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Microsoft is a Leader in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant for Cloud-Native Application Platforms 

We’re delighted to share that Microsoft has once again been recognised as a Leader in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant for Cloud-Native Application Platforms. This is our second consecutive year at the top, and we are especially proud to be noted as the furthest to the right in Completeness of Vision. We believe this achievement highlights our ongoing commitment to product innovation, seamless experiences for developers, and leadership in AI, enabling our customers to accelerate their innovation with cloud-native applications and AI technologies.

As AI transforms the application landscape, Microsoft is dedicated to maintaining its leadership with a robust platform that includes web apps, APIs, event-driven apps, serverless functions, containers, and AI tools, all supported by our global reach and extensive enterprise expertise. Our aim is to empower developers and clients to innovate using AI, while managing scalable and cost-effective operations for businesses of all sizes.

A Developer-Centric Experience Designed for Productivity

We are committed to enhancing the developer experience across our application platform. Our focus is on offering simplicity, choice, and seamless integration at each layer. Whether you’re using containers, functions, APIs, or web frameworks, Azure delivers a productive environment to take your ideas from concept to reality swiftly. Here’s what Azure provides:

  • Azure App Service: An enterprise-level platform-as-a-service (PaaS) for web applications, supporting various language runtimes like .NET, Java, Node.js, Python, PHP, plus Windows and Linux containers, alongside custom domain management and deep integration with GitHub and DevOps pipelines.
  • Azure Container Apps: A serverless container service perfect for microservices and event-driven tasks, recently upgraded with scaling enhancements, support for serverless GPUs, and integration with Azure AI Foundry.
  • Azure Functions: A powerful serverless compute platform designed for event-driven frameworks. We have introduced features like improved performance with the Flex Consumption plan, support for the .NET 8 remote MCP server, and enhanced capabilities for long-running durable workflows.
  • Agentic DevOps: All of these services are integrated with GitHub Copilot and Visual Studio. GitHub Copilot has revolutionised coding, making it the tool of choice for 20 million developers who use it to expedite their projects. Each month, 50 million developers engage with Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code. With Agentic DevOps, powered by GitHub Copilot and the Azure SRE Agent, developers can move rapidly from coding to scaling in the cloud, streamlining their entire application lifecycle.

Driving the Next Generation of AI-Native Applications

AI is fundamentally transforming both how software is created and how users interact with it. From tailored digital experiences to autonomous agents, modern applications increasingly depend on embedded intelligence, real-time insights, and the orchestration of complex workflows.

Microsoft leads AI innovation with Azure AI Foundry, which brings together agents, models, and tools equipped with enterprise-ready features such as tracking, monitoring, and assessments. Azure AI Foundry provides a comprehensive catalog of AI models, including OpenAI’s GPT-5, GPT-4o, Meta’s Llama, Microsoft’s Phi-4, and more. This platform integrates with Azure’s application services like Azure Container Apps and Azure Functions, enabling developers to create agentic applications through composable, event-driven, and containerised components.

In this past year, we’ve unveiled key innovations within our application platform to establish Azure as the go-to hub for AI-native applications:

  • Serverless GPUs in Azure Container Apps allow customers to perform AI model inferences on-demand without managing any infrastructure, making it easier for teams to scale generative AI tasks efficiently and cost-effectively.
  • Dynamic sessions in Azure Container Apps provide secure, on-demand, isolated computing environments, ideal for code generated by large language models (LLMs), AI agents, and temporary workloads.
  • Integration of Azure Container Apps with Azure AI Foundry simplifies the process of deploying models directly from the Foundry catalog to Azure Container Apps, enhancing the model deployment experience.
  • Sidecars in Azure App Service streamline the deployment of AI-native apps by incorporating the hosting, routing, and scaling of smaller language model (SLM) functionalities within existing web applications.

By merging applications, data, and AI into a single platform, Azure empowers organisations to create and scale the next generation of intelligent, adaptable applications.

Engineered for Secure and Cost-Effective Scalability

Modern applications must not only function effectively but also scale properly, perform reliably, and remain economically viable. Azure is crafted to satisfy the needs of both enterprises and startups with embedded features that minimise operational burdens and enhance productivity. Recent improvements include:

  • Azure App Service Premium v4 plan (currently in public preview) delivers a next-generation, fully managed PaaS experience for both Windows and Linux, boasting superb performance, scalability, and cost efficiency thanks to cutting-edge Azure hardware. It’s designed to lower total ownership costs, with preliminary tests indicating up to 24% savings for Windows web applications when compared to the earlier Premium v3 tier.
  • Azure Functions Flex Consumption provides concurrency-based scaling, instant scaling from zero to 1,000 instances without cold starts via the “Always Ready” feature, and smooth integration into virtual networks.
  • App Service plans with 2+ instances automatically support Availability Zones without requiring additional setup, while maintaining a 99.99% SLA. Enhanced visibility and configurable redundancy settings for zones simplify deployment and help cut costs.

Customers Are Innovating with Azure’s Application Platform

We are honoured by this recognition and grateful for the confidence our customers and partners place in us. Their innovation and feedback continually shape our roadmap and mission. Here are a few instances of that innovation:

  • Coca-Cola harnessed Azure AI Foundry and application services to develop a unique, real-time conversational “Santa” AI model, engaging over a million individuals across 43 markets in 26 languages. They launched the engaging “Create Real Magic” holiday campaign in just 60 days, demonstrating how their multi-phase migration to an AI-ready Azure platform enabled rapid innovation through scalable services such as Azure AI Speech, Functions, and Container Apps.
  • Medigold Health transitioned its applications to Azure App Service and adopted the Azure OpenAI Service, along with Azure Cosmos DB and Azure SQL Database. This automation of clinicians’ report generation drastically reduced administrative workloads and resulted in a 58% increase in clinician retention, enhancing job satisfaction and workflow efficiency.
  • The NFL enhanced its Combine App with a real-time conversational AI assistant, using Azure OpenAI Service, Azure Container Apps, and Azure Cosmos DB. This innovation enabled scouts and coaches to ask natural language questions and access quick, accurate player insights, transforming talent evaluation during the Combine event.
  • Audi AG utilised Azure AI Foundry, Azure App Service, and Azure Cosmos DB to rapidly deploy secure, scalable AI assistants to meet urgent HR needs. This approach provided swift and modular access to information, building confidence among both leadership and staff. Audi is advancing from experimentation to operational AI, preparing for deeper system integration and next-generation capabilities like multi-agent orchestration.

As AI revolutionises the application landscape, Microsoft remains committed to helping our customers quickly develop what’s next with both intellect and resilience.

Discover More About Azure

  • Begin your journey with AI App Templates. You can edit and deploy to Azure using Visual Studio Code or GitHub Codespaces.
  • Receive expert guidance from skilled Microsoft partners through the new Azure Accelerate programme.

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Cloud-Native Application Platforms, By Tigran Egiazarov, Mukul Saha, Prasanna Lakshmi Narasimha, 4 August 2025.

*Gartner is a registered trademark and service mark and Magic Quadrant is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally, used here with permission. All rights reserved.

This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The full Gartner document is available upon request here.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product, or service depicted in its research publications and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings. Gartner’s research publications reflect the opinions of its research organisation and shouldn’t be interpreted as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, regarding this research, including warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

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