As 25,000 + people landed in Orlando just over a week ago, Core’s Head of Infrastructure and Cloud Services, Tim Eichmann, took time out of a busy schedule to join the crowds at Microsoft’s Ignite conference. Along with some of the globe’s best technical consultants, IT and business leaders from across education, healthcare, manufacturing and professional services he was there to see the latest innovations from Microsoft first hand.
With the cloud moving at the fastest pace ever, Microsoft’s roadmap was stacked full of new enhancements to empower users, intelligent controls for IT and innovations that will change the way many work. Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO kicked off the event stating that whether you’re in the business of decision agriculture or precision medicine, whether it’s smart factories or smart cities, we are in an age of digital transformation.
We have selected the top 10 modern workplace enhancements that you can start using right away:
1. Microsoft 365 for Education & Microsoft 365 F1 for Frontline workers
Following the launch of Microsoft 365 at the July Inspire conference, Microsoft launch two new offerings that are more than just ways of licensing. These licenses come with specific enhancements and unique experiences for teacher and classroom, and frontline workers.
2. Teams
Microsoft announced the first integrations between Teams and Skype for Business, and the roadmap to make Teams the centre of their intelligent communications strategy. Teams is part of Office 365 and available with Business Essentials, Business Premium, Enterprise E1, E3 or E5 licenses.
3. Word Editor
New improvements in the Microsoft Office suite see AI and cognitive services in action. Features are there to support a spectrum of users and include editing queues, smart suggestions, text-to-speech and 3D imaging. It’s time to give your PowerPoint presentations a jazzy update!
4. SharePoint Online and OneDrive
We’re super excited that Microsoft has been heavily investing in SharePoint Online. The user interface has undergone a complete redesign under the hood to provide a seamless coherent experience across web, mobile and desktop without any custom development. SharePoint is now integrated with Power Apps and Flow to allow organisations to easily create custom apps, forms and workflow.
5. Files on Demand
Files on Demand brings together your SharePoint Team Sites, OneDrive and your local drive to show all files in one single File Explorer view. Work seamlessly between online and local documents and select if you want something to be local or online only, to free up space.
6. Windows Autopilot
Send a device directly to your user, who can join a wifi network and identify themselves with 5 questions on startup. Windows Autopilot will then build the desktop remotely, provisioning the user’s email, security profile and apps all in a few minutes. Already supported on Surface device, Autopilot will be supported by Lenovo and HP early in 2018, followed by new devices from Fujitsu, Toshiba and Panasonic later in 2018.
7. Co-Management
A new set of Intune and System Center capabilities to help you migrate to the cloud with Windows 10. Co-Management allows you to be AD and Azure AD joined at the same time leveraging existing investments in Config Manager and Intune together to provide the flexibility to move to the cloud one workload at a time.
8. Azure Advanced Threat Protection
The third addition to the Advanced Threat Protection family, Azure Advanced Threat Protection completes story across the full scope of users and entities in an organisation. As an advancement on Advanced Threat Analytics, AATP will detect, investigate, and with the acquisition of Hexadite will soon respond to the threat.
9. Cloud App Security
During the Ignite keynote speech, Microsoft showcased the new Azure information protection features integrated in to Office 365. They also introduced Azure Active Directory Conditional Access that can be applied to documents, or within SaaS applications. This includes non-corporate Apps such as personal email accounts.
10. Compliance Manager
Compliance Manager is a real time risk assessment that essentially creates a compliance score, to recommend actions against compliance guidance to help you improve your standing. Launching this Autumn, Microsoft is committed to helping organisations become GDPR compliant in time for 25th May 2018.
If you would like to learn more about the above points, or other key points from the Ignite conference, you can contact us here.