INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
It Microsoft Ignite this week, the company premier event for IT professionals and decision-makers
But it not just about new tools for role-based access
Ignite is also very much a forward-looking conference that keeps the changing role of IT in mind
And while there isn&t a lot of consumer news at the event, the company does tend to make a few announcements for developers, as well.
This
year Ignite was especially news-heavy
Ahead of the event, the company provided journalists and analysts with an 87-page document that lists all of the news items
If I counted correctly, there were about 175 separate announcements
Here are the top seven you really need to know about.
Azure Arc: you can now use Azure to manage resources anywhere, including on AWS and
Google Cloud
What was announced: Microsoft was among the first of the big cloud vendors to bet big on hybrid deployments
With Arc, the company is taking this a step further
It will let enterprises use Azure to manage their resources across clouds — including those of competitors like AWS and Google Cloud
It&ll work for Windows and Linux Servers, as well as Kubernetes clusters, and also allows users to take some limited Azure data services
with them to these platforms.
Why it matters:With Azure Stack, Microsoft already allowed businesses to bring many of Azure capabilities into
But because it basically a local version of Azure, it only worked on a limited set of hardware
Arc doesn&t bring all of the Azure Services, but it gives enterprises a single platform to manage all of their resources across the large
clouds and their own data centers
Virtually every major enterprise uses multiple clouds
Managing those environments is hard
So if that the case, Microsoft is essentially saying, let give them a tool to do so — and keep them in the Azure ecosystem
In many ways, that similar to Google Anthos, yet with an obvious Microsoft flavor, less reliance on Kubernetes and without the managed
services piece.
Microsoft launches Project Cortex, a knowledge network for your company
What was announced: Project Cortex creates a
knowledge network for your company
It uses machine learning to analyze all of the documents and contracts in your various repositories — including those of third-party
partners — and then surfaces them in Microsoft apps like Outlook, Teams and its Office apps when appropriate
It the company first new commercial service since the launch of Teams.
Why it matters:Enterprises these days generate tons of documents and
data, but it often spread across numerous repositories and is hard to find
With this new knowledge network, the company aims to surface this information proactively, but it also looks at who the people are who work
on them and tries to help you find the subject matter experts when you&re working on a document about a given subject, for
example.
Microsoft launched Endpoint Manager to modernize device management
What was announced: Microsoft is combining its ConfigMgr and
Intune services that allow enterprises to manage the PCs, laptops, phones and tablets they issue to their employees under the Endpoint
With that, it also launching a number of tools and recommendations to help companies modernize their deployment strategies
ConfigMgr users will now also get a license to Intune to allow them to move to cloud-based management.
Why it matters:In this world of BYOD,
where every employee uses multiple devices, as well as constant attacks against employee machines, effectively managing these devices has
become challenging for most IT departments
They often use a mix of different tools (ConfigMgr for PCs, for example, and Intune for cloud-based management of phones)
Now, they can get a single view of their deployments with the Endpoint Manager, which Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella described as one of the
most important announcements of the event, and ConfigMgr users will get an easy path to move to cloud-based device management thanks to the
Intune license they now have access to.
Microsoft Chromium-based Edge browser gets new privacy features, will be generally available January
15
What was announced: Microsoft Chromium-based version of Edge will be generally available on January 15
The release candidate is available now
That the culmination of a lot of work from the Edge team, and, with today release, the company is also adding a number of new privacy
features to Edge that, in combination with Bing, offers some capabilities that some of Microsoft rivals can&t yet match, thanks to its
newly enhanced InPrivate browsing mode.
Why it matters:Browsers are interesting again
After years of focusing on speed, the new focus is now privacy, and that giving Microsoft a chance to gain users back from Chrome (though
At Ignite, Microsoft also stressed that Edge business users will get to benefit from a deep integration with its updated Bing engine, which
can now surface business documents, too.
You can now try Microsoft web-based version of Visual Studio
What was announced: At Build earlier
this year, Microsoft announced that it would soon launch a web-based version of its Visual Studio development environment, based on the work
it did on the free Visual Studio Code editor
This experience, with deep integrations into the Microsoft-owned GitHub, is now live in a preview.
Why it matters:Microsoft has long said
that it wants to meet developers where they are
While Visual Studio Online isn&t likely to replace the desktop-based IDE for most developers, it an easy way for them to make quick changes
to code that lives in GitHub, for example, without having to set up their IDE locally
As long as they have a browser, developers will be able to get their work done.
.
Microsoft launches Power Virtual Agents, its no-code bot
builder
What was announced: Power Virtual Agents is Microsoft new no-code/low-code tool for building chatbots
It leverages a lot of Azure machine learning smarts to let you create a chatbot with the help of a visual interface
In case you outgrow that and want to get to the actual code, you can always do so, too.
Why it matters:Chatbots aren&t exactly at the top of
the hype cycle, but they do have lots of legitimate uses
Microsoft argues that a lot of early efforts were hampered by the fact that the developers were far removed from the user
With a visual too, though, anybody can come in and build a chatbot — and a lot of those builders will have a far better understanding of
what their users are looking for than a developer who is far removed from that business group.
Cortana wants to be your personal executive
assistant and read your emails to you, too
What was announced:Cortana lives — and it now also has a male voice
But more importantly, Microsoft launched a few new focused Cortana-based experiences that show how the company is focusing on its voice
assistant as a tool for productivity
In Outlook on iOS (with Android coming later), Cortana can now read you a summary of what in your inbox — and you can have a chat with it
to flag emails, delete them or dictate answers
Cortana can now also send you a daily summary of your calendar appointments, important emails that need answers and suggest focus time for
you to get actual work done that not email.
Why it matters:In this world of competing assistants, Microsoft is very much betting on
Cortana didn&t work out as a consumer product, but the company believes there is a large (and lucrative) niche for an assistant that helps
Because Microsoft doesn&t have a lot of consumer data, but does have lots of data about your work, that probably a smart move.
SAN
FRANCISCO, CA & APRIL 02: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella walks in front of the new Cortana logo as he delivers a keynote address during the
2014 Microsoft Build developer conference on April 2, 2014 in San Francisco, California (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Bonus:
Microsoft agrees with you and thinks meetings are broken — and often it the broken meeting room that makes meetings even harder
To battle this, the company today launched Managed Meeting Rooms, which for $50 per room/month lets you delegate to Microsoft the monitoring
and management of the technical infrastructure of your meeting rooms.
Microsoft launches managed meeting rooms as a service
