Support for Hosting NI Nigel in a Customer’s Azure AI Foundry Environment

[KevRotork]

Hi,

Our organisation is interested in using NI Nigel, but our preferred security model is for AI processing to run within our own Azure tenant and subscription, ideally using our existing Azure AI Foundry environment.

This would allow us to benefit from Nigel’s specialist test and measurement knowledge while keeping our engineering data within an environment controlled and governed by our organisation.

This approach would provide several benefits:

• greater control over engineering and test data;
• alignment with our existing Azure security and governance policies;
• control over user access, monitoring and audit;
• easier approval for use with internal LabVIEW and TestStand projects;
• reduced concerns about sending proprietary engineering information to an externally hosted AI service.

Does NI plan to support deploying or connecting Nigel to a customer-owned Azure AI Foundry environment?

If so, is there an expected roadmap or timeframe for this capability?

It would also be helpful to understand whether NI is considering a bring-your-own Azure OpenAI or customer-managed deployment option.

Thanks,

Kev

[cbutcher · Accepted solution]

Hi Kev,

The roadmap here lists it as probably "In Development - 2026" (Customer Azure Cloud Hosting).

There are a couple of other categories if you don't think "Customer Azure Cloud Hosting" is what you're describing (with different timeframes).

In development for 2026 may mean releasing with 2026Q3 (i.e., probably very soon), or for Nigel, it might be a later patch release or something (because Nigel can release separately too).

[JÞB]

Personaly,  I have not found NIgel to outperform any well constructed search of these forums. 

Even if you just consider the cumulative posts of the Zealots and Knights.... an AI trained in Austin will take some time.

As Ben would argue "who is the expert?"  Then quote something from a "Republic" volume in the Greek original.  (Propably related to horse saddles)  BEN?

[JÞB]

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@JÞB wrote:

Personaly,  I have not found NIgel to outperform any well constructed search of these forums. 

Even if you just consider the cumulative posts of the Zealots and Knights.... an AI trained in Austin will take some time.

As Ben would argue "who is the expert?"  Then quote something from a "Republic" volume in the Greek original.  (Propably related to horse saddles)  BEN?

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Ah! Ha! I took some time and thought about it.... "Intelligence" vs "empirical evidence" 

I could use a Ben thought ...I miss his thought process. 

[EricR]

@KevRotork  - as someone who is directly working on this implementation, I would be interested in more details about your specific scenario and what would work best for your company.

Please send me whatever level of details and questions you can share:  eric.reffett@emerson.com

[BertMcMahan]

I'm somewhat interested as well, as a lot of my software has legal restrictions that make it very tricky to send to outside AI sources.

My use case isn't necessarily solving a bunch of hard problems, but doing rote tasks or helping with fiddly ones.

Examples of rote tasks I'd like it to handle:

• Renaming a ton of constants (like when you rename a class)
• Generating clean documentation
• Reorganizing files

Examples where I don't use a tool frequently enough to be quick:

• Using VI Scripting to create some automatic tool (usually to do one of the rote tasks above)
• Wiring up the million references and VI server nodes needed to talk to Excel/Word/etc.

Or just generally "proof of concept" tasks that don't have to be great under the hood, but let me test out an idea on some users before doing it the right way.

[JÞB]

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@BertMcMahan wrote:

Or just generally "proof of concept" tasks that don't have to be great under the hood, but let me test out an idea on some users before doing it the right way.

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Ah.... the "NI R&D Approach" write, release, fix bugs!

[BertMcMahan]

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@JÞB wrote:

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@BertMcMahan wrote:

Or just generally "proof of concept" tasks that don't have to be great under the hood, but let me test out an idea on some users before doing it the right way.

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Ah.... the "NI R&D Approach" write, release, fix bugs!

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Lol, looking back, I believe the word I was looking for was "prototyping" xD

[alexderjuengere]

"the best debugger, is the customer"

[softball]

Hi

Hosting usually infer paying somebody for something.

Does anybody have an indication about the money involved in using these services ?

Regards