Azure Incubations

Experiment. Build. Share.

Incubating the next wave of cloud-native innovation.

The Azure Office of the CTO is where Azure experiments, innovates, and collaborates to shape the future of the cloud through cutting-edge research and open-source projects.

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The Azure Incubations team drives innovation across Azure, Microsoft, and the broader cloud ecosystem through bold experimentation and strategic collaboration. By developing open technologies that address emerging cloud-native challenges, the team transforms ideas into impactful solutions that advance the state of the industry.

In keeping with Microsoft's commitment to open innovation, Azure Incubations donates key intellectual property to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), advancing an open, sustainable cloud-native ecosystem shaped by contributors worldwide.

— Mark Russinovich, CTO, Deputy CISO and Technical Fellow, Microsoft Azure

Our Focus

We incubate technologies that shape the future of cloud computing.

Cloud-native Platforms

Boosting developer productivity with modern cloud-native toolchains

Microservices & Distributed Systems

Resilient patterns for building and connecting modular cloud systems

Event-driven & Serverless

Scalable, on-demand architectures that respond to events in real time

Observability & Operations

Ensuring reliability, monitoring, and operational excellence at scale

Our Approach

How we innovate and collaborate

CNCF

Open Source

We believe open source is the fastest path to innovation. Our projects are built in the open, contributing to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) and strengthening the cloud-native community.

Collaboration

Collaboration

Great ideas grow when shared. We work side by side with Microsoft teams, open source contributors, and enterprise partners to turn innovation into solutions that scale.