Microsoft unveils updates across Azure Cognitive Services and Azure Machine Learning

During its Ignite 2020 conference, which kicked off virtually this morning, Microsoft announced updates to Azure Cognitive Services and Azure Machine Learning aimed at streamlining business processes during the coronavirus pandemic. The company also launched two features in Azure Cognitive Search -- Private Endpoints and Managed Identities -- plus enhancements to Bot Framework Composer and the broader Azure Bot Service. "We're seeing AI touching every business across the planet, and so one of the key focuses we have with Azure Machine Learning is to provide our customers with the tools to really simplify the ability to create new models because we know they're going to need them in every area of their business," Microsoft corporate vice president Eric Boyd told VentureBeat in a phone interview. "This continues to be a key theme for us -- how we will really help our customers, enable more of their developers, and even more of their data analysts to build machine learn models and apply them in all aspects of their business." Private Endpoints in Cognitive Search, which is generally available as of today, allow a client on a virtual network to access data in an index over a private link.