ECS 2027: Summit & Community

Closing the Gap Between a Local Agent and a Production One

Microsoft's Foundry Hosted Agents aim to take the operational headache out of shipping Agent Framework agents — though it's still preview territory.

Foundry Hosted Agents are containerised applications that run inside Foundry Agent Service

Why Fine Tuning Your AI Model Could Be the Most Important Thing You Do This Year

From AI Assistants to Team Intelligence: The Next Shift in Enterprise AI

The Future of AI Apps and Agents: A New Operating Model for Developers

Lee Stott is a Principal Cloud Advocate at Microsoft, focused on developer experience, AI platforms, and cloud-native architectures. You can find him at ECS 2026 in Cologne, 5–7 May 2026.

If you've been building with AI over the past few years, you'll have felt the shift.

After the Hype

My generation, people in their 50s, is the only one who sets up printers for our parents and our kids. Not because we are good with printers — because we have had to learn this industry from scratch more times than is reasonable. Eight-bit machines, PCs, the internet, mobile, cloud, and now AI. And, every few years, someone announces that everything is about to change.

ECS 2026 Editorial

When a Legend Says the F-Word to AI: The Rob Pike Incident and What It Means for All of Us

Rob Pike, co-creator of Go, Plan 9, and UTF-8, received an AI-generated thank you email on Christmas Day and responded with fury. His reaction crystallizes essential concerns about AI's environmental impact, economic irrationality, and the irony of machines expressing gratitude they cannot feel.

There are moments in technology history that crystallize something larger than themselves

Microsoft Agent Framework: The production-ready convergence of AutoGen and Semantic Kernel

Microsoft has consolidated its agentic AI capabilities into a single open-source framework that unifies research-driven innovation with enterprise-grade reliability. Released in public preview on October 1, 2025, Microsoft Agent Framework merges AutoGen's dynamic multi-agent orchestration with Semantic Kernel's production foundations.

Microsoft integrates Anthropic Claude models into Copilot Studio

Microsoft's September 24, 2025 announcement marks a fundamental shift in enterprise AI strategy: Claude Sonnet 4 and Claude Opus 4.1 are now integrated into Microsoft 365 Copilot, enabling organizations to leverage both OpenAI and Anthropic models for the first time.

RLaaS transforms AI from static predictions to dynamic learning systems

Reinforcement Learning-as-a-Service (RLaaS) represents a fundamental shift in how enterprises deploy AI, moving from static models to continuously learning systems that optimize for long-term business outcomes through trial-and-error experience.

ASML's historic €1.3 billion bet on European AI sovereignty

ASML, the Dutch semiconductor equipment monopolist, has invested €1.3 billion to become the largest shareholder in French AI startup Mistral AI, marking Europe's most significant technology convergence deal and a strategic alliance aimed at establishing European technological independence in the AI era.