Microsoft and Oracle to interconnect Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud

Microsoft Corp. and Oracle Corp. on Wednesday announced a cloud interoperability partnership enabling people to migrate and run mission-critical enterprise workloads across Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud. Enterprises are now able to seamlessly connect Azure services, like Analytics and AI, to Oracle Cloud services, like Autonomous Database. By enabling people to run one a part of a workload within Azure and the other area of the same workload inside the Oracle Cloud, their bond offers a highly enhanced, best-of-both-clouds experience. Taken together, Azure and Oracle Cloud offer customers a 1-stop shop for the cloud services and applications they have to run all of their business.

Connecting Azure and Oracle Cloud through network and identity interoperability makes lift-and-improve migrations seamless. This partnership delivers direct, fast and highly reliable network connectivity between two clouds, while ongoing to supply first-class customer support and support that enterprises have started to expect in the two companies. Additionally to supplying interoperability for purchasers running Oracle software on Oracle Cloud and Microsoft software on Azure, it enables innovative and new scenarios like running Oracle E-Business Suite or Oracle JD Edwards on Azure against an Oracle Autonomous Database running on Exadata infrastructure within the Oracle Cloud.

“As the cloud preferred by the enterprise, with more than 95% from the Fortune 500 using Azure, we will always be first of all centered on helping our customers enjoy their digital transformation journeys,” stated Scott Guthrie, executive v . p . of Microsoft’s Cloud and AI division. “With Oracle’s enterprise expertise, this alliance is really a natural option for us once we help our joint customers accelerate the migration of enterprise applications and databases towards the public cloud.”

“The Oracle Cloud provides a complete suite of integrated applications for sales, service, marketing, human sources, finance, logistics and manufacturing, plus highly automated and secure Generation 2 infrastructure featuring the Oracle Autonomous Database,” stated Don Manley, executive v . p ., Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). “Oracle and Microsoft have offered enterprise customer needs for many years. With this particular partnership, our joint customers can migrate all of their group of existing applications towards the cloud without getting to re-architect anything, preserving the big investments they have made.”

Because of this expanded partnership, the businesses are today making available a brand new group of abilities:

• Connect Azure and Oracle Cloud seamlessly, allowing people to extend their on-premises datacenters to both clouds. This direct interconnect can be obtained beginning today in Ashburn (The United States) and Azure US East, with intends to expand additional regions later on.
• Unified identity and access management, using a unified single sign-on experience and automatic user provisioning, to handle sources across Azure and Oracle Cloud. Available too at the begining of preview today, Oracle applications may use Azure Active Directory because the identity provider as well as for conditional access.
• Supported deployment of custom applications and packaged Oracle applications (JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, Oracle Retail, Hyperion) on Azure with Oracle databases (RAC, Exadata, Autonomous Database) deployed in Oracle Cloud. Exactly the same Oracle applications may also be certified to operate on Azure with Oracle databases in Oracle Cloud.
• A collaborative support model to assist IT organizations deploy these new abilities while enabling these to leverage existing customer care relationships and procedures.
• Oracle Database will still be certified to operate in Azure on various os's, including Home windows Server and Oracle Linux.

“The alliance between Microsoft and Oracle is welcome news once we accelerate Albertsons’ digital transformation and leverage the entire worth of the general public cloud,” stated Anuj Dhanda, executive v . p . and chief information officer at Albertsons Companies. “This will let us create mix-cloud solutions that optimize a number of our current investments while maximizing the agility, scalability and efficiency from the public cloud.”

“As we glance to create our omnichannel experience closer together and transform we've got the technology platform that forces the space Corporation. brands, the collaboration between Oracle and Microsoft can make it simpler for all of us to scale and deliver abilities across channels,” stated Sally Gilligan, chief information officer at Gap. “The interoperability between Azure and Oracle Cloud enables us to deploy Oracle or custom-built applications on Azure and Oracle databases on Oracle Cloud.”

“At Halliburton, there exists a lengthy good reputation for running both Oracle and Microsoft technologies for the most important applications. Our deep knowledge about both of these proper vendors has produced consistently stable and performant application deployments,” stated Ken Braud, senior v . p . and CIO at Halliburton. “This alliance provides for us the versatility and continuing support to carry on leveraging our standard architectures, while allowing us to pay attention to generating business outcomes that maximize returns for the shareholders.”

Microsoft announces 2019 Partner of the Year Award winners and finalists

Microsoft Corp. on Thursday announced the winners and finalists from the Microsoft 2019 Partner of the season Awards. The annual awards recognize Microsoft partners demonstrating excellence in innovation and implementation of customer solutions according to Microsoft technology. Award winners and finalists from around the globe is going to be recognized at Microsoft Inspire, This summer 14-18, 2019, in Vegas, Nevada.

This season, Microsoft acknowledged partners in 41 groups celebrating each one of the solution areas, industries and sectors by which Microsoft technology is used. The award finalists and winners were selected from greater than 2,900 nominations collected from 115 different countries worldwide according to their dedication to customers, their solution’s impact available on the market, and exemplary utilization of Microsoft technologies.

“We’re happy to celebrate the finalists and winners from the Microsoft 2019 Partner of the season Awards,” stated Gavriella Schuster, corporate v . p ., One Commercial Partner, Microsoft. “These information mill industry leaders helping companies all over the world connect and get more. I’m truly astonished by each champion and finalist, and i'm honored to focus on the incredible work they're doing.”

About Microsoft Inspire

Microsoft Inspire provides Microsoft’s partner community with use of key marketing and business strategies, leadership, and knowledge regarding specific customer solutions made to help partners succeed available on the market. Together with informative learning possibilities covering sales, marketing, services, and technology, Microsoft Inspire is a perfect setting for partners to garner valuable understanding using their peers and from Microsoft. 

Xbox showcases 60 anticipated games, including 34 to premiere in Xbox Game Pass

Xbox showcased a blockbuster selection of 60 anticipated games for console and PC in the Xbox E3 Briefing and shared a glimpse for the future with Project Scarlett, which launches alongside “Halo Infinite” in 2020. Headlined through the greatest bet on 2019, “Gears 5,” together with 34 games premiering in Xbox Game Pass, the Xbox E3 Briefing delivered 11 world premieres along with a record 14 games from Xbox Game Studios, that will soon include legendary game development studio Double Fine Productions.

“It’s great to celebrate with this incredible fans and show the way we are delivering against our vision to empower gamers to experience the games they need, using the buddies they need, wherever they need,” stated Phil Spencer, Mind of Xbox. “With a large number of Video games in development, we curated our show around our players, with new titles premiering in Xbox Game Pass across console and PC, and game streaming that permits them to play their most favorite games, using their buddies, wherever they're going.”

The Easiest Method To Uncover GREAT GAMES ON CONSOLE AND PC

PC gamers all over the world are now able to join the Xbox Game Pass for PC beta with the new Xbox application, that is currently available on Home windows 10. Xbox Game Pass for PC was created particularly for PC gamers having a curated library well over 100 high-quality Computer games from over 75 developers and publishers including fan-favorite PC titles like “Football Manager 2019,” “Imperator: Rome” and “Metro Exodus.”

Xbox also announced the launch of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, a brand new plan mixing the curated games library for console and PC with Xbox Live Gold.

Additionally, Xbox announced a number of new blockbuster games that are offered with Xbox Game Pass for Console beginning today, including “Metro Exodus,” “Hollow Dark night: Voidheart Edition,” “Borderlands: The Handsome Collection” and “Batman: Arkham Dark night.”

The Xbox E3 Briefing also showcased new Xbox Game Studios titles which will premiere in Xbox Game Pass, including “Gears 5,” “Battletoads,” “Bleeding Edge,” “The Outer Worlds,” “Ori and also the Will from the Wisps,” and 25 games in the ID@Xbox program.

WELCOMING DOUBLE FINE PRODUCTIONS TO XBOX GAME STUDIOS

Xbox announced today the intent to get legendary game development studio Double Fine Productions, that will bring the entire quantity of development studios under Xbox Game Studios to fifteen. Brought by industry veteran Tim Schafer, adding this boundlessly creative studio will reinforce the Xbox team’s dedication to developing original quite happy with memorable figures and unpredicted tales. Double Fine showcased the lengthy-anticipated “Psychonauts 2” today around the Xbox E3 stage:

• “PSYCHONAUTS 2” (XBOX ONE AND Home windows 10 PC, MAC, LINUX, Ps 4). Razputin Aquato, trained acrobat and effective youthful psychic, has recognized his lifelong imagine joining the worldwide psychic espionage organization referred to as Psychonauts! However these psychic super spies have been in trouble. Their leader hasn’t been exactly the same since he was kidnapped, and what’s worse, there is a mole hiding within their headquarters. Raz must use his forces to prevent the mole before they execute their secret plan-to create the murderous psychic villain, Maligula, away from the dead! “Psychonauts 2” launches worldwide in 2020.

The Way Forward For Video Gaming

During its briefing, Xbox shown its dedication to video gaming like a critical option for players who would like a tool designed, built and enhanced for gaming.

Project Scarlett sets a brand new bar for console power, speed, and gratifaction, coming Holiday 2020 alongside “Halo Infinite.” Having a custom-designed AMD processor, high bandwidth GDDR6 memory, along with a next-generation solid condition drive (SSD), Project Scarlett can give developers the ability they have to bring their creative visions to existence. A large number of games across four console generations will appear and play best on Project Scarlett.

Getting XBOX Towards The CLOUD

Additionally to delivering players the games they need, using the people they need, across console and PC, Xbox can also be empowering individuals to play wherever they need by getting Xbox towards the cloud.

First, Xbox announced the opportunity to stream games out of your Xbox One console, beginning in preview this October. With console streaming, gamers will get access to their Xbox One game library and Xbox Game Pass titles on the run, streamed from an Xbox One console to some mobile phone.

The Xbox E3 Briefing also marked a brand new milestone for “Project xCloud,” with E3 2019 attendees being one of the primary on the planet to experience Xbox One games like “Halo 5: Guardians” and “Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice” streaming on tablets and smartphones. With Project xCloud, Xbox is investing to make sure players possess the choice and freedom to experience the games they need, using the buddies they need, where and how they need.

THE WORLD’S Innovative CONTROLLER

Additionally, Xbox unveiled the Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2. Inspired by fan feedback, the Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2 may be the world’s innovative controller, designed most abundant in passionate gamers in your mind.

The Elite Series 2 may be the second iteration from the fan-favorite Xbox Elite Wireless Controller and it is re-engineered for ultimate performance, personalization, and sturdiness, and includes 30 new and improved features for example adjustable-tension thumbsticks, wraparound rubberized grip, shorter hair-trigger locks, and as much as 40 hrs of rechargeable battery existence.

Microsoft and Providence St. Joseph Health announce strategic alliance to accelerate the future of care delivery

Microsoft Corp. and Providence St. Frederick Health today announced a multi-year proper alliance to accelerate digital transformation of healthcare. The alliance will combine the strength of Microsoft’s cloud, artificial intelligence (AI), research abilities, and collaboration tools using the clinical expertise and care environments of Providence St. Frederick Health, among the largest health systems in the united states.

The 2 organizations will build up a portfolio of integrated solutions made to improve health outcomes and lower the all inclusive costs of care by mixing technologies from Microsoft with Providence St. Frederick Health’s data and clinical expertise. The alliance will accelerate the care industry’s adoption from the cloud and let data-driven clinical and operational decision-making by leveraging Microsoft Azure, and industry interoperability standards like FHIR, to integrate siloed data sources inside a cloud atmosphere that allows security and compliance.

Providence St. Frederick Health logoProvidence St. Frederick Health will deploy next-generation solutions and emerging technologies from Microsoft and it is partners in a Providence St. Frederick Health-affiliated hospital facility in San antonio, Wash., near Microsoft’s Redmond headquarters. This website will enable modern clinical and operational encounters for patients and providers. The aim is to scale these innovations over the entire Providence St. Frederick Health system, inside a transformation which will bring innovative and necessary methods to more communities.

“Providence St. Frederick Health continues to be on the journey to change healthcare and get an image of health for any better world. We’re excited to accelerate that journey by collaborating with Microsoft. Together, we’ll support doctors, nurses and all sorts of caregivers by equipping all of them with innovative tools and technology making it simpler to complete the very important work of improving lives,” stated Fishing rod Hochman, M.D., president and Chief executive officer of Providence St. Frederick Health.

“Our alliance with Providence St. Frederick Health includes the help of among the largest and many comprehensive health systems in the united states with the strength of Azure, Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365,” stated Satya Nadella, Chief executive officer of Microsoft. “Our ambition would be to accelerate Providence St. Frederick Health’s digital transformation and also to build new innovations together that can improve healthcare delivery and outcomes.”

Included in the proper alliance, Providence St. Frederick Health uses Microsoft Azure since it's preferred cloud platform and standardize productivity and collaboration tools because of its 119,000 caregivers on Microsoft 365, and continuously improve and support patient engagement using technologies including Dynamics 365. Providence St. Frederick Health nurses and doctors uses Microsoft Teams, which belongs to the Microsoft 365 platform, for additional secure communication and collaboration, enabling these to gather chat, video conferences and conferencing, and line-of-business applications right into a single hub.

About Providence St. Frederick Health

Providence St. Frederick Health is really a national, not-for-profit Catholic health system comprising an assorted group of organizations and driven with a thought that health is really a human right. With 51 hospitals, 829 physician clinics, senior services, supportive housing and lots of other health insurance and educational services, the system and it is partners employ greater than 119,000 caregivers serving communities across seven states - Alaska, California, Montana, Boise State Broncos, Or, Texas and Washington with system offices located in Renton, Wash., and Irvine, Calif.

Microsoft announce partnership to bring broadband internet to Indiana, Ohio and Illinois

Watch Communications and Microsoft Corp. announced a contract targeted at closing the broadband gap, and also the rural digital divide particularly, in the usa of Indiana, Ohio and Illinois. Their bond belongs to the Microsoft Airband Initiative, which is centered on extending broadband use of three million individuals rural America by This summer 2022.

The FCC reports which more than 21 million Americans lack broadband access. Based on Microsoft data, 162 million people over the U . s . States aren't online at broadband speeds, including roughly 17 million individuals Indiana, Ohio and Illinois. Watch Communications will deploy a number of broadband connectivity technologies to create these areas under coverage, with a focus on wireless technologies leveraging TV white-colored spaces (e.g., unused TV frequencies) in lower population density or terrain-challenged areas to attain improved coverage. Areas likely to benefit include 50 counties in Indiana, 22 counties in Illinois, and many counties in Ohio.

“Every person deserves exactly the same chance. But too frequently as well as in a lot of places, these possibilities are restricted by where individuals live as well as their use of reliable and cost-effective broadband access,” stated Shelley McKinley, gm, Technology and company Responsibility, Microsoft. “Microsoft is working across the nation to shut this gap. We’re partnering with Watch Communications to enhance broadband access in Indiana, Illinois and Ohio and make around the incredible work being carried out by condition and native leaders about this issue with respect to their citizens.”

“Public-private partnerships, collaboration and understanding local initiatives are answer to enabling connectivity success. Supplying rural broadband can be challenging, so working together to resolve digital divide requires partners. We're excited to work with Microsoft about this initiative,” stated Greg Jarman, chief operating officer, Watch Communications.

Improved connectivity will bolster economic, educational and telehealth possibilities for everybody in the area, and is particularly impactful with this region’s maqui berry farmers. Together, Indiana, Illinois and Ohio account in excess of $38.5 billion in farming value, with all of three ranking within the top 16 states by farming output, based on the USDA. With broadband access, maqui berry farmers can engage in advanced technologies for example precision agriculture which will help better monitor crops while increasing yields.

Additionally, Watch Communications and Microsoft works together to make sure that once connectivity can be obtained, people understand how to utilize it and can acquire the training required to fully have fun playing the digital economy, access educational possibilities and access telemedicine.

Microsoft and ServiceNow announce strategic partnership

Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) and ServiceNow (New york stock exchange: NOW) today announced a wider proper partnership meant to considerably boost the integration and optimization from the companies’ products, platform and cloud abilities. Through this expanded partnership, the businesses will enable enterprise customers in a few highly controlled industries, in addition to government customers, to accelerate their digital transformation and drive new amounts of insights and innovation. And, the very first time, ServiceNow will house its full SaaS experience on Azure additionally to the own private cloud. The expanded partnership will elevate ServiceNow to 1 of Microsoft’s proper partners in the Global ISV Proper Alliance Portfolio.

“There is definitely an enormous chance for purchasers - including within the public sector - to use the strength of the cloud to get more effective and responsive,” stated Satya Nadella, Chief executive officer of Microsoft. “Our partnership combines ServiceNow’s knowledge of digital workflows with Azure, our reliable cloud, to ensure that customers can accelerate their digital transformation, while meeting their security and compliance needs.”

“Expanding our proper global relationship with Microsoft enables ServiceNow to more fully leverage and integrate our platform and merchandise with Microsoft’s leading enterprise technology and abilities,” stated John Donahoe, president and Chief executive officer of ServiceNow. “Together, ServiceNow and Microsoft can help our enterprise and government customers accelerate their digital transformation, creating great encounters and unlocking productivity.”

The expanded agreement develops a partnership announced last fall by Microsoft and ServiceNow. As leading enterprise technology platforms, Microsoft and ServiceNow allow it to be simpler for purchasers to integrate and optimize over the two companies’ products and platforms. By collaborating on next-generation encounters, Microsoft and ServiceNow will leverage technology to create further cognitive services and intelligence to products over the Now Platform® with Microsoft 365 and Azure.

ServiceNow Selects Microsoft Azure for several Highly Controlled Industries

ServiceNow uses Azure Cloud included in its preferred cloud platform for several highly controlled industries, taking advantage of Microsoft’s deep knowledge of data protection, security, and privacy, such as the very indepth group of compliance choices associated with a cloud company. ServiceNow will first be accessible through Azure Regions around australia and Azure Government within the U . s . States, adopted by additional markets later on.

With ServiceNow available through Azure Government, U.S. government departments can leverage the compliance coverage across regulatory standards available through Azure. Microsoft is dedicated to supporting the entire spectrum of presidency data to assist agencies rapidly and simply achieve their necessary needs. Azure Government was built particularly to deal with the abilities, performance and compliance requirements of U.S. government customers as well as their partners. Azure Government enables innovation with deeply integrated cloud services, data and advanced analytics, as well as an open application platform that gives the inspiration to quickly develop, deploy and manage intelligent solutions.

The U.S. authorities is constantly on the turn to ServiceNow like a proper partner because it modernizes its IT infrastructure and accelerates its utilization of today's technology to digitally transform the ins and outs.

Microsoft Selects ServiceNow to Digitize Its Workflows

Included in another transaction, Microsoft will implement ServiceNow’s IT & Worker Experience workflow products across its very own business to enhance operations, enhance worker encounters, and deliver more powerful business outcomes. With ServiceNow, Microsoft brings much more digital workflows into its organization, so employees can cut back time on manual tasks.

Microsoft announces investments to broaden opportunities for partners

Microsoft Corp. announced new investments in technologies and programs made to support its partner ecosystem. The investments are targeted at helping optimize Microsoft’s partner engagement for that cloud era.

“Customers and partners alike still proceed to the cloud and accelerate their digital transformation, leading us to different and new amounts of partnership,” stated Gavriella Schuster, corporate v . p . of Microsoft’s One Commercial Partner group. “Our portfolio of programs, offers and sources for businesses partnering with Microsoft is transforming to assist them to take advantage of this chance.”

Listed here are some popular features of this news announced today, with increased details available here.

Investments in programs and products

• Microsoft Teams extensions and adoption. Just 2 yrs after its launch, Teams presently has 13 million daily active users and 19 million weekly active users. The organization also announced additional features in Microsoft Teams for each worker -including new methods to support healthcare organizations and firstline workers. Additional new partner integrations include support for contact centers, compliance recording and cloud solution providers.
• Dynamics 365 updates. The organization announced significant updates towards the Dynamics 365 Nonprofit Accelerator and 2 new integrations for Dynamics 365 that address the automotive and financial services industries. Additionally, the company Applications ISV Connect program is usually available, with new development tools and guidance, marketplace sources, joint field engagement processes and go-to-market support.
• Presenting Azure Lighthouse. Azure Lighthouse gives partners just one control plane to see and manage Azure at scale across all of their customers. This gives a much better managed Azure knowledge about greater automation and efficiency, leading to greater visibility and to safeguard customers. This marks the very first time Microsoft has architected an answer only at that scale, with partners as well as for partners.
• Azure Migration Program. The brand new Azure Migration Program (AMP) helps customers accelerate their migration to Azure. AMP offers positive advice and tools to assist mitigate risks and address common issues connected with moving workloads towards the cloud.

Broadening partner chance

Because the beginning of Microsoft’s co-sell program 24 several weeks ago, this program has witnessed $9.5 billion in annual contracted partner revenue. The investments announced now are made to develop that chance:

• General accessibility to the Microsoft Security competency. This latest competency enables partners to promote their expertise and offers use of a variety of benefits made to enable business growth and profitability.
• Five advanced specializations. Included in this are Home windows Server and SQL Server Migration to Microsoft Azure, Linux and Free Databases Migration to Microsoft Azure, Data Warehouse Migration to Microsoft Azure, Modernization of Web Applications in Microsoft Azure, and Kubernetes on Microsoft Azure.
• New advancements in marketplace. Additional prices models, a rewards program along with a new path to market are moving in This summer for businesses that publish transactable offers in Microsoft’s expanded commercial marketplace. The prices models include monthly and annual SaaS billing, flexible, custom-metered billing options, standard contracts, and free SaaS trials that become compensated engagements.

About Microsoft Inspire

Microsoft Inspire provides Microsoft’s partner community with use of key marketing and business strategies, leadership, and knowledge regarding specific customer solutions made to help partners succeed available on the market. Together with informative learning possibilities covering sales, marketing, services, and technology, Microsoft Inspire is a perfect setting for partners to garner valuable understanding using their peers and from Microsoft.

10 cool things to check out at Microsoft Build 2019

Microsoft Build is underway in Seattle, and this year’s premier developer conference is focused on empowering developers of all kinds, from experienced computer scientists to tech beginners with big ideas. We’re sharing the latest on Microsoft platforms, tools and services that are making it easier to create and innovate using AI and mixed reality with the intelligent cloud and the intelligent edge, as well as helping people and organizations do more each day.

Here’s a peek at some of the event’s highlights:

1.

Check out the new features in Microsoft Edge built on Chromium OSS that will make it easier to collect, organize and share content, and give you additional privacy controls to make your own decisions about how third parties can track you.

2.

See how technology is helping Starbucks and their baristas deliver great customer experiences including managing predictive maintenance on coffee machines with Azure Sphere; giving personalized recommendations to customers via the Starbucks mobile app with reinforcement learning on Azure; and powering digital traceability efforts to track coffee beans from farm to store with Azure blockchain service.

3.

Read about Fluid Framework, a web-based platform expected to be available later this year that will give teams new ways to create together, enabling content to be deconstructed and reconstructed into modular components and allowing intelligent agents to work alongside people to co-author, provide photo suggestions, translate data and more.

4. 

Learn more about Microsoft’s vision for intelligent agents that leverage breakthroughs in conversational AI and machine learning pioneered by Semantic Machines, which Microsoft acquired in May 2018. We’re showcasing a calendaring application of the technology that can make organizing your day with an intelligent assistant a more natural and powerful experience, and the same technology will eventually be integrated into our conversational AI moving forward across all of Microsoft’s products and services.

5.

See how more everyday uses of AI in Microsoft 365 and Office 365 can help improve productivity, including Ideas in Word for Word Online, which can help you easily design and present polished documents, and Microsoft Search, a new enterprise search experience that applies AI technology from Bing and deep personalized insights surfaced by the Microsoft Graph.

6. 

Learn more about a new platform that can help make it easier for companies to create autonomous systems, whether it’s a robot that can help in life-threatening situations, a drone that can inspect remote equipment or systems that can autonomously calibrate factory equipment. The first component in this platform is now available in a limited preview program.

7.

Learn what developers will be able to do with Microsoft Graph data connect, a service that helps organizations bring together productivity data from the Microsoft Graph with their own business data securely, providing new opportunities to create insight-powered apps while helping address the challenges of moving and managing large amounts of data.

8.

Learn about the new tools and capabilities in Azure AI for developers and data scientists, including Ink Recognizer, which lets developers embed digital ink recognition, an advanced speech-to-text capability that transcribes meeting conversations in real time so participants can fully engage in the discussion and know who said what later on.

9.

See how the new Azure Blockchain Service will empower developers, letting them deploy a fully managed consortium network with a few simple clicks and use built-in governance to add new members, set permissions and authenticate user applications. They’ll also be able to monitor their network’s health and activity.

10.

Check out IoT Plug and Play. One of the greatest challenges customers face when deploying Internet of Things solutions broadly is connecting their IoT devices to the cloud. IoT Plug and Play offers a new open modeling language to help make this happen seamlessly, as well as a large ecosystem of partner-certified devices that simply work, with over a dozen certified devices now available.

New intelligent cloud and intelligent edge advancements ushering in the next era of computing

Since the inception of Azure, we have been focused on delivering a true hybrid cloud where applications spanning public cloud and on-premises datacenters are built and run consistently. As organizations are now building applications that span the intelligent cloud and intelligent edge, the same approach is needed. Fundamentally, the principles and technology needed for developing hybrid cloud applications are the same as intelligent cloud and intelligent edge applications. Azure’s longstanding leadership in hybrid cloud provides developers with unique know-how toward building modern applications that span the edge and the cloud.

Next week at Microsoft Build, more than 6,000 developers will join us in Seattle to experience the latest advancements in dev tools and cloud services. Today, to help usher in Build, I’m excited to share some of the new Azure innovations that we will be showcasing at Build that enable developers to build this new generation of hybrid applications with greater productivity and success.

To begin, we’re announcing several new AI services and capabilities that makes it easier for developers to build AI-powered applications. Furthering our commitment to building the most productive AI platform, we’re delivering key new innovations in Azure Machine Learning that simplify the process of building, training and deployment of machine learning models at scale. These include new automated machine learning advancements and an intuitive UI that make developing high-quality models easier, a new visual machine learning interface that provides a zero-code model creation and deployment experience using drag-and-drop capabilities and new machine learning notebooks for a rich, code-first development experience. Furthermore, new MLOps (DevOps for machine learning) capabilities with Azure DevOps integration provides developers with reproducibility, auditability and automation of the end-to-end machine learning lifecycle. To enable extremely low latency and cost-effective inferencing, we are also announcing the general availability of hardware-accelerated models that run on FPGAs, as well as ONNX Runtime support for NVIDIA TensorRT and Intel nGraph for high- speed inferencing on NVIDIA and Intel chipsets.

Azure Cognitive Services give connected devices, bots and apps the ability to see, hear, respond, translate, reason and more. Azure is the only public cloud that enables these Cognitive Services to be containerized to run on-premises, in the cloud and at the edge. Today we’re giving developers even more ways to create “smart” devices and services with a new Cognitive Services category called “Decision” that delivers users specific recommendations to enable informed and efficient decision-making. Azure Cognitive Services such as Content Moderator, the recently announced Anomaly Detector and a new preview service called Personalizer, which uses reinforcement learning to provide each user with a relevant experience to drive engagement, will be part of this new category. We’re also delivering several new services in public preview, including Ink Recognizer for embedding digital ink recognition capabilities; Form Recognizer for automating data entry by extracting text, key-value pairs and tables from documents; and new conversation transcription capability in Speech Service, which transcribes meeting conversations in real time so participants can fully engage in the discussion, know who said what when and quickly follow up on next steps.

We are also bringing AI to Azure Search with the general availability of the cognitive search capability, enabling customers to apply Cognitive Services algorithms to extract new insights their structured and unstructured content. In addition, we are previewing a new capability that enables developers to store AI insights gained from cognitive search, making it easier to create knowledge-rich experiences leveraging Power BI visualizations or machine learning models. You can read more about today’s Azure AI announcements here.

Intelligent cloud and intelligent edge applications have evolved from primarily low-compute IoT devices working with the cloud to powerful compute at the edge, which requires a new modern hybrid application approach. A key aspect of enabling this is supporting the spectrum of edge compute and data needs. SQL Server and Azure SQL Database are the leading data engines for enterprise workloads on-premises and in the cloud, respectively, and today we are bringing these powerful data and analysis capabilities to the edge with Azure SQL Database Edge preview. Azure SQL Database Edge runs on ARM processors and provides capabilities like data streaming and time series data, with in-database machine learning and graph. And because Azure SQL Database Edge shares the same programming surface area with Azure SQL Database and SQL Server, you can easily take your applications to the edge without having to learn new tools and languages, allowing you to preserve consistency in application management and security control. This consistency in database programming and control plane across cloud and edge is essential to running a secure and well-managed hybrid application.

In addition, we’re announcing IoT Plug and Play, a new open modeling language to connect IoT devices to the cloud seamlessly, enabling developers to navigate one of the biggest challenges they face — deploying IoT solutions at scale. Previously, software had to be written specifically for the connected device it supported, limiting the scale of IoT deployments. IoT Plug and Play provides developers with a faster way to build IoT devices and will provide customers with a large ecosystem of partner-certified devices that can work with any IoT solution.

Perhaps one of the best examples of a cloud and edge application is with Mixed Reality — using the combination of mixed-reality device with cloud services to create entirely new experiences. We have barely scratched the surface for possibilities with Mixed Reality development. Now we’re making it easier to create applications for HoloLens 2 with the HoloLens 2 Development Edition, which starts at $3,500 or as low as $99 a month. It provides the community of mixed-reality developers with access to solutions to help them build and run mixed-reality experiences across a range of mixed-reality devices, and with Azure credits and three-month free trials of Unity Pro and the Unity PiXYZ Plugin for CAD data. Unreal Engine 4 support for streaming and native platform integration for HoloLens 2 will be available by the end of May for developers to create high-quality, photo-realistic renders and immersive, augmented-reality and virtual-reality experiences for architecture, product design and manufacturing.

Blockchain is showing potential across many industries to manage complex workflows and logistics. Last year we announced Azure Blockchain Workbench, which gave developers a simple UI to model blockchain applications on a preconfigured Azure-supported network. Today we are doubling down on our investments to empower blockchain developers by announcing Azure Blockchain Service, which simplifies the formation, management and governance of consortium blockchain networks, allowing businesses to focus on workflow logic and app development. Azure Blockchain Service deploys a fully managed consortium network and offers built-in governance for common management tasks, such as adding new members, setting permissions and authenticating user applications. And, the service is already receiving enterprise traction — we also announced this week that J.P. Morgan’s Ethereum platform, Quorum, is the first ledger available in Azure Blockchain Service, enabling Microsoft and J.P. Morgan to offer the first enterprise-grade Ethereum stack to the industry.

What is on the Horizon from Microsoft

Microsoft Inspire has come to an end. There have been some exciting announcements and important focuses to take note of. Scroll down to read more.

Today marks the start of the week-long Microsoft Inspire event. For those unfamiliar, Microsoft Inspire is an annual conference for its partner community to share knowledge, best practices and to announce upcoming technologies. This year is especially exciting with so much changing in the tech world with revolutions like AI and Cloud computing gaining momentum.

We are looking forward to hearing what’s coming up from Microsoft 365, an evolution of the Office 365 space, along with important insights into Cloud storage and security using technologies such as Azure, Data Box Disk, Azure Virtual WAN and Azure Firewall.

In addition we're excited to hear more about their perspectives on the AI boom. Day 4 alone will include topics such as Conversational AI, AI early access programs and resources, Machine learning and Bots and AI in Dynamics 365. This amount of attention to AI gives an exciting look into the future of Microsoft programs and the possibilities that will be coming with them.

Outside of the AI and Cloud scope, announcements surrounding Windows 7 end of support, digital transformation and the aforementioned Microsoft 365 gives plenty to look forward to.

• Update Day 1 

The first day on Microsoft Inspire revealed a lot of great intentions for the rest of the week.

MS Teams for free!

Microsoft announced one of their Office 365 apps, Teams, will be soon be free to use. Although this will not be the full version, the app is still an excellent resource for any business and might help give you an idea of how the rest of Office 365 works to connect staff.

Want to get your team all over the Office 365 experience? Find out more here.

Linux opportunity on Azure

Mandar Naik, Azure Director with Microsoft, spoke about accelerating your business with the Linux opportunity on Azure. Mandar states that Azure is a critical asset to a business’s success, offering unprecedented opportunities to help data centre transformation efforts. We absolutely agree that Azure can be an amazing resource for any business and it’s great to hear that the service is become more available to business on different platforms.

Windows 7 end of support

This is a big one. Microsoft announcing the end of Windows 7 support means a few things to a lot of business out there. It doesn’t mean that you won’t be able to use windows 7 but it does mean that there will be no more system updates or fixes. Depending on your subscription you may be entitled to extended technical support. Overall this means it might be time for your business to jump to the next level. If you are looking to upgrade windows 8 and 10 continue to be updated and improved every day.

• Update Day 2 

Day 2 of Microsoft Inspire wraps up with sessions on cyber security, Artificial Intelligence(AI), Azure and Microsoft 365.

The Adoption of Office 365

A big session for the day was about the adoption of Office 365. Jason Zander, Executive Vice President for Microsoft Azure, stated

“over 90 percent of the Fortune 500 use the Microsoft cloud.”

however, many smaller businesses are not convinced it’s right for them. According to Microsoft own research, most businesses that are hesitant to implement Office 365 don’t even fully understand what it is. The solution to helping people understand the potential of cloud computing? As we have seen yesterday, Teams in Office 365 will be release as a free application, so businesses can trial the basics of cloud computing to get a better understanding of the bigger picture. If you’re considering Office 365 for your business

Microsoft Azure

There were many sessions on Microsoft Azure Sphere yesterday. As IoT (Internet of Things) becomes a bigger reality, the opportunities for interconnected everyday electronics are increasingly exciting. A recent tweet revealed that

“Microsoft is investing $5 billion in Internet of Things over the next four years. “That’s not just for R&D, it’s for new services and programs”

But increased opportunity brings increased risks. The basic and extremely common Microcontrollers (MCUs), that run almost every electronic device, have no security built into them. Hackers have already begun to exploit these flaws. Take for example, a recent attack on a Casino. Hackers got into the digital thermometer in the Casinos fish tank, that was connected to the casinos IT systems and gained access to the high-roller data base…

Azure sphere creates some great solutions to these problems. Microsoft is developing certified MCUs with Azure Sphere OS and a full security service that focuses on Hardware Root of Trust, Dynamic Compartments and Renewable Security. With these security developments Microsoft will certainly be pushing for IoT to become a bigger part of our daily lives.

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