The biggest shift in 2026 is moving from basic chatbots to AI Agents.
- The Foundry Agent Service now includes “Managed Memory.” Your AI agents can now remember user preferences and past conversations across different devices automatically—you don’t have to build a custom database for it anymore.
- Use the Agent-to-Agent (A2A) tool. You can build one “Master Agent” that calls other “Specialist Agents” (like a Travel Agent calling a Weather Agent), making complex apps much easier to scale.
The "Smart" Storage
Storage isn’t just a “hard drive in the sky” anymore; it’s now optimized for AI.
- Blob Scaled Accounts can now handle millions of objects at once. This is designed specifically for “Agentic Scale”—giving AI models the high-speed data they need to think and respond in real-time.
- Use Elastic SAN for your databases. It’s a managed storage pool that shares resources between different apps, so you aren’t paying for empty space on five different disks.
The "Self-Driving" Cloud
Kubernetes (AKS) has officially reached “set it and forget it” status.
- Node Auto-Provisioning is now globally available. You no longer have to pick “Small,” “Medium,” or “Large” servers. Azure looks at your code and creates the exact right size of server for you on the fly.
- Enable AKS Copilot (Cluster Mode). It’s an AI assistant that lives inside your cluster. If your app crashes, you can literally ask it, “Why did my app scale poorly last night?” and it will give you the fix.
Real-Time Data
The barrier between “storing data” and “analyzing data” has disappeared.
- Mirroring for Microsoft Fabric. Your data in Cosmos DB now appears in your analytics tools (Fabric) instantly without you having to move it (No ETL).
- Use Per-Partition Failover. If one tiny part of your database has an issue, Azure fixes just that part without taking your whole global app offline