Denodo puts Agora cloud service on Microsoft Marketplace

Denodo has made its Agora cloud data service available on the Microsoft Marketplace, giving customers access to the service through Microsoft's commercial channel.

The move brings Agora into Microsoft's sales and procurement framework for Azure customers, including buyers in Australia, Singapore and other Asia-Pacific markets. Eligible customers in Singapore can also count Denodo purchases towards their Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment.

Agora is Denodo's fully managed cloud service, designed to connect users and software agents to data spread across on-premises systems, software-as-a-service products and multiple cloud environments. The service can access data from more than 200 source systems, including SAP, Oracle, Salesforce and Snowflake.

It works alongside Microsoft products such as Microsoft Fabric, Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2, Power BI and Azure Synapse Analytics, as well as Azure OpenAI and Azure Databricks. This lets organisations use Microsoft's AI tools while reaching data that sits outside Microsoft's own platforms.

Hybrid data

A central part of the offer is support for so-called agentic AI, where software agents retrieve information and carry out tasks with limited human intervention. Agora serves as a data access layer that lets those agents work with live data across hybrid and multi-cloud systems, rather than relying only on information stored within Microsoft's estate.

This includes several usage patterns. Microsoft Copilot agents can access enterprise data through Agora's Model Context Protocol integration, while custom AI agents built with Microsoft Foundry can use Agora application programming interfaces for real-time data retrieval.

Agora also includes a data marketplace for business users, including Power BI users, so people and AI agents draw from the same semantic layer. In practice, that means both human users and software agents can work from the same business definitions and context when querying data.

The service's availability through Microsoft Marketplace may carry particular weight in Asia-Pacific, where companies often operate under different national rules on data handling and storage. Agora is intended to help customers meet data sovereignty, regulatory and security requirements while keeping access to distributed data under governance controls.

Compliance focus

To support that approach, Agora integrates with Microsoft Entra ID and includes controls such as attribute-based access control, end-to-end lineage and policy enforcement for data sources outside Microsoft systems. Those features are aimed at organisations that need to manage access across varied systems without moving all their data into a single platform.

Microsoft highlighted the significance of the addition to its marketplace ecosystem.

"Microsoft is pleased to welcome Agora to Microsoft Azure and the Microsoft Marketplace," said Jake Zborowski, General Manager, Microsoft Azure Platform at Microsoft Corp. "Together with Denodo, we look forward to helping enterprises accelerate agentic AI initiatives - especially those operating in complex hybrid, multi-cloud and data-sovereign environments."

The commercial arrangement also broadens the ways customers can buy the product. Organisations can start through free trials, annual private offers or consumption-based pricing, depending on procurement needs.

That may appeal to enterprise buyers that increasingly want AI and data products to fit into existing cloud spending commitments rather than go through separate purchasing processes. By appearing on the marketplace and qualifying for Azure commitment treatment in some cases, Agora becomes easier to buy through established Microsoft channels.

For Denodo, the listing also strengthens its position as a partner to Microsoft customers that want to connect AI systems to operational and analytical data held across several environments. Rather than replacing Microsoft's own data and AI tools, Agora is being pitched as an additional layer for access to external and non-Microsoft data sources.

Richard Jones, Vice President and General Manager, APAC and Japan, framed the launch as a way to broaden the data available to customers using Microsoft's AI stack.

"With Agora's availability on the Microsoft Marketplace and seamless integrations to Microsoft's AI and data services, we offer our mutual customers a powerful solution for agentic AI use cases that leverage an organization's entire data estate across hybrid and multi-cloud environments," Jones said. "Agora on the Microsoft Marketplace delivers new levels of agility, scalability, cost-efficiency and ease-of-use."