Microsoft Build 2024: 10 Coolest Exhibitors In AI, Cloud Computing, Security
Nvidia, Avanade and Snowflake were among the standout vendors at Microsoft Build 2024 in Seattle.
The Redmond, Wash.-based tech giant used the conference – which runs through Thursday in Seattle – to illustrate how it is enabling developers in delivering new AI applications and experiences while investing in an ecosystem approach to innovating around the emerging technology.
Exhibitors included fellow vendor giants such as Nvidia and Snowflake.
[RELATED: Microsoft Build 2024: The Biggest News In AI, Copilots, Data, Security]
Microsoft has about 400,000 channel partners worldwide and is a member of CRN’s 2024 Channel Chiefs.
Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella declared “a golden age of systems” in his Build 2024 keynote, taking time to walk an audience of developers through the tech giant’s ongoing innovations in artificial intelligence across infrastructure, data, tooling, applications and more.
Nadella highlighted breakthroughs in making computers understand humans instead of needing laypeople to understand computers, plus making computers assist humans in reasoning, planning and taking actions.
“What stands out to me as I look back at this past year is how you all as developers have taken all of these capabilities and applied them, quite frankly, to change the world around us,” Nadella said in his remarks. “The rate of diffusion is unlike anything I’ve seen in my professional career. And it’s just increasing.”
Microsoft even made news ahead of Build 2024 by revealing its new device category of Copilot+ PCs. In an interview with CRN, Mark Linton, Microsoft vice president of device partner sales, said the devices plus end of support for Windows 10 should spur “a big refresh moment” for Microsoft partners dealing in hardware.
Out of the dozens of exhibitors, here are the 10 coolest companies teaming with Microsoft to change the future at this year’s Build conference.
AMD
Microsoft Azure ND MI300X virtual machines (VMs) became generally available (GA) during Build 2024, giving users a way to handle demanding AI workloads.
They feature an AMD Instinct MI300X AI accelerator with 1.5TB of high-bandwidth memory for each VM and 5.2TB/s of memory bandwidth.
Santa Clara, Calif.-based Advanced Micro Devices has positioned its Instinct MI300X accelerators, ROCm open software, Ryzen AI processors and software, and Alveo MA35D media accelerators as ways for Microsoft to power AI-based deployments in multiple markets.
Instinct MI300X and the ROCm software stack power Azure OpenAI ChatGPT 3.5 and 4 services, according to AMD.
AMD has about 700 channel partners worldwide and about 140 in North America, according to CRN’s 2024 Channel Chiefs.
Intel
Intel and Microsoft partnership news at Build 2024 included the chipmaker validating and optimizing its AI portfolio across client, edge and data center for multiple Microsoft Phi-3 open small language models (SLMs).
Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel also said that its upcoming client processors – code-named Lunar Lake – will power more than 80 new laptop designs across 20-plus original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), delivering AI performance at a global scale for Microsoft’s new PC category, Copilot+ PCs.
Intel – a member of CRN’s 2024 Channel Chiefs – expects to ship more than 40 million AI PC processors this year, according to the chipmaker.
Nvidia
Although Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang shared a stage with Michael Dell this week and not Satya Nadella, Nvidia still made news with its Microsoft relationship during Build 2024.
The Santa Clara, Calif.-based chipmaker revealed new AI performance optimizations and integrations for Windows meant to deliver high performance on Nvidia’s GeForce RTX AI PCs and RTX workstations.
Microsoft’s new Copilot+ PCs category will have power-efficient systems-on-a-chip and RTX GPUs meant for demanding local AI workloads, according to Nvidia.
The new Microsoft Azure ND MI300X v5 VM series for demanding AI and high-performance computing (HPC) workloads feature an AMD Instinct MI300X AI accelerator – and they are connected by Nvidia Quantum-2 CX7 InfiniBand, offering 3.2TB/s of scale-out bandwidth per VM. This promises users the ability to scale up to thousands of VMs and tens of thousands of GPUs, according to Microsoft.
Nvidia has about 1,600 channel partners worldwide and 350 in North America, according to CRN’s 2024 Channel Chiefs.
Qualcomm
Microsoft’s freshly unveiled Copilot+ PCs all rely on Qualcomm’s brand-new Snapdragon X processors to enable advanced AI capabilities – including a recall feature that uses constant image-taking of active screens to aid with finding previously viewed content.
Microsoft is hoping that Qualcomm’s new chips, along with new processors to come from Intel and AMD, will help it better compete against Apple and its growing portfolio of Macs that have been revitalized by the iPhone giant’s M-series system-on-chips such as the M3.
In touting its capabilities, Qualcomm said its Snapdragon X chips can deliver 2.6 times greater NPU performance than Apple’s M3 and 5.4 times greater NPU performance than Intel’s Core Ultra 7 processor. The company also said its Snapdragon X Elite series, which represent the highest performance chips in the lineup, “leads in performance per watt,” matching the peak CPU performance of the Core Ultra 7 while using 60 percent less power.
The San Diego-based chipmaker also revealed a Snapdragon Dev Kit for Windows with a special developer edition Snapdragon X Elite SoC. The kit has a stackable form factor and the NPU powering Copilot+ PCs, according to Microsoft.
Oracle
Oracle’s partnership with Microsoft – a partnership that Nadella called last year an indicator of the “profound timing” for “data and AI coming together to transform businesses and business process” – received valuable real estate on the show floor.
Representatives with the Austin, Texas-based database and cloud products provider educated passersby on Oracle Database@Azure, which promises to simplify app and analytics development by putting Oracle workloads in modern, self-managed database environments.
Through the partnership, users can integrate Oracle Database with Data Factory, OpenAI, Power BI and other Azure Services, according to Microsoft. Users can leverage Oracle Database services directly from Azure data centers and the Azure console.
During Build 2024, Microsoft revealed a preview for a new integration between its Power Pages website creator and Oracle databases, connecting websites to a line-of-business system.
Oracle is a member of CRN’s 2024 Partner Program Guide.
Snowflake
In preview later this year is new interoperability between Snowflake and Microsoft Fabric OneLake.
Users of the Bozeman, Mont.-based data cloud platform vendor gain bi-directional data access between Snowflake wares and Fabric, with Snowflake data accessible across Microsoft 365, Power Platform and Azure AI Studio.
Users can work with a single copy of data across Snowflake and Fabric even if it is stored with Delta Lake or Apache Iceberg.
Snowflake is a member of CRN’s 2024 Channel Chiefs.
MongoDB
Microsoft launched a preview of a new cross-region disaster recovery option for MongoDB through vCore-based Azure Cosmos DB, allowing cluster replica creation in another region.
For users of Microsoft’s .Net open-source, cross-platform framework for modern applications and cloud services, a generally available integration with New York-based MongoDB’s Provider for Entity Framework Core means developers can more easily incorporate features from the New York-based developer data platform provider into EF-based apps for more robustness and scalability.
MongoDB has about 1,000 channel partners worldwide and 400 in North America, according to CRN’s 2024 Channel Chiefs.
F5
Representatives with F5 were on site at Build 2024 to tout the benefits of Nginx as a Service for Azure as a cloud-native reverse proxy and load balancer and other collaborations between the vendor and Microsoft.
The Seattle-based multi-cloud networking vendor positions its offerings on Azure as ways to automate app delivery and security in agile environments, with visibility and analytics for apps from one central location, according to F5.
Users can leverage F5 to protect against threats and authenticate and secure user access, among other use cases.
F5 has about 2,000 channel partners worldwide and 400 in North America, according to CRN’s 2024 Channel Chiefs.
Fortinet
Fortinet tools can give developers app and workload security for Azure at any stage of adoption.
The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based cybersecurity vendor promises simpler security management with visibility into Azure environments and more than 100 Microsoft integrations, according to Fortinet.
Fortinet Security Fabric offers broad protection and automated management for web apps, email apps and zero-day threat protection. FortiWeb stops distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) and malicious bot attacks against Azure users, and FortiGate-VM delivers next-generation firewall (NGFW) capabilities for Azure virtual private clouds (VPCs), among other examples of the vendors’ integrated offerings.
Fortinet has about 1,000 channel partners worldwide and 400 in North America, according to CRN’s 2024 Channel Chiefs.
Meta
Facebook and Instagram parent Meta showcased its mixed reality for work offerings, which includes 3D models for idea iteration, digital twins, training scenarios and more.
During Build 2024, Microsoft said it is deepening its partnership with the Menlo Park, Calif.-based company to improve Windows experiences on Quest devices and extend Windows applications into a 3D space with volumetric apps.
Meta and Microsoft have also worked together on creating more access to the former’s AI models.
In the days leading up to Build, Meta made news by announcing the end of its business tool Workplace, with plans to make Workplace accessible only for reading and downloading existing data on Sept. 1, 2025, and terminating access on June 1, 2026, according to Meta.