Microsoft Launches New Cloud Bot Service for Azure - Microsoft/Windows on Top Tech News

Redmond today announced the Azure Bot Service, a new service for its Azure cloud platform designed to help developers create intelligent bots for Azure using the Microsoft Bot Framework. The bots will run on Azure Functions, a serverless environment, that allows enterprises to scale their bots as needed. The Azure Bot Service will let enterprises build, connect, deploy, and manage bots that interact naturally with users through an app, Web site, SMS platform, Slack, Facebook Messenger, Skype, and several other popular services. Microsoft said the new service will help companies accelerate intelligent bot development. "You can get started quickly with out-of-the-box templates such as the basic bot, Language Understanding Intelligent Service bot, form bot, and proactive bot," Lili Cheng, an engineer with Microsoft's Artificial Intelligence and Research Group, said on the company's blog.