Data infrastructure for AI comes first at Microsoft Ignite – News

Artificial intelligence is shifting from simple copilots to full-fledged agents embedded into every layer of one’s data infrastructure.

At Microsoft Ignite 2025, Microsoft Corp. laid out its AI roadmap, alongside partners Dell Technologies Inc., Oracle Corp. and other industry players. The event featured announcements for over 70 products, including Agent 365, a control plane for both Microsoft and outside agents. It will enable customers to manage AI agents within a familiar infrastructure while accessing all the governance that comes with Microsoft’s platform.

“When we look at entering the agentic AI era, we see that agents are evolving from assistance or copilots to really first-class participants in the enterprise workflows,” said Paul Nashawaty, principal analyst at theCUBE Research. “We’re also seeing that complete AI lifecycles are really getting framed up, and we saw this at Ignite at the keynote.”

Nashawaty spoke with fellow analyst Rob Strechay as part of an AnalystANGLE segment during Microsoft Ignite, for an exclusive conversation on theCUBE, News Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed how agentic AI is impacting data infrastructure and enterprise security. (* Disclosure below.)

Here’s theCUBE’s complete analyst insights segment:

And here are three key insights you may have missed from Microsoft Ignite 2025:

Insight No. 1: Data infrastructure is the bedrock of agentic AI.

Microsoft’s announcements reflect an industry-wide sentiment — AI is nothing without its data. Fabric IQ, which is currently in preview, employs Microsoft’s OneLake data lake to create a “live, connected view” of business entities and relationships, with the goal of giving AI agents more relevant context.

“Microsoft was introducing zero-copy data interoperability, enabling organizations to really have data across partner data platforms and Fabric OneLake with no data movement,” Strechay said. “They are looking to help companies with analytics, BI and AI workloads that can run on either platform.”

Microsoft has also partnered with Dell on Dell PowerScale for Microsoft Azure, a packaged solution that brings Dell’s unstructured data product, OneFS, into Azure, allowing customers to provision Dell’s file storage directly from the Azure portal. The product is designed with agentic AI in mind, providing high throughput and low-latency file for data-heavy industries such as life sciences.

“We had an opportunity to just perform a traditional lift and shift and bring the OneFS operating system and platform to Azure, but we wanted to do more than that,” said Karl Rautenstrauch, principal partner and engagement manager of Azure Storage at Microsoft, in an exclusive interview with theCUBE. “We’ve developed a deeply integrated solution that offers Azure-native provisioning, management, billing [and] monitoring.”

Dell and Microsoft’s partnership doesn’t stop there. Dell PowerScale for Microsoft Azure also makes Dell’s cybersecurity offerings available on the Azure marketplace so that customers can find the “puzzle pieces” they need to make their data infrastructure resilient, according to Colm Keegan, senior consultant of product marketing at Dell.

“The cloud, in many respects, is one giant sandbox,” he told theCUBE. “You think of all the development work that goes on in the cloud; use that to your advantage. Spin up these workloads in the cloud, and then simulate a cyber event. Then see how good you are at recovery.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with Karl Rautenstrauch and Dell’s Rachna Lalwani:

And the complete video interview with Colm Keegan:

Insight No. 2: Modern enterprise requires hybrid flexibility.

AI is spurring a move back toward on-premises and hybrid solutions, with customers seeking options for private AI — AI built on proprietary company data — and AI on the edge, including on-device AI applications.

Another Dell-Microsoft collaboration is Dell Copilot+ PCs, built on Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC architecture, which blends Microsoft’s cloud-enabled Copilot+ capabilities with on-device intelligence. These Copilot+ PCs are designed to accelerate AI workflows in a hybrid setting.

“Dell views the AI world as hybrid,” said Isaac Piñon, director of product marketing, B2B solutions and software, at Dell. “A combination of cloud, on-prem and edge, all the way down to the PC. The next generation of applications are all being written for the NPU-enabled machines. There are some ISVs and partners that we work with today that are already using them. Dell Copilot+ PCs are the perfect choice for future proofing your AI PC investments, and it becomes the new standard for every day, on-device AI applications.”

Dell’s Copilot PCs listen and react to users in real time, using voice or context-aware visual intelligence to decode their surroundings. This type of on-device AI is particularly important for data-sensitive industries that prefer not to send confidential data to the cloud and instead keep it within a proprietary data infrastructure.

“You’ve got Copilot Voice, which makes interacting with your AI PC as easy as speaking to it,” Piñon said. “There’s also Copilot Vision, which offers guidance based on what you see on your screen. You’ve got these Copilot+ experiences that help you work on productivity — so, features like Recall and Click to Do, which streamline your workflow.”

Dell and Microsoft are also restructuring the private cloud to meet enterprise AI standards with Azure Local and Azure Arc, which bring Azure’s security and operating model into private environments. Dell customers can even plug in PowerStore and adopt Azure Local without purchasing new hardware, a huge cost-saving option.

“The solutions that we provide have to meet the customer’s needs around flexibility and scale, allowing them to grow and shrink as necessary and scale up and scale down,” said Matt McSpirit (pictured, left), senior principal engineering technologist at Dell. “It’s a complex set of challenges that we’re looking to address with some great infrastructure solutions.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with Isaac Piñon:

And the complete video interview with Matt McSpirit and Microsoft’s Meena Gowdar (right):

Insight No. 3: AI data solutions are on the rise.

Dell’s not the only partner reshaping data infrastructure with Microsoft. Oracle recently released Oracle Database@Azure and Oracle AI Database, AI-powered data solutions that merge Azure’s scalable cloud ecosystem with Oracle’s high-performance data management. The fusion of Oracle Database and Microsoft Azure allows customers to apply Azure’s AI capabilities to the data already stored in Oracle.

“We’re super committed to getting customers to be able to use the Oracle Database everywhere,” said Nathan Thomas, vice president of product management at Oracle. “We started with Microsoft over three years ago as our first multicloud partner through the Oracle Database@Azure offering, but that really provides the Oracle AI Database and Oracle Exadata on OCI in Microsoft data. We’ve had a great opportunity to support our joint customers by building out that infrastructure.”

Strengthening your data infrastructure is essential for operationalizing your data at scale, according to Thomas. If customers want to develop enterprise-ready AI applications, then integrating their data is the first step.

“We’re talking to a lot of people who are looking to migrate and modernize their Oracle Database workloads into Microsoft Azure, and of course, the solution that we’ve built together really is critical for that,” he said. “Our solutions help play a role in really helping customers start to take advantage of AI by enabling them to use the Oracle AI Databases that have all of their most important private corporate data in them.”

Microsoft’s collaboration with Oracle reflects its larger strategy around agentic AI. Ignite’s keynote highlighted the importance of data and lifecycle management for getting AI applications into production, according to Nashawaty: “It reinforced Microsoft’s AI lifecycle management and messaging along from AI pilots into production. We’re seeing in our own CUBE Research … that 51% of applications that are going into production are using AI today.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with Nathan Thomas:

To watch more of theCUBE’s coverage of Microsoft Ignite 2025, here’s our complete event video playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=videoseries

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Microsoft Ignite. Sponsors of theCUBE’s event coverage do not have editorial control over content on theCUBE or News.)

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