StartCloud deploys and manages Microsoft Foundry (Azure AI Foundry) for Australian businesses. Foundry is a unified platform for building, deploying, and governing AI applications and agents. It provides access to over 11,000 AI models from Microsoft, OpenAI, Meta, Mistral, and others, plus tools for building intelligent agents, grounding AI in business data, and managing governance at scale. StartCloud handles secure deployment, integration with existing Microsoft 365 and Azure environments, and ongoing support.
Build AI Apps and Agents That Understand Your Business
Microsoft Foundry gives you access to over 11,000 AI models and a complete platform for building intelligent agents that connect to your business data, automate complex processes, and operate under your existing security policies.
Whether you're exploring AI for the first time or scaling existing projects, StartCloud helps you deploy Foundry securely and get real value from it.
What Is Microsoft Foundry?
Microsoft Foundry (also known as Azure AI Foundry) is a unified platform where you can discover AI models, build intelligent agents, and govern everything from one place. Used by developers at over 80,000 enterprises, including 80% of the Fortune 500.
11,000+ AI Models in One Place
Browse and deploy foundation models from Microsoft, OpenAI, Meta, Mistral, and more. Compare benchmarks, test outputs, and pick the right model for your use case without juggling multiple platforms.
Build Agents That Act on Your Data
Create AI agents that understand your business context. Connect them to your systems through 1,400+ enterprise connectors and let them handle complex, multi-step processes on your behalf.
Governance and Security Built In
Every model and agent runs under your existing Microsoft security policies. Entra ID, Defender, and Purview integrate natively so your data stays protected and compliant from day one.
The Risk of Unmanaged AI
AI is already in your organisation, whether you planned for it or not. Without a proper platform, you're flying blind.
Scattered AI Tools with No Oversight
When teams experiment with different AI services independently, you lose visibility into what data is being shared, which models are being used, and whether outputs are reliable.
Manual Processes That Don't Scale
Your team spends hours on repetitive tasks that could be automated. Without a proper platform to build and deploy AI agents, these inefficiencies just keep growing.
Security Blind Spots When Using AI
Most AI tools operate outside your organisation's security perimeter. Sensitive data gets sent to unknown endpoints, and there's no audit trail for what the AI sees or produces.
What's Inside Microsoft Foundry
Foundry brings together models, tools, agents, and governance in a single platform. Here's what you get access to.
Foundry Models
Access a catalogue of over 11,000 models from Microsoft, OpenAI, Meta, Mistral, Cohere, and more. Compare performance benchmarks side by side and deploy the right model for your workload.
Foundry Agent Service
Build context-aware AI agents that automate complex business processes. Agents connect to your enterprise systems through 1,400+ connectors and work within your existing security policies.
Foundry IQ
Ground your AI in real business data. Foundry IQ connects to your knowledge bases and documents using retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) so responses are accurate and relevant to your organisation.
Foundry Tools
A complete toolkit for prompt engineering, fine-tuning, and evaluation. Test different approaches, measure quality, and iterate quickly without building infrastructure from scratch.
Content Safety
Built-in guardrails protect against prompt injection attacks, hallucinations, and biased outputs. Content Safety filters run automatically so your AI applications stay trustworthy and responsible.
Foundry Local
Run AI models at the edge for scenarios where low latency or data residency matters. Process sensitive workloads on-premises or on local devices without sending data to the cloud.
Microsoft Solutions Partner
Modern Work Designation
StartCloud holds the Microsoft Solutions Partner designation for Modern Work, recognising our proven capability in deploying and managing Microsoft cloud solutions for Australian businesses.
A Platform Trusted by Global Enterprises
Microsoft Foundry is the same platform used by the world's largest organisations to build and govern their AI solutions.
Why Choose StartCloud?
AI platforms are powerful, but only when they're set up properly and managed well. That's where we come in.
Microsoft Solutions Partner
We hold the Modern Work designation, which means Microsoft has verified our expertise across the Microsoft cloud stack. We bring that same rigour to Foundry deployments.
Security-First AI Deployment
We don't just connect your data to AI and hope for the best. Every Foundry deployment includes proper identity management, data governance, and content safety configuration.
End-to-End Integration
We connect Foundry to your existing Microsoft 365, Azure, and Dynamics 365 environments so your AI agents have the context they need to be genuinely useful.
Ongoing Support and Governance
AI isn't a set-and-forget project. We provide ongoing monitoring, model evaluation, and governance support to make sure your AI investments keep delivering value.