At Microsoft's Ignite 2021 conference, the company has announced a host of new capabilities now available across its Azure Cognitive Search and Azure Machine Learning solutions. Additionally, it has also announced a bunch of features currently in preview for customers.
Starting with Microsoft's AI-powered cloud search service for app development on web and mobile, Azure Cognitive Search, the firm has enabled semantic search capabilities. Typically, similar solutions offer keyword-based search, but this feature relies more on user intent, and then utilizes natural language models and techniques such as synonym search to deliver more personalized and relevant results. Furthermore, a new connector has been added for integration with SharePoint. This allows Cognitive Search to use content from SharePoint as well.
Secondly, Form Recognizer now features extraction of invoices and support for IDs. It will also have the capability to read data from a total of 73 languages by the end of this month. The ability to extract data from invoices will allow customers to store information in a structured format without writing too much code or manually labeling data. Meanwhile, support for pre-built IDs enables autonomous extraction of data from passports and drivers' licenses, eradicating the need for manual data entry.
Lastly, Azure Machine Learning now supports role-based access control (RBAC). This enables IT admins to assign more granular access controls for data science teams. Other features being added to Azure Machine Learning are currently in preview. This includes integration with Azure Synapse Analytics so Spark clusters can be used for data preparation tasks. Azure Percept is available in preview as well. This is a collection of services and devices to deliver real-time hardware-accelerated insights on the edge.
Check out our other Ignite 2021 coverage right here.
