Standing up Microsoft Foundry as a public-facing sandbox takes an afternoon; deploying it privately with enterprise-grade security and governance is a proper platform design project. Drawing on a recently completed enterprise design, this post walks through the key decisions — governance boundaries, network isolation, RBAC, models and regions, NFRs and DR — the gotchas that get missed, and a framework for phasing decisions across HLD, LLD, Build and Run.

Microsoft Foundry is the latest evolution of Azure's AI tooling — but what actually is it? In this post, I share a practical mental model for the new Foundry experience: the problem it solves, the core workflow it's built around, and how models, agents, tools, knowledge, and evaluation fit together. If you're wondering where to start, this should give you a clear picture before you open the portal.