I jumped straight out of Samsung’s SDC event in San Francisco and the life of an analyst along the way continued in Orlando, where I attended Microsoft’s annual Ignite visitor convention for all things business computing. The event is a must-have occasion in the industry, and I intend to attend every year to find out what Microsoft is preparing for businesses large and small (see my 2016, 2017, and 2018 policy for more information).
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella opened the speech by emphasizing trust, where I think it has some merit with end consumers over some of its tech peers. Let’s take a closer look at what was announced this year. My informative 87-page eBook, so of course I’ll just touch on the strengths.
Azure Arc hybrid cloud and Stack
For me, the biggest support for Microsoft in the hybrid cloud and the Ignite edge, led through Azure Arc.
Azure Arc is a set of technologies that will bring Azure and control to what Microsoft calls “any knowledge center, cloud, and edge,” adding Windows and Linux servers and Kubernetes clusters. This comes with on-premises clouds, edge clouds, and even competition like AWS and Google Cloud. Initially, Azure Arc comes with a variety of features, adding Azure Resource Manager (also known as Arm), Azure portal, API, Microsoft Azure Cloud Shell, Marketplace, and Microsoft Azure Policy. The first Azure Arc comes with Azure SQL Database for PostgreSQL Hyperscale running a Kubernetes cluster, but I expect many, many more in the future. Microsoft’s Erin Chapple demonstrated Azure Arc, appearing as a single window for managing on-premises and multi-cloud environments, and even replicating knowledge to Amazon AWS Cloud. com.
It’s to perceive the difference between Arc and Stack. Azure Arc is a set of Azure Stack, which has literally been reshaped into a full stack of hardware, software, and services. Azure Stack is characterized by “embedded systems” and includes:
Microsoft analyzed its hybrid history more than ever, noting that “unlike others, we believe that hybrid is a permanent state, not a transient state. “It will have a very strong festival of AWS and Google Cloud. AWS Outposts (details here) not AWS’s first hybrid offering. AWS also provides Snowball Edge, VMware Cloud on AWS, and many tactics for integrating on-premises resources with AWS, adding Amazon Storage Gateway, VPC, Direct Connect, Systems Manager, Identity and Access Management, Directory Service, OpsWorks, and CodeDeploy. Google Cloud to Anthos (details here).
Azure Synapse analytics
Microsoft has announced a new analytics service called Azure Synapse Analytics, a feature that brings new features to its Azure SQL Data Warehouse solution. The company says Azure Synapse will combine enterprise knowledge storage and big-knowledge analytics and combine structured and unstructured knowledge. it is a state of Nirvana.
While enterprises generally need two other types of analytics formulas (knowledge lakes and knowledge stores), Azure Synapse Analytics needs to bridge the gap so that anyone can be used through a single cloud-native analytics service. Array Aims to provide a unified area to carry out functions of preparation, management, storage, great knowledge and AI. The company touts the solution’s “unlimited scale” and claims it’s the only knowledge analytics formula capable of performing all TPC-H queries at petabyte scale. Microsoft claims that Synapse can process queries about 75 times faster than google Cloud’s giant queries, to say the least.
Azure Synapse is integrated with Power BI and Azure Machine Learning, which deserve to enable consumers to apply ML models and gain insights from all their knowledge. Returning to this claim, Azure Synapse also offers an impressive amount of security and privacy. features, adding persistent knowledge encryption, automated risk detection, column-level security, row-level local security, and dynamic knowledge masking. Overall, it’s a noble undertaking on Microsoft’s part. Congratulations to Microsoft for their ambition here.
Microsoft Power Platform enhancements
The Microsoft Power platform is the company’s low-code progression platform and includes Power BI (business analytics), PowerApps (application progression), Power Automate (workflow automation) and Power Virtual Agents (new) that rely on their common data service, Data Connectors (275) and AI Builder. Net-net Microsoft needs to increase the number of developers, increase your speed and adapt it through collaboration. This is a direct reaction to closing the “skills gap,” which cited an Indeed survey that indicated that “86% of organizations struggle for the technical ability to build apps” and other studies indicate that there will be a one million developer deficit by 2030.
Microsoft has announced a series of updates to Power Platform, its platform for visualizing knowledge and writing traditional business applications. These come with the
rename Microsoft Flow to Microsoft Power Automate (not so big), but more importantly, the addition of robotic process automation, or RPA, to Microsoft Power Automate. RPA gets a lot of attention due to the high demand for programs, but limited resources from developers. . The addition of RPA makes Power Automate a complete end-to-end solution, covering AI, API, and user interface. Microsoft’s new RPA capability, called UI flow, allows users to turn manual responsibilities into automated workflows through recording and reading human interaction. with software systems that do not have API automation. I saw a crazy demo (in a clever way) where a new worker profile was automatically created in Sharepoint by extracting knowledge from Microsoft Forms without an API, but places and clicks from Windows UX.
Another new feature is Microsoft Power Virtual Agents, which is an application that allows users to create and deploy AI-powered virtual agents, with (or little) coding required. I believe that new “citizen development” features like this are imperative to move forward, given the growing shortage of developers. In a similar vein, Microsoft also announced a new set of pre-built and more complex templates for AI Builder, which adds key phrase extraction, language detection, text recognition, and sentiment analysis. Additional enhancements are coming with new knowledge security enhancements in Power BI and greater integration between Power Platform and Microsoft Teams. According to my analyst, all this is that Microsoft Power Platform has the highest value-to-credit ratio. With Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365, it’s a combination that kills: I’d say it poses a huge risk for Salesforce, Tableau, Pega, and even SAP.
Visual Studio Online Preview
In addition to the no-code, low-code “citizen” progression team, Microsoft also has very physically powerful progression teams and environments. Before I dive in, I wanted to say that I think Microsoft gets enough credits for what it does for developers. , however, the facts speak for themselves:
Visual Studio Online is precisely what developers expect, which is to make Visual Studio available from a browser editor from the cloud. Everything, and I mean everything, is available for the cloud, so why not an IDE?anywhere and in any type of infrastructure. I also think it’s worth arguing that as developer collaboration increases and open source workflows become more popular, cloud-based IDs, such as Visual Studio Online, make a lot of sense. You can check it here.
Microsoft 365: A new network of knowledge and more
Many innovations have been announced for Microsoft 365. I tried to mention a few that I found really remarkable. The big announcement, in my opinion, was Project Cortex, Microsoft’s first new service since the advent of Teams. Project Cortex is a so-called “wisdom network” that the company calls “a cross between a tough corporate content organizer and a virtual concierge who provides others with the data they need as part of their workflow. “Microsoft says Cortex harnesses collective wisdom and uses AI to bring data and insights to consumers in their everyday applications. It seems to me that Project Cortex is a genuine focus of the equation “great knowledge AI = wisdom”. This is precisely what it is in a company.
Several other new features of Microsoft 365 caught my attention. Microsoft has announced a new Teams Chat button for Outlook, which should move annoying email conversations to a Teams chat module. In addition, it announced a new Outlook feature called “Read My Emails. “”, in which Cortana uses the popularity of herbal language and speech to read her emails aloud. Finally, it announced a new “voice enhancement” feature for Stream, which leverages ML algorithms to stumble upon unwanted background noise from the video. Frankly, I think I’m going to make smart use of all those new features. All serve to streamline the work experience in a useful way.
It’s going to be difficult for Array to slow down Microsoft in its 365 end-user experiences, as it maintains its position and continues to load useful and enhanced features with ML.
New and advanced Microsoft Edge and Bing
I wanted to mention the launch of the new Microsoft Edge and Microsoft Bing, which the company praises as “the browser and search engine of businesses. “The new Microsoft Edge offers tracking prevention (set by default), which, along with SmartScreen, better isolates users from phishing and malware patterns. Edge and Bing now offer InPrivate mode, which is different from Chrome and Google Search because incognito mode can still send data to Google Search. Edge also now offers collections, a feature that allows users to collect and organize content from the Internet to export to Word and Excel, which will nevertheless become a post-beta reality. According to Microsoft, the new Edge is twice as fast as the previous edition and is compatible in new sites and with IE. I, the new protective search privacy features are a massive game changer. Again, it all comes down to trust.
Microsoft’s new search on Bing seems nifty, as you can now search both the web and your intranet in a single browsing and search experience. For example, you can use the address bar to locate other people in your business through search by title, team name, or workplace location. Microsoft also announced that users can now access Microsoft Search on Bing on their cell phones. Overall, it looks like Microsoft has upped the stakes with Edge and Bing.
I’ve used Canary Edge as my number one browser and this is the first time in years that, with a bit of luck, I can say that consumers and businesses have good reasons to use the new Edge as their number one browser. it’s a no-brainer, as it’s an “iron two” with IE mode. Businesses can standardize on a single browser instead of two as is currently done with IE for legacy Internet applications and Chrome for modern sites.
Pack
Ignite 2019 was a wonderful event, packed with 87 pages of commercials covering Azure, Power Platform, Microsoft 365, and Edge. Although I didn’t mention it in my analysis, Paul Smith-Goodson, a quantum analyst at Moor Insights
Microsoft never stops piling up the ads at those events, and this year’s convention is no exception. Microsoft seems to be protecting its current positions, aggressively attacking existing markets, not owning the top stocks in the market, and investing in the right areas of expansion. I watch expecting to see all those updates in action next year.