Public Preview: Claude Opus 4.5 Available in Microsoft Foundry

Public Preview: Claude Opus 4.5 Available in Microsoft Foundry

Claude Opus 4.5 is now available in public preview on Microsoft Foundry, bringing advanced coding, agentic workflows, and enterprise productivity to Azure customers. Claude Opus 4.5 sets a new benchmark for performance and versatility, outperforming previous Claude models and delivering frontier intelligence at a more accessible price point. With seamless integration into Foundry Models, Playground, and Agent Service, organizations can build and scale AI solutions securely and efficiently. The model benefits from Azure’s enterprise-grade security and compliance, and supports use cases from software development to financial analysis and cybersecurity. Pricing starts at $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens, available in East US2 and Sweden Central regions.

Generally Available: Azure File Sync in New Zealand North
Azure File Sync enables seamless tiering of data from on-premises Windows Servers to Azure Files for hybrid use cases and simplified migration. It also enables you to leverage the performance, flexibility and compatibility of your on-premises File Server while leveraging the scale and cost effectiveness of Azure Files.
The expansion into New Zealand North brings the service closer to organizations in these regions, offering lower latency, better performance, and support for local data residency requirements.
If Azure File Sync is not yet available in your preferred region, please fill out this survey to express interest.

Public Preview: Entra ID support for RDP connections
Announcing Azure Bastion now supports Microsoft Entra ID authentication for RDP connections to Windows VMs directly in the portal.

This update brings two key benefits for RDP users connecting to their virtual machines:

• Enhanced Security: By eliminating local authentication mechanisms, this feature reduces potential attack surfaces, helping customers strengthen their security posture.
• Seamless Access: With Microsoft Entra ID as the authentication method, users enjoy a simple, one-click sign-on experience—no extra credentials required.
  This is a big step forward in making secure and streamlined VM access easier than ever.

Generally Available: Azure MCP Server for Azure Database for MySQL
Announcing that Azure MCP Server now supports Azure Database for MySQL. With this update, you can empower AI agents and applications to interact with your MySQL data using natural language through the open Model Context Protocol (MCP). Instead of writing complex queries, you can simply ask questions like “retrieve schema details for the customers table,” “show the last 7 days of failed orders,” or “summarize anomalies by region.” These interactions support Microsoft Entra authentication, eliminating password management and ensuring enterprise-grade security.

By integrating MySQL tools into the Azure MCP Server alongside other services such as Azure AI Search, Azure Cosmos DB, and Azure Storage, you gain a unified interface for building intelligent, context-aware workflows. This consistency reduces integration complexity, accelerates development, and enables you to create agentic solutions that span data exploration, analysis, and operational actions—all within the trusted Azure ecosystem.

You benefit from faster insights, simplified schema discovery, and the ability to automate MySQL-driven business logic without leaving your development environment.

Generally Available: Regex support in T-SQL
Boost your SQL queries with powerful regular expressions (regex) support for advanced pattern matching. Now you can use native regex in T-SQL directly in Azure SQL and SQL Server 2025 queries—simplifying code, improving maintainability, and reducing dependency on external scripts.

Generally Available: Azure Load Testing in Italy North
Azure Load Testing capability in Azure App Testing is now generally available in Italy North. Customers can now use Azure Load Testing, a fully managed load-testing service to generate high scale load and run simulations, easily identify performance bottlenecks through a rich dashboard of client-side and server-side metrics, get AI powered actionable insights, and integrate load tests into their CI/CD workflows. Customers can get started without any knowledge of load-testing tools, or use their existing Apache JMeter or Locust scripts.