Ein Unternehmen erhält ohne Kenntnisnahme auf Google Maps einen anderen Namen. Google kann es wochenlang nicht korrigieren. Bis es dann doch geht. Eine Recherche von Ingo Pakalski (Google Maps, Google)
Quelle: Golem
Mediensüchtige Außerirdische, sinnlose Spielereien: Was in den sechziger Jahren bei Perry Rhodan Fernsehkritik war, klingt heute wie Kritik an unserem Medienkonsum. Von Marius Pieruschka (Unterhaltung & Hobby, Smartphone)
Quelle: Golem
Von vorausschauender Wartung über automatisierte Qualitätskontrollen bis hin zur Energieoptimierung wälzt KI die industrielle Produktion um. Ein Bericht von Klaus Manhart (Wirtschaft, IBM)
Quelle: Golem
Wird Arbeit zur Last, ist es dennoch oft nicht leicht, den Absprung zu wagen. Wir haben euch gefragt, warum ihr bleibt. (Arbeit, Silicon Valley)
Quelle: Golem
Over the past few years, AI has seamlessly woven itself into the fabric of our daily routines, transforming the ways we access information and organize our lives. From intelligent search engines to virtual assistants that help us plan trips, AI is behind the effortless convenience we now expect.
It’s also transforming the way we shop. Increasingly, we’re embracing AI shopping tools that more easily help us find products. But that’s just the start of what conversational commerce can do. Just like consumers want in store, online they’re seeking recommendations that reflect their sense of personal style.
Enter Ask Ralph, a new AI-powered styling companion that not only helps with product discovery but also inspires consumers with Ralph Lauren’s unique and iconic take on style.
Azure AI: Design, customize, and manage AI apps and agents at scaleAsk Ralph: A style companion powered by AIAsk Ralph is a conversational AI shopping experience built on Azure OpenAI and available in the Ralph Lauren app in the US. You can interact with Ask Ralph just like you would a stylist in a Ralph Lauren store by asking simple, conversational questions or using prompts to find the perfect look for any occasion.
Whether you’re refreshing your wardrobe for fall or wondering what to wear to a concert in the park, Ask Ralph responds with curated, fully stylized, visually displayed, and shoppable outfits from across the Polo Ralph Lauren brand, tailored to your unique prompts.
The delight of conversational commerceAsk Ralph is part of a broader movement—one where AI doesn’t just assist, it inspires.
Using natural language, Ask Ralph interprets open-ended prompts, asks clarifying questions, and delivers beautifully visualized outfit recommendations that are tailored to your query—all based on Ralph Lauren’s real-time available inventory.
Built for the future, grounded in legacyFor nearly 60 years, Ralph Lauren has been a pioneer in creating transportive and cinematic retail experiences. Twenty-five years ago, Microsoft and Ralph Lauren teamed up to launch one of fashion’s first e-commerce platforms, setting an industry standard—and now, together, we are again redefining the shopping experience with Ask Ralph.
As Naveen Seshadri, Ralph Lauren’s Chief Digital Officer, shared in a recent interview, “At Ralph Lauren, our focus is always on the consumer. We harness innovative technologies to create an elevated, personalized experience that draws customers into Ralph’s iconic world at every interaction. The launch of Ask Ralph is a continuation of that commitment.”
To hear more from Naveen on the vision behind Ask Ralph, watch the Ralph Lauren customer video.
Agentic AI: The new frontierAsk Ralph is powered by Azure’s agentic AI capabilities—intelligent systems that plan, reason, and act. These agents are transforming retail by enabling immersive, personalized experiences at scale.
“At Ralph Lauren, our focus is always on the consumer. We harness innovative technologies to create an elevated, personalized experience that draws customers into Ralph’s iconic world at every interaction. The launch of Ask Ralph is a continuation of that commitment.”
—Naveen Seshadri, Chief Digital Officer at Ralph Lauren
Confidence, creativity, connectionAt its heart, Ask Ralph is about inspiration. It’s about helping people find new ways to express their personal style.
This is just the beginning for Ask Ralph, which will continue to evolve with new features and offerings to offer an even more personalized experience, as well as expand across markets, platforms, and additional Ralph Lauren brands.
A woman holding a tabletAzure AI solutionsCreate the future with Azure AI Foundry
Get startedReady to transform the shopping experience with AI?With Azure AI, retailers have the power to build immersive, intelligent shopping experiences that scale, adapt, and inspire. Whether you’re looking to personalize customer journeys, optimize inventory, or empower your workforce, Microsoft’s AI platform is ready to help you innovate with confidence.
Join us for an AI.deation workshop to explore how agentic AI can elevate your business—from concept to production. Let’s co-create the future of retail, one conversation at a time.
Learn moreRead the press release on Microsoft News.Learn more about Ask Ralph and download the app on the Ralph Lauren site.Read the full Ralph Lauren customer story.
The post Ask Ralph: Where style meets AI—a new era of conversational commerce appeared first on Microsoft Azure Blog.
Quelle: Azure
This blog post is the fifth out of a six-part blog series called Agent Factory which will share best practices, design patterns, and tools to help guide you through adopting and building agentic AI.
An agent that can’t talk to other agents, tools, and apps is just a silo. The real power of agents comes from their ability to connect to each other, to enterprise data, and to the systems where work gets done. Integration is what transforms an agent from a clever prototype into a force multiplier across a business.
With Azure AI Foundry customers and partners, we see the shift everywhere: customer service agents collaborating with retrieval agents to resolve complex cases, research agents chaining together across datasets to accelerate discovery, and business agents acting in concert to automate workflows that once took teams of humans. The story of agent development has moved from “can we build one?” to “how do we make them work together, safely and at scale?”
Connect agents with Azure AI Foundry
Industry trends show integration as the unlock
At Microsoft over the years, I’ve seen how open protocols shape ecosystems. From OData, which standardized access to data APIs, to OpenTelemetry, which gave developers common ground for observability, open standards have consistently unlocked innovation and scale across industries. Today, customers in Azure AI Foundry are looking for flexibility without vendor lock-in. The same pattern is now unfolding with AI agents. Proprietary, closed ecosystems create risk if agents, tools, or data can’t interoperate, causing innovation to stall and an increase in switching costs.
Standard protocols taking root: Open standards like the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and Agent2Agent (A2A) are creating a lingua franca for how agents share tools, context, and results across vendors. This interoperability is critical for enterprises who want the freedom to choose best-of-breed solutions and ensure their agents, tools, and data can work together, regardless of vendor or framework.
A2A collaboration on MCP: Specialist agents increasingly collaborate as teams, with one handling scheduling, another querying databases, and another summarizing. This mirrors human work patterns, where specialists contribute to shared goals. Learn more about how this connects to MCP and A2A in our Agent2Agent and MCP blog.
Connected ecosystems: From Microsoft 365 to Salesforce to ServiceNow, enterprises expect agents to act across all their apps, not just one platform. Integration libraries and connectors are becoming as important as models themselves. Open standards ensure that as new platforms and tools emerge, they can be integrated seamlessly, eliminating the risk of isolated point solutions.
Interop across frameworks: Developers want the freedom to build with LangGraph, AutoGen, Semantic Kernel, or CrewAI—and still have their agents talk to each other. Framework diversity is here to stay.
What integration at scale requires
From our work with enterprises and open-source communities, a picture emerges of what’s needed to connect agents, apps, and data:
Cross-agent collaboration by design: Multi-agent workflows require open protocols that allow different runtimes and frameworks to coordinate. Protocols like A2A and MCP are rapidly evolving to support richer agent collaboration and integration. A2A expands agent-to-agent collaboration, while MCP is growing into a foundational layer for context sharing, tool interoperability, and cross-framework coordination.
Shared context through open standards: Agents need a safe, consistent way to pass context, tools, and results. MCP enables this by making tools reusable across agents, frameworks, and vendors.
Seamless enterprise system access: Business value only happens when agents can act: update a CRM record, post in Teams, or trigger an ERP workflow. Integration fabrics with prebuilt connectors remove the heavy lift. Enterprises can connect new and legacy systems without costly rewrites or proprietary barriers.
Unified observability: As workflows span agents and apps, tracing and debugging across boundaries becomes essential. Teams must see the chain of reasoning across multiple agents to ensure safety, compliance, and trust. Open telemetry and evaluation standards give enterprises the transparency and control they need to operate at scale.
How Azure AI Foundry enables integration at scale
Azure AI Foundry was designed for this connected future. It makes agents interoperable, enterprise ready, and integrated into the systems where businesses run.
Model Context Protocol (MCP): Foundry agents can call MCP-compatible tools directly, enabling developers to reuse existing connectors and unlock a growing marketplace of interoperable tools. Semantic Kernel also supports MCP for pro-code developers.
A2A support: Through Semantic Kernel, Foundry implements A2A so agents can collaborate across different runtimes and ecosystems. Multi-agent workflows—like a research agent coordinating with a compliance agent before drafting a report—just work.
Enterprise integration fabric: Foundry comes with thousands of connectors into SaaS and enterprise systems. From Dynamics 365 to ServiceNow to custom APIs, agents can act where business happens without developers rebuilding integrations from scratch. And with Logic Apps now supporting MCP, existing workflows and connectors can be leveraged directly inside Foundry agents.
Unified observability and governance: Tracing, evaluation, and compliance checks extend across multi-agent and multi-system workflows. Developers can debug cross-agent reasoning and enterprises can enforce identity, policy, and compliance end-to-end.
Why this matters now
Enterprises don’t want isolated point solutions—they want connected systems that scale. The next competitive advantage in AI isn’t just building smarter agents, it’s building connected agent ecosystems that work across apps, frameworks, and vendors. Interoperability and open standards are the foundation for this future, giving customers the flexibility, choice, and confidence to invest in AI without fear of vendor lock-in.
Azure AI Foundry makes that possible:
Flexible protocols (MCP and A2A) for agentic collaboration and interoperability.
Enterprise connectors for system integration.
Guardrails and governance for trust at scale.
With these foundations, organizations can move from siloed prototypes to truly connected AI ecosystems that span the enterprise.
What’s next
In part six of the Agent Factory series, we’ll focus on one of the most critical dimensions of agent development: trust. Building powerful agents is only half the challenge. Enterprises need to ensure these agents operate with the highest standards of security, identity, and governance.
Did you miss these posts in the series?
Agent Factory: The new era of agentic AI—common use cases and design patterns.
Agent Factory: Building your first AI agent with the tools to deliver real-world outcomes.
Agent Factory: Top 5 agent observability best practices for reliable AI.
Agent Factory: From prototype to production—developer tools and rapid agent development.
Azure AI Foundry
Build adaptable AI agents that connect with each other to automate tasks and enhance user experiences.
Learn more
The post Agent Factory: Connecting agents, apps, and data with new open standards like MCP and A2A appeared first on Microsoft Azure Blog.
Quelle: Azure
Selbst wenn sie vorhandene Glasfaser nicht nutzen, finden Firmen das Internet zu langsam. Zugleich gibt es FTTH noch nicht überall. (Wirtschaft, DSL)
Quelle: Golem
Innnerhalb von nur einem Jahr ist die Zahl der Spyware-Investoren aus den USA so stark angestiegen, dass sie nun den Spitzenplatz besetzen. (Politik, Security)
Quelle: Golem
Der Hisense 50E7Q Pro bietet 144 Hz und Freesync Premium. Aktuell gibt es den 50-Zoll-QLED-TV bei Amazon zum historischen Tiefstpreis. (Fernsehen, Amazon)
Quelle: Golem
Der Mini-PC Vista Mini V1 von Acemagician ist bei Amazon 80 Euro reduziert. Günstiger war er für Nutzer ohne Prime-Abonnement noch nie. (PC, Computer)
Quelle: Golem
