INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Microsoft is hosting its Ignite conference in Orlando, Florida this week
And although Ignite isn&t the household name that Microsoft Build conference has become over the course of the last few years, it a massive
event with over 30,000 attendees and plenty of news
Indeed, there was so much news this year that Microsoft provided the press with a 27-page bookletwith all of it.
We wrote about quite a few
of these today, but here are the most important announcements, including one that wasn&t in Microsoft booklet but was featured prominently
Microsoft, SAP and Adobe take on Salesforce with their new Open Data Initiative for customer data
What was announced: Microsoft is teaming
up with Adobe and SAP to create a single model for representing customer data that businesses will be able to move between systems.
Why it
matters: Moving customer data between different enterprise systems is hard, especially because there isn&t a standardized way to represent
Microsoft, Adobe and SAP say they want to make it easier for this data to flow between systems
But it also a shot across the bow of Salesforce, the leader in the CRM space
It also represents a chance for these three companies to enable new tools that can extract value from this data — and Microsoft obviously
hopes that these businesses will choose its Azure platform for analyzing the data.
2
Microsoft wants to do away with more passwords
What was announced: Businesses that use Microsoft Azure Active Directory (AD) will now be
able to use the Microsoft Authenticator app on iOS and Android in place of a password to log into their business applications.
Why it
matters: Passwords are annoying and they aren&t very secure
Many enterprises are starting to push their employees to use a second factor to authenticate
With this, Microsoft now replaces the password/second factor combination with a single tap on your phone — ideally without compromising
Microsoft new Windows Virtual Desktop lets you run Windows 10 in the cloud
What was announced: Microsoft now lets businesses rent a virtual
Windows 10 desktop in Azure.
Why it matters: Until now, virtual Windows 10 desktops were the domain of third-party service providers
Now, Microsoft itself will offer these desktops
The company argues that this is the first time you can get a multiuser virtualized Windows 10 desktop in the cloud
As employees become more mobile and don&t necessarily always work from the same desktop or laptop, this virtualized solution will allow
organizations to offer them a full Windows 10 desktop in the cloud, with all the Office apps they know, without the cost of having to
provision and manage a physical machine.
4
Microsoft Office gets smarter
What was announced: Microsoft is adding a number of new AI tools to its Office productivity suite
Those include Ideas, which aims to take some of the hassle out of using these tools
Ideas may suggest a layout for your PowerPoint presentation or help you find interesting data in your spreadsheets, for example
Excel is also getting a couple of new tools for pulling in rich data from third-party sources
Microsoft is also building a new unified search tool for finding data across an organization network.
Why it matters: Microsoft Office
remains the most widely used suite of productivity applications
That makes it the ideal surface for highlighting Microsoft AI chops, and anything that can improve employee productivity will surely drive a
lot of value to businesses
If that means sitting through fewer badly designed PowerPoint slides, then this whole AI thing will have been worth it.
5
Microsoft massive Surface Hub 2 whiteboards will launch in Q2 2019
What was announced: The next version of the Surface Hub, Microsoft
massive whiteboard displays, will launch in Q2 2019
The Surface Hub 2 is both lighter and thinner than the original version
Then, in 2020, an updated version, the Surface Hub 2X, will launch that will offer features like tiling and rotation.
Why it matters: We&re
talking about a 50-inch touchscreen display here
You probably won&t buy one, but you&ll want one
It a disappointment to hear that the Surface Hub 2 won&t launch into next year and that some of the advanced features most users are waiting
for won&t arrive until the refresh in 2020.
6
Microsoft Teams gets bokeh and meeting recordings with transcripts
What was announced: Microsoft Teams, its Slack competitor, can now blur
the background when you are in a video meeting and it&ll automatically create transcripts of your meetings.
Why it matters: Teams has
emerged as a competent Slack competitor that quite popular with companies that are already betting on Microsoft productivity tools
Microsoft is now bringing many of its machine learning smarts to Teams to offer features that most of its competitors can&t match.
7
Microsoft launches Azure Digital Twins
What was announced: Azure Digital Twins allows enterprises to model their real-world IoT deployments
in the cloud.
Why it matters: IoT presents a massive new market for cloud services like Azure
Many businesses were already building their own version of Digital Twins on top of Azure, but those homegrown solutions didn&t always scale
Now, Microsoft is offering this capability out of the box, and for many businesses, this may just be the killer feature that will make them
decide on standardizing their IoT workloads on Azure
And as they use Azure Digital Twins, they&ll also want to use the rest of Azure many IoT tools.
