We are thrilled to announce that Microsoft has been recognized as a leader in The Forrester Wave™: Serverless Development Platforms, Q2 2025.
Microsoft is named a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Serverless Development Platforms, Q2 2025
We are thrilled to announce that Microsoft has been recognized as a leader in The Forrester Wave™: Serverless Development Platforms, Q2 2025. We believe this recognition is a testament to our relentless focus on empowering developers, driving innovation, and delivering real value at scale for organizations across industries with Azure Functions and Azure Container Apps. Download the full report here (Forrester subscription required).
Build smarter, scale faster with serverless compute in the era of AI applications and agents
Microsoft’s vision for serverless has always been clear: enable every developer to build, deploy, and manage modern applications with unmatched productivity, security, and agility—no matter the architecture, language, or workload. With Azure’s end-to-end serverless platform, we have moved beyond function-as-a-service to a comprehensive environment where containers, event-driven architectures, AI, and cloud-native patterns come together seamlessly.
Our serverless offerings are designed to do more than abstract infrastructure—they are the foundation for building next-generation intelligent apps. With deep integrations into AI services, robust event handling, and developer-centric tooling, Azure Functions and Azure Container Apps make it easy for teams to transform ideas into impactful solutions.
What sets Microsoft’s serverless compute platform apart?
- Unified event-driven and container-based models: Azure Functions and Azure Container Apps let you run any code, anywhere, scaling instantly from zero to hyper-scale—supporting both serverless functions and fully managed serverless containers without worrying about underlying infrastructure.
- AI integration at every layer: With native support for Azure OpenAI, serverless GPUs and AI toolchains, you can embed generative AI, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) patterns, and agentic workflows directly into serverless workflows, accelerating innovation in every app.
- Best-in-class developer experience: From Visual Studio and VS Code to GitHub Actions, GitHub Copilot for Azure and familiar open-source frameworks, Microsoft’s stack puts developer productivity first—backed by extensive documentation, templates, and integrated DevOps capabilities.
- Enterprise-grade security and compliance: Azure offers comprehensive identity and access management, role-based controls, and regulatory compliance, ensuring your applications and data are always protected.
- Flexible pricing and hosting: Choose between consumption-based serverless, dedicated compute, or adaptive models. Features like Flex Consumption Plan and serverless GPU let you optimize for cost, performance, and specific workload needs.
- Seamless and instant scaling: Instantly scale from zero to global with negligible cold start delays—ensuring always-on performance and real-time responsiveness for AI-powered and event-driven workloads, without manual intervention or infrastructure management.
- Industry impact: With over a decade of operating a reliable cloud platform, we support mission-critical workloads across financial services, manufacturing, media, retail, and beyond.
Real-world impact: Customer success stories
Our customers continue to inspire us, showing what’s possible with Azure Functions and Azure Container Apps:
- Hera Space Mission: Hera Space Companion, in collaboration with Terra Mater Studios, European Space Agency and Impact AI, is using Azure Container Apps and Azure AI Foundry to power the Hera AI Companion—an interactive, multilingual experience that lets users converse with a spacecraft in deep space—while also enabling rapid satellite image analysis and streamlined AI model deployment to accelerate innovation in space-based environmental insights.
- Coca Cola: By adopting Azure Container Apps and Azure Functions to orchestrate real-time interactions in its global “Create Real Magic” holiday campaign, Coca Cola created a serverless, AI-powered Santa to engage over a million consumers across 43 countries in 26 languages with personalized experiences.
- NFL: The National Football League integrates Azure Container Apps into its scouting platform, NFL Combine, to deliver real-time, sideline-ready AI insights, transforming hours of manual analysis into seconds of actionable data for coaches and scouts—without managing infrastructure.
to power advanced fan engagement platforms, delivering real-time updates, personalized content, and data analytics during live events—all at massive scale. - Indiana Pacers: The Pacers build a real-time, in-arena captioning system that delivers instant, accurate captions to fans, enhancing accessibility and redefining the live sports experience through serverless compute and AI.
- Coldplay: The iconic band, Coldplay, partners with Pixel Artworks to deliver immersive, AI-driven visual experiences at live shows, blending creativity and technology in real time using Azure Functions.
- Heineken: Heineken is leveraging Azure Functions to build secure, scalable AI agents that automate workflows and power real-time RAG experiences—enabling intelligent, cost-optimized innovation across its global operations.
These stories are just a glimpse into the transformative potential of serverless at Microsoft. Visit the Microsoft Customer Stories for deeper dives into how organizations are succeeding with Azure Functions and Azure Container Apps, and check out the latest Build updates for even more innovation highlights.
Innovation continues: Build what’s next with Microsoft serverless
This recognition as a leader isn’t just a milestone—it’s a launchpad for what’s next. We’re continuously investing in AI-powered development, seamless hybrid cloud, and flexible deployment models. Our recent updates at Microsoft Build highlight advanced AI apps and agents, new serverless GPU capabilities, and an ever-growing ecosystem of tools, templates, and partner solutions to help you modernize, build, and scale.
Whether you’re building intelligent agents, orchestrating real-time data, or delivering engaging digital experiences, Microsoft’s serverless platform provides the power, flexibility, and trust you need.
Join us on this journey. Explore the latest on Azure Functions and Azure Container Apps, and let’s build the future—together.
Forrester does not endorse any company, product, brand, or service included in its research publications and does not advise any person to select the products or services of any company or brand based on the ratings included in such publications. Information is based on the best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. For more information, read about Forrester’s objectivity here .
