What’s New with Microsoft?

Every year in July Microsoft hosts a conference that is meant to inspire customers and partners to achieve more. When other Microsoft conferences focus on new technology and infrastructure architecture, then Inspire talks about how to deploy that technology in a way that it benefits us all. In short, Microsoft Inspire focuses less on technology itself and more about how we great value from it in our everyday life. 

Microsoft Inspire 2021 focused mainly on how people have changed their beliefs and behaviors due to COVID and how technology has played a huge role in it. In a situation where people are forced to work alone and from a distance, we need IT solutions that help to improve our working conditions and work-life balance.

Microsoft divides the areas where they see room for improvement as follows: 

• Modern Work
• Digital & App Innovation
• Business Applications
• Data & AI
• Infrastructure
• Security

In all the above areas Microsoft is creating value by improving their cloud solutions. 

Knowing the areas in which Microsoft is investing in, Primend can take this knowledge and bring it to companies who want to make their businesses more successful. This is not an easy task. Pandemic has changed the way people view business and the rate at which technology changes. In order to help businesses grow, we need to understand their needs and rapidly standardize solutions that will drive impact. 

Azure Arc

Cloud solutions are becoming more and more popular. However, this brings about the problem that depending on how your IT systems are set up they could be located in different cloud solution providers or be with production machines in the middle of nowhere or in companies own datacenter. How to ensure that a business has an overview and the ability to manage their IT infrastructure when it is disparately located?

Azure Arc is a set on technologies, that enables to run Azure services in companies own datacenters, in production machines computers, at different cloud solutions providers and to manage it all with in one Azure tenant. In Azure Arc you can manage Windows, Linux, SQL servers and Kubernetes clusters in datacenters and in the periphery.

Enterprise Metaverse

Metaverse is a new approach for that layer of data that is present in any infrastructure. This data is created when devices and solutions get their own sensors and AI capabilities. Metaverse brings together IoT, Digital Twins, mixed-reality and different solutions for automation. 

Smart devices are equipped with sensors, that collect data from the device itself and its surroundings. From that data you can build, with AI solutions, decision making solutions that make devices into smart devices. In order to connect devices to other devices and business processes, we need services that record the device conditions, make sense of business processes and give an overview to people. Enterprise Metaverse is a concept of a service that is needed to bring together the physical and digital world. 

Data & AI

People create several petabytes of data daily. According to IDC people will create more data in the next 3 years then in the 30 years combined. 

There is a lot of data but is it enough and what kind of knowledge can we derive from it? The main obstacle in getting insight from data is its fragmentation. Data is saved in different sources depending on the business process. Data tends to be unorganized and sometimes even sits with the service provider, so business does not have full access. 

Azure Synapse service brings together all data from business systems, so you can find new connections with AI and then easily present it with PowerBI. 

From gathered data it is possible to create new business process support apps that take into consideration the connections discovered from that data, make proposals to improve workflows, lessen mistakes and with that increase employee productivity. For that Azure has a full offer of services from AI to Power Platform low code services to build whatever solutions on whatever platform needed. 

Microsoft has made big investments in developing AI services, that even people with low IT skills can use. There are AI services for every taste – you can develop them yourself, you can use pre-made models and can use models that are already in use for immediate effect. 

For enterprises that want to know where their data is located and what it contains, Microsoft can offer a new service called Azure Purview that helps with data detection, cataloging and assessing compatibility. 

Collaboration Apps

Microsoft is trying to create a solution that entails collaboration, communication and business processes with the purpose of creating supportive apps for the office and first line employees. With Microsoft Graphi you can bring data from Microsoft 365 services like Exchange and Sharepoint, connect them with business processes using Power Platform and Azure services and create an access point for them in Teams. 

Collaboration apps bring together data from different services and connect them with Teams for easy access and use. 

Modern Work

Pandemic has created a situation where employees need to be able to successfully work in an office, from home and from a factory. When the pandemic started employees moved from office to home and that created a new set of demands to keep up the security and productivity levels.

Mixed-reality

More and more, even factories, are moving towards remote work and that demands completely new mixed-reality solutions. Mixed reality has also given tools to handle the changes happening, for example creating interactive workshop environments. 

Microsoft Viva 

In a situation where employees might not be working from offices anymore, companies need to re-think what is their employees work experience – how to immerse them into the company culture, how to train people to be successful at what they do, how to manage stress levels and to drive collaboration between co-workers. 

Microsoft Viva collects telemetry from systems to assess employee work loads, help understand if the communication channels are effective and from that offer employees relevant trainings.

Windows 11

We are in a new era with how we work, that means we need to reassess our work environment and how that opts for optimal productivity. Windows 11 takes the knowledge that has been gathered during the pandemic and builds on it to make a more secure and productive working environment whether you are working from home or from the office. Cloud solutions are even more integrated into Windows 11, keeping data in the center of attention. 

Windows 365

Windows 365 is a cloud computing solution based on Azure and Windows 11, that works on every browser. With Windows 365 you can pick up work where you left of on whatever device wherever you are. 

Idea behind Windows 365 is to offer employees and companies a safe place to work, where employees can be productive not dependent on where they are working from and what device they are using. If the device is fast enough to run Youtube videos, it can be used as a Windows 365 device. Windows 365 needs to have a central management system and antivirus on it, which makes the device security easier to manage for the company. Also, the employee’s computer speed is not dependant on the hardware but company can give each employee a cloud computer with enough speed to get their job done.

Environmental Cloud

Microsoft gives each company an opportunity to give back to our planet to prevent global warming by using cloud services which have been created by using environmentally friendly technologies and CO2 neutral electricity. 

Trust And Security

Technology is tightly woven into our everyday lives and we need to be sure that the technology we are using is keeping us and our data safe.

All Microsoft solutions entail security technology in itself and are perfected by our partner solutions. Sometimes the security solutions are not enough and another layer needs to be added but the problem is that they are difficult to implement and manage. Microsoft is building solution that will help to implement and manage these security features more easily with the help of AI. Microsoft is creating an easy platform where specialist can keep an eye on security.