A structured, time-boxed 6 week foundation that stands up the AI platform, security, and integrations you will run every future use case on. Runs once, ends with a hard go/no-go gate before any use case begins. Use-case-specific rollout timelines live with each individual use case on the home page.
Lay the foundation: review the current AI architecture, map the target environment (cloud, on-prem, or hybrid), inventory upstream and downstream integrations, and finalize the reference architecture you will build on. Identify high-risk dependencies and plan for mitigations early.
Provision the core AI platform: Azure OpenAI, AI Foundry, AI Search, and supporting compute. Establish identity (Entra ID), secrets management (Key Vault), private networking, and API management. Environments are created for dev, test, and production with promotion rules defined.
Wire the AI platform into your data and systems of record. Stand up the API gateway, ingestion pipelines, and vector/RAG stores. Enable AI Content Safety, audit logging, and model governance so every future use case inherits the same security and compliance posture.
Run end-to-end smoke tests across identity, networking, data, and model serving. Confirm operational runbooks, monitoring, and escalation paths are in place. A formal readiness review holds the hard go/no-go gate before any use case is allowed to start.