Microsoft Inspire is the annual event for Microsoft partners around the world that showcases the latest technology innovation. We give you a recap of Microsoft Inspire 2022. Key topics this year included how modernisation and migration can help you innovate, the new digital imperative for hybrid working, and streamlining security across platforms.
A focus of this year’s event was how Microsoft can support organisations with the challenges of the next decade. This will be very different from what we’ve seen in the past decade. The key announcements revealed how the Microsoft cloud can provide organisations with the technology to help them do less with more.
Digital Contact Center Platform
One of this year’s new announcements is the Digital Contact Center Platform, an open, collaborative solution that brings together recently acquired Nuance with Dynamics 365, Power Platform and Microsoft Teams. It helps organisations create a seamless experience for customers reaching out through any channel.
Organisations can use this platform to build customer-aligned contact center experiences with a seamless experience through cross-channel collaboration, examples are a modern Teams Voice telephony solution, online live chat boxes or AI-powered chatbots.
Hybrid Working
Hybrid working is here to stay however it is important to have a good balance between flexibility and connectivity. Microsoft is rolling out new capabilities in Microsoft 365 and MS Teams to make online collaboration easier.
- With Excel Live, you can edit workbooks directly from the Teams meeting window.
- Collaborative annotations allow people to engage with content shared in a Teams meeting.
- Video messages are introduced in Teams, giving users the ability to include, edit, and send a short clip in a conversation.
Viva, Microsoft’s employee experience platform, helps businesses increase productivity, wellbeing and collaboration with modules integrated directly into Microsoft Teams. A new module, Viva Engage, was announced at Microsoft Inspire. With Viva Engage, you can increase your employee community and leadership engagement through new features like Stories.
Windows 365
Since Windows 365 was first released at last year’s Microsoft Inspire event, it has continued to expand with a number of features added. It has been a major enabler of the hybrid way of working that has now become the norm.
Organisations use Windows 365 and modern endpoint management to streamline onboarding, improve hybrid work experience, reduce infrastructure costs, and improve security. The ways in which the cloud PC platform can be used by organizations continue to evolve. Two new features in Windows 365 are:
- point-in-time recovery, which allows administrators to recover a cloud PC
- the Autopatch service, which automates Windows updates for increased security.
New Azure capabilities
Azure is key to Microsoft’s digital need for integrated technology that helps you do more with less. Modernising and migrating to Azure is fundamental to innovating your workforce. Microsoft is focused on building a multi-cloud, multi-edge infrastructure to support this innovation.
One of Azure’s several announcements was a plan for ten additional data center regions, spanning ten regions on four continents, over the next year. As more organisations move to the cloud, it will lead to faster access and improved data storage.
Other key Azure capabilities from the Microsoft Inspire event include:
- Azure Confidential Computing capabilities are available for organizations to process sensitive data in the cloud with even greater protection
- Azure Center for SAP Solutions will be available to deploy and manage SAP workloads, allowing you to run a SAP system seamlessly with the Microsoft Cloud
- The Azure Arc Boost program allows organisations to build apps with Azure services running in a variety of environments, thanks to Microsoft’s partnership with Intel.
Another exciting announcement was the Azure Space Partner Community, tailored for partners developing the power of their cloud computing with satellite networks and other space technologies. This provides an innovative way for organizations to broaden the scope of connectivity and gain new insights using space data.
Improving security across clouds and platforms
In an increasingly digital world that expands across clouds and platforms, security is a top priority for any organisation. Microsoft is the only cloud provider with multi-cloud protection for the top three platforms and continues to expand and create new security offerings with the growing Microsoft Security partner network.
A new development in this area is the enhancements of Microsoft Defender for Internet of Things (IoT) – integrating Microsoft 365 Defender with IoT devices for increased security.
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