optimize and troubleshoot all sound great but how exactly does Microsoft Copilot for Azure help me and my IT org save time and get answers faster?

Here are 4 specific ways Microsoft Copilot for Azure can help your IT team get their jobs done more quickly and efficiently:

Learning Azure and providing recommendations-- Copilot helps you learn about every service. It can also provide tailored recommendations for the services your workloads need.  Insights are delivered directly to you in the management console, accompanied by links for further reading. Copilot is up to date with the latest Azure documentation, ensuring you’re getting the most current and relevant answers to your questions. Copilot navigates to the precise location in the portal needed to perform tasks. This feature speeds up the process from question to action.

Understanding cloud environments-- Copilot helps answer questions about a cloud environment faster and more easily. In addition to answering questions about your environment, Copilot also facilitates the construction of Kusto Query Language (KQL) queries for use within Azure Resource Graph. Whatever your experience level, Copilot accelerates the generation of insights about your Azure resources and their deployment environments.

Optimizing cost and performance-- Copilot aids in understanding invoices, spending patterns, changes, and outliers, and it recommends cost optimizations. Copilot can help you better analyze, estimate, and optimize your cloud costs. For example, if you prompt Copilot with questions like, "Why did my cost spike on July 8?" or "Show me the subscriptions that costs the most," you’ll get an immediate response based on your usage, billing, and cost data.  

Support and troubleshooting--Copilot provides troubleshooting insight generated from Azure documentation and built-in, service-specific troubleshooting tools. Copilot will quickly provide step-by-step guidance for troubleshooting, while providing links to the right documentation. If more help is needed, Copilot will direct you to assisted support if requested.   

Copilot is also aware of service-specific diagnostics and troubleshooting tools to help you choose the perfect tool to assist you, whether it's related to high CPU usage, networking issues, getting a memory dump, scaling resources to support increased demand or more.

Copilot can also answer questions in context of the resources you’re managing, enabling you to ask about sizing, resiliency, or the tradeoffs between possible solutions.

Ready to get started with Microsoft Copilot for Azure and do so much more than Keep the Lights On?

Learn more about Copilot in Azure

Microsoft Copilot in Azure overview | Microsoft Learn

Learn more about Copilot in Azure capabilities

Microsoft Copilot in Azure capabilities | Microsoft Learn

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