Earlier this month, November 4-9th, Microsoft held their annual Ignite conference in Orlando, Florida. During Ignite, tech leaders come together to discuss all things Microsoft. It is also an opportunity for the public to learn about strategic direction and new features from Microsoft.
As you can imagine, there were quite a few announcements at this year’s conference — many that likely affect systems your organization uses. Here are some announcement notes we believe are worth highlighting:
Microsoft launches Azure Arc
Azure Arc is a new tool from Microsoft that gives people the ability to manage a complex environment all on one screen or “from a single pane of glass.” This service connects on premise windows servers, Microsoft Azure, and other cloud computing providers, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud. This allows users to have the same experience whether they are deploying an Azure compute node or on-premise server.
Microsoft did announce that while this tool is not recommended for production at this time, it is available for public testing.
Microsoft Teams: Improved Features, More Collaborating
Microsoft Teams is one of the fastest growing products under Microsoft’s Office 365 Suite of applications.
- Private channels in Microsoft Teams: You may now have secured, separate channels within the same team. This makes it possible to collaborate with a select group of a larger Team, perfect for including external users and customers in one-off projects, strategy meetings or event coordination.
- Microsoft announces Teams Rooms: It can be difficult to find the right conferencing system for your organization. Microsoft has developed an easy to use, cost effective solution in Office 365. Our company recently implemented Teams Rooms video conferencing and we can help your organization understand the features to determine if it is the right solution for you.
- Microsoft Partners with Zoom and Cisco to enable guests using either system to join Teams meetings. This will be supported in their new generation of Microsoft Teams Rooms.
Project Cortex Offering AI Driven Insights
Project Cortex is an AI driven tool that helps deliver insight in apps you use every day. It works through Office 365 and organizes content into shared topics such as customers or projects. Once the information is organized, Project Cortex creates a knowledge network based on relationships between those topics. In today’s world, there isn’t a lack of content, but there is definitely a lack of organization. Project Cortex will help users organize company data into related objects so that information is easier to find. This functionality allows all team members access to information that previously was only accessible or known by a few.
Microsoft Ignite was full of great announcements and we’ve only just scratched the surface! Interested in reading more about the conference? Check out the Microsoft’s event page to watch keynotes, read articles and more.
If you have questions about the Ignite announcements or our Managed IT services, feel free to contact us at [email protected] or read more of our blog posts here.
