This year, Microsoft’s biggest event, Ignite, is being hosted virtually. Thus far, the event has seen a strong participation from Microsoft’s ecosystem and covered what’s new and upcoming in the Microsoft world.
Today, at the launch of Microsoft Ignite 2020, Satya Nadella in his opening keynote discussed the pandemic and the three “R’s,” which will help us overcome the after effects of the global pandemic – response, recovery and resilience.
To truly achieve digital transformation, it’s absolutely necessary to empower people, engage customers and optimize operations. Microsoft solutions are built for this era, and serve as tools to help both individuals and organizations not only thrive, but also transform during this time of uncertainty. Using these tools, organizations can empower employees by fostering a new culture of hybrid work, engaging customers intelligently and virtually, transforming products and business models and optimizing operations to keep customers and employees safe—not just to reimagine, but to build the future.
Additionally, Microsoft made a host of significant announcements, including:
Microsoft Azure
Azure-based solutions have become more critical than ever before for organizations across the globe. Using Azure, enterprises can aggregate data by applying AI models to generate insights. To support this objective further, –Microsoft announced the following:
- Azure Orbital was unveiled in the session, which is a service to help customers move data from satellites directly into the Azure cloud for processing and storage. Azure Orbital is a fully managed ground station as a service that lets you communicate with, control your satellite, process data and scale your operations directly in Microsoft Azure.
- Further, Azure Mixed Reality was launched, covering; Remote rendering, Spatial Anchors and Object Anchors which will ensure AI enabled decision making.
Microsoft Power Platform
The phenomenal success of Power Platform during the pandemic has led to the creation of a “Return to Workplace Solution” in Power Platform, which was launched at Inspire this past July.
This return to workplace solution is being emphasized to help organizations manage their return to workplace experience end-to-end.
Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams will greatly contribute to the future of workplace collaboration, serving as the hub of teamwork in Microsoft 365 and ensuring organizations adapt to the new normal. The three focus areas to ensure success in the future of work are:
- Collaboration
- Learning
- Well Being
Microsoft Teams ensures collaboration not only within the organization, but also with an external audience. To facilitate this further, seven new teams-oriented features were launched:
1.New Together mode- Reimagines meeting experiences to help participants feel closer together even when you are apart. With new Together mode scenes coming this calendar year, you can transport your team to a variety of settings that can help set the tone and create the experience for your meeting, whether it be an auditorium, a conference room, or a coffee shop.
2.Custom layouts – coming later this year, custom layouts allow for a more dynamic content viewing experience and enable presenters to customize how content shows up for participants during a meeting.
3.Breakout rooms- breakout rooms will allow meeting organizers to split up meeting participants into smaller groups to facilitate brainstorming sessions or work group discussions. Presenters can choose to hop between breakout rooms, make announcements to all breakout rooms, and/or close the breakout rooms that then bring everybody back into the main meeting.
4.Meeting recap– Meeting recaps help teams stay on track and keep work moving forward after a meeting for both participants and for those who were unable to attend a meeting. The recap will also be available in the meeting event in your Outlook calendar.
5.Webinar registration and reporting -For more structured meetings, such as customer webinars, meeting organizers can use event registration with automated emails to make it easier to manage attendance. And after the meeting, view a detailed reporting dashboard that will help understand attendee engagement.
6.Touch less meeting experiences– Touch less meetings experiences to help our customers navigate through the hybrid working; including Room remote for Microsoft Teams Rooms, Support for Teams casting for Microsoft Teams Rooms, Proximity Join on Surface Hub, and Cortana voice assistance for Microsoft Teams Rooms on Windows.
7.Info pane, pinned posts, and new conversation button in channels
Available now, the channel info pane provides an at-a-glance summary of active members, important posts pinned by members, and other relevant information in each channel. This is great for new members getting up to speed or existing members who want to stay in the know.
To ensure a round-the-clock learning experience, LinkedIn Learning will now be a part of Microsoft Teams, enabling control and integration of LinkedIn content courses right inside Teams.
The well-being of employees and the community is a top concern for all. Microsoft launched well-being features and productivity insights – powered by MyAnalytics and Workplace Analytics – which will be part of Microsoft Teams starting in October. Individuals, managers and business leaders will get insights personalized to their role with recommended actions to make changing habits, improving productivity and boosting well-being easier.
In conclusion, Agreeya believes that economic growth is dependent on building tech-intensity across every industry and sector of the global economy. Considering the opportunities and challenges facing the world right now, we have an enormous responsibility to build technology that benefits everyone on the planet, as well as the planet itself.
To speak with AgreeYa Microsoft experts, or to learn more, email at partner.microsoft@agreeya.com