Azure Open Datasets Simply Explained

2026-10-31 · 8 views

Description

Stop wasting hours cleaning messy public data and start building your models in minutes. In this episode of Microsoft Knowledge Nuggets, Mirko Peters explains how Azure Open Datasets provides a free, curated library of high-quality data that is ready to use for your next data science or machine learning project.

🚀 What You Will Learn

In this video, we explore how Microsoft handles the heavy lifting of data normalization, cleaning, and hosting so you can focus on gaining insights. We cover everything from weather and holiday data to NYC taxi trips and US Census statistics. Whether you are a beginner looking for practice data or a pro needing external signals for sales forecasting, this service is a game-changer for your workflow.

🛠️ Technical Deep Dive

We also dive into the technical side, showing you how to access these datasets using Python, Power BI, Azure Machine Learning, and Synapse. Plus, we break down the cost structure so you know exactly how to keep your projects budget-friendly by avoiding common egress charges. By keeping your compute in the same region as the data, you can often work with these massive datasets for little to no cost.

Chapters

0:00 M365Con Announcement 1:11 The Struggle with Public Data 2:05 What is Azure Open Datasets 4:40 Why Microsoft Built This Service 7:06 Weather and Holiday Datasets 9:02 Census and Demographic Data 10:29 Mobility and Public Safety Data 12:09 Benchmark Machine Learning Datasets 13:43 How to Access the Data 15:40 Understanding Costs and Egress

If you found this guide helpful, make sure to subscribe for more Microsoft Knowledge Nuggets! Don’t forget to visit m365khan.net to secure your spot for the upcoming 10-day Microsoft community event in January.

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