An overview of what you need to know…
The Ignite 2021 conference represented an opportunity for Microsoft to give a strong indication of where they see their industry going over the next few years and more certainly demonstrating to us, as partners and consumers, what they intend to focus their resources on.
As you might expect given then the last 2 years and what the world has been through there was a strong focus on new patterns of work – after all most of us have got quite comfortable working from home and avoiding the previously held norm of working in an office. In fact as mentioned in Satya’s keynote session 70% of workers want flexible remote work options to continue, even if the world were ever to return to pre-pandemic norms.
A world of hybrid working brings with it massive opportunities for a technology innovator like Microsoft to provide leading edge tools and technologies to assist remote workers, but also massive challenges as traditional technology security and infrastructure is no longer fit for purpose in this environment of geographically distributed workers using home networks and connectivity.
“Embedding computing into the real world and the real world into computing”
SATYA NADELLA, MICRSOFT IGNITE 2021
Thus the main thrust of the sessions at Ignite were focussed under four core themes:
- Empower people and organisations for a new world of hybrid work
- Protect everything with end-to-end security
- Build a hyperconnected business
- Innovate anywhere from multi-cloud to edge
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella hosted the main opening session giving us an overview on emerging technology trends and innovations across the Microsoft Cloud. He introduced several new tools and technologies that would be detailed more thoroughly throughout the following days.
I have picked out a few highlights below and we will be discussing our opinions on some of these further in upcoming posts.
Mesh for Microsoft Teams
Metaverse is the new buzz word in technology (even Facebook..sorry Meta are at it) – and Microsoft have embraced this concept with open arms. Microsoft Mesh has been in development for some time and it enables presence and shared experiences from anywhere – on any device – through mixed reality applications. With this new innovation however, this capability is being built into Microsoft Teams, allowing for custom avatars to represent ourselves in meetings and in other collaborative scenarios. These avatars can be entirely customised to represent the version of ourselves we would like to present at any given time whilst mimicking our own behaviours and intents.
Mesh for Teams will also be supporting fully immersive experiences where we can meet up with colleagues and collaborate in full Virtual Reality (VR) environments. It will be intriguing to see how this develops given that Second Life was supposed to be the answer to this way back in 2003 – nearly 20 years ago! Perhaps the modern generation of social media and online gaming will finally move this from a fanciful idea into the reality of the modern workplace. Only time will tell.
Microsoft Teams Connect
In a more grounded move, but one with powerful implications for real world collaboration scenarios right now, Microsoft announced Teams Connect. As a company that works with a number of customers and partners who are all consumers of Microsoft Teams themselves this innovation cannot come soon enough. Previously referred to simply as ‘shared channels’ this capability helps organisations collaborate seamlessly with customers, partners, suppliers or other external parties through shared channels. Being able to work with a full team, including external parties, without swapping between Teams tenants will enable for much richer and more productive collaboration experience.
Microsoft Loop
The latest innovation across the Microsoft Office suite, Microsoft Loop (previously referred to as the Fluid framework) presents a flexible canvas for allowing groups of people to collaborate on content and data from across the organisation, Loop components can be viewed in multiple Office products such as Teams, Word, Outlook – but the unique thing here is that all modifications to the Loop components are then visible in all the different places where that Loop component is used.
Azure OpenAI Service
Azure have built an AI service on the GPT-3 model produced by the OpenAI research laboratory. GPT-3 produces readable text from multiple data sources by imitating the way people gain certain types of knowledge – an AI concept known as deep learning. These Open AI services are already being used in Microsoft’s own software and services such as Power Platform and GitHub Copilot. This OpenAI service will eventually bring the power of GPT-3 into the hands of all developers, but for now is under a limited public preview.
There were many other updates announced for existing Microsoft tools, platforms and services which are neatly summarised in the Microsoft Ignite Book of News 2021.
Microsoft have identified the need for experiences in our everyday use of technology that reflect the new norms in society – how can we better engage with each other in a world where the workforce is remote, but also digitally empowered and used to socialising in virtual worlds? As someone who regularly engages in online worlds outside of work (looking forward to enjoying Forza Horizons 5 
) and who reluctantly admits to being ‘middle aged’ – perhaps now the balance is finally tipped in favour of the metaverse?
Cielo Costa work across Microsoft technologies on innovative technology projects aimed at resolving everyday business challenges with solutions that fit within your ways of working. If any of the announcements at this year’s Ignite conference have piqued your interest then why not book one of our envisioning sessions and let’s see how we can use this technology to solve your everyday needs.
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