Azure AI Foundry and Copilot Studio MCP Integration

In the world of enterprise AI, we’re moving past single, siloed AI assistants toward interconnected “agentic” systems. Two key platforms driving this change are Azure AI Foundry and Microsoft Copilot Studio. Azure AI Foundry (announced at Ignite 2024) is Microsoft’s unified AI platform for developers – it ties together the tools devs love (like Visual Studio, GitHub) with a powerful […]

Understanding “Tools” in Copilot Studio and Azure AI Foundry

The Power of Tools in Azure AI Foundry and Copilot Studio Introduction In the evolving landscape of enterprise AI, one concept is quietly transforming how we build intelligent systems: tools. Whether you’re working with Azure AI Foundry or Copilot Studio, understanding tools—and how agents use them—is foundational to unlocking real business value. What is a […]

Translytical Task Flows: Integrating Analytics and Action in Power BI

Translytical Task Flows are a new Power BI feature (currently in public preview as of May 2025) that combine transactional operations with analytical insights, directly within your reports In essence, “translytical” merges transactional and analytical – allowing end-users to not only visualize data but also act on it in real time without leaving the dashboard I’ve set out to describe: what translytical task flows are, why they […]

McKinsey and AI Best Practices

McKinsey’s list of best practices and cross-reference to large vs. smaller businesses adopting them. These jive with what I’m seeing as well, but what’s missing? If an executive asked me, “what is the difference between success and failure”? The answer I’d give them is, “alignment between strategic growth plan and technology’s possibilities with a willingness […]

Top 10 Ways to Save Money with Azure FinOps

Introduction In the ever-evolving landscape of cloud computing, managing costs effectively is crucial for organizations to optimize their investments and maximize returns. Azure’s comprehensive suite offers numerous opportunities for businesses to streamline their expenditure without compromising on performance or security. In this blog, we will explore the top 10 ways to save money using Azure […]

AI Momentum Summit – March 20th!

I’m presenting at the AI Momentum Summit on March 20th in Milwaukee. I’m presenting on “Building Your AI Use Case”, but if that isn’t interesting to you, there are many other hands-on topics. AI Momentum Summit 2025 – Milwaukee Tickets, Thu, Mar 20, 2025 at 1:00 PM | Eventbrite Join me! Nathan Lasnoski

Top 10 Ways to Optimize Your Azure Environment

As organizations strive to enhance their operations and derive maximum value from their cloud investments, optimizing the Azure environment becomes paramount. By following a strategic approach, companies can ensure they leverage Azure’s full potential to create a more efficient, secure, and cost-effective cloud setup. Here are ten proven strategies that can help you achieve this […]

Create a culture of AI agent delegation and building

When the Generative AI craze first hit we were amazed by the conversational capability of a new AI agent “Chat GPT”, but it represented a generalistic and ungrounded tool that quickly had limitations because of the bounds of its knowledge. We then discovered ways via RAG to connect large language models to grounded data that […]

Create value for your customers with data and the rest will fall behind it

We are in the third age of data. The first was full of preparing data with legacy data warehouses that struggled to provide value beyond surfacing reports about the past. The second was preoccupied with loading data into data lakes. The third needs to be built on outcomes that we are trying to achieve. Not […]

What did Satya Nadella mean by “SaaS is Dead”?

A few weeks ago Satya Nadella was on the BG2 podcast and discussed a wide variety of topics, from leadership, to becoming the CEO at Microsoft, to AI, to Growth Mindset. I recommend listening to the podcast in its entirety as it really is worth the investment. With all that said, the headline from the […]