A Visual Guide To: Azure Percept
Tags: azure, sketchnote, iot, beginners
Published: 2021-09-16 21:39:43

---
title: A Visual Guide To: Azure Percept
published: true
description: Want to build edge AI solutions? Explore the visual guide to Azure Percept from @sketchthedocs.
series: A Visual Study Guide For Azure
tags: azure, sketchnote, iot, beginners
cover_image: https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/l216tg8wvnt7mzoknsoq.png
---


> Want to continue the learning journey?
 * 📄 Read the blog post: https://aka.ms/visual/azure-percept
 * 🧠 Visit the Azure Percept docs: https://aka.ms/AzurePercept
 * 🐦 Follow [@sketchthedocs](https://twitter.com/sketchthedocs/status/1438590407546396674) for more guides & info


Welcome to my continuing series on visual guides for Azure technologies!! Today we'll explore the illustrated guide to [Azure Percept](https://aka.ms/AzurePercept), a new end-to-end technology platform from Microsoft to enable rapid prototyping, deployment, and management, of _edge AI_ solutions from Microsoft. 

## About Visual Guides

[65% of us are visual learners](https://sketchthedocs.dev/about/) - we absorb information from visual cues, detect patterns quicker, and make connections that help us understand complex concepts and recall them more easily. Use these guides as a pre-read (big picture) and post-recap (summary) resource for your own learning journeys. Print out the [hi-res image](https://github.com/SketchTheDocs/cloud-skills/blob/main/gallery/Azure-005-AzurePercept.jpg) or use it as desktop wallpaper to provide a handy reference for studying!

## About Edge AI
[Edge Computing](https://www.microsoft.com/research/project/edge-computing/) is a key aspect of [Hybrid Cloud](https://azure.microsoft.com/solutions/hybrid-cloud-app/#overview) strategy. It focuses on placing compute resources _closer_ to information gathering sources so as to reduce network latency and bandwidth usage for efficient & sustainable distributed computing. [AI at the Edge](https://acloudguru.com/blog/engineering/artificial-intelligence-at-the-edge-building-in-demand-iot-skills) focuses on using these resources to run machine learning and data analytics processes to drive _intelligent edge_ applications using real-time insights or automation.

## About Azure Percept
Today, edge AI solutions are hand-crafted - relying on developers to integrate hardware (devices) and software (services) manually, and build custom AI models to suit their domain needs. This creates workflow complexity and adds a burden on developers to have non-trivial data science expertise, to develop and deploy edge AI apps.

[Azure Percept](https://azure.microsoft.com/services/azure-percept/) addresses this with an _end-to-end_ edge AI platform that offers the following benefits:
 * Built-in hardware accelerators and integrations with Azure AI and Azure IOT services
 * Pre-built AI models for custom vision and speech, for rapid protoyping
 * Built-in security measures on-device and in-cloud, to protect high-value assets
 * Rich tooling for low-code development and unified workflow management

## Visual Guide To Azure Percept

Check out the 30-second timelapse of the Visual Guide to Azure Percept to get a sense of the story flow.

{% twitter 1424848806504538113%}

Then check out the static version below - and download [the hi-res printable image](hhttps://github.com/SketchTheDocs/cloud-skills/blob/main/gallery/Azure-005-AzurePercept.jpg) for a handy reference. 

![An Illustrated Guide to the Microsoft Azure Percept platform for edge AI application development](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/t3b2647t46bpbyrnbjlq.png)

Now - check out the [detailed blog post on the Visual Guide to Azure Percept](https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/internet-of-things/a-visual-guide-to-azure-percept/ba-p/2747730) to explore the various sections of the guide - from an overview of the platform to its three core components, and a quickstart guide to begin hands-on exploration.

## Next Steps

Check out the [resources](https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/internet-of-things/a-visual-guide-to-azure-percept/ba-p/2747730) section of that blog post for links to learning paths, code samples and more - to get you started. 

What do you think of the platform? Do you have use cases you want to explore, or ideas for product enhancements? Leave us a comment here or on the original blog - we'd love to get feedback.

And follow [this series](https://dev.to/nitya/series/11040) to see more visual guides to Azure Technologies as they are published!


---

> Want to continue the learning journey?
 * 📄 Read the blog post: https://aka.ms/visual/azure-percept
 * 🧠 Visit the Azure Percept docs: https://aka.ms/AzurePercept
 * 🐦 Follow [@sketchthedocs](https://twitter.com/sketchthedocs/status/1438590407546396674) for more guides & info