Azure has deprecated the Azure Service Management (ASM) APIs in favor of the newer Azure Resource Manager (ARM) API, which offers enhanced features such as Resource Groups and better support for modern cloud services. As a result, from version 2018.12.0, Octopus will no longer proactively retrieve Cloud Service or Storage Account details in the portal when using Azure Certificate Accounts, though deployments will continue to function. The switch to ARM requires users to shift from Management Certificates to Azure Active Directory with Service Principals for authentication, as ARM does not support the former. Despite Azure's intention to phase out older APIs, some functionalities, notably related to Azure Cloud Services, will still be accessible via HTTP API endpoints for compatibility reasons, although these are not supported through ARM. Octopus users will experience changes in the configuration process, where auto-populated fields are replaced by manual input fields, reflecting the transition away from deprecated libraries.