News

Microsoft Makes Bicep Azure Verified Modules for Azure Landing Zones Generally Available

• By John K. Waters
• January 20, 2026

Microsoft has made a Bicep-based set of Azure Verified Modules generally available for its Platform Landing Zone, a move aimed at giving customers a more modular, standardized way to deploy Azure Landing Zones with Infrastructure as Code while starting the phase-out of the older "classic" ALZ-Bicep approach, the company says.

In a post on its Azure Tools Blog, Microsoft said the "Azure Verified Modules for Platform Landing Zone using Bicep is now generally available," and that the Azure Landing Zones Bicep implementation now "leverages AVM exclusively."

Azure Verified Modules (AVM) are Microsoft-developed and supported reusable Infrastructure as Code modules for Bicep and Terraform that aim to standardize deployments and align them with Microsoft best practices. Bicep is a domain-specific language that uses declarative syntax to deploy Azure resources.

Microsoft said the Bicep framework has been refactored into a more modular architecture. It described a "starter module" composed of 19 Azure Verified Modules, including resource modules and pattern modules, intended to let organizations "compose" a Platform Landing Zone and customize components ranging from management group hierarchies to individual resource names and configurations.

The company also highlighted changes intended to reduce operational friction after initial deployment. Microsoft said it has integrated Azure Deployment Stacks, which it described as helping track what resources should exist and automatically clean up resources no longer defined in templates, a capability it compared to state management but "native to Azure."

For customers using Microsoft's Azure Landing Zones Infrastructure-as-Code Accelerator, Microsoft said Bicep AVM is now the default "starter module" and the focus of future development, with configuration shifting toward a YAML-based file intended to offer more control over management-group structure, resource naming, regions and network architecture choices.

Microsoft also said the new approach uses the Azure Landing Zones Library to decouple policy data from deployment logic, which it said is intended to make it easier to update modules and refresh policies on separate cycles, and to reduce friction for customers who customize policies.

As part of the shift, Microsoft said it is beginning a deprecation process for the classic ALZ-Bicep implementation. In the blog post, Microsoft said the classic starter module is being removed from the accelerator and that the ALZ-Bicep repository will be archived on Feb. 16, 2026, with limited support continuing for 12 months after removal from the accelerator.

Microsoft said a migration guide is "coming soon" to help customers transition from classic ALZ-Bicep to the AVM-based approach.