Category: Business

Posted on

Microsoft 365 CoPilot: What is the ROI?

So, who is excited then? Microsoft 365 Copilot will be officially GA from 1st of November 2023 at a cost of $30 per user per month for commercial customers. That is THIS week!!!

How much will Microsoft 365 CoPilot cost?

Microsoft continue to be firm that any organisation that invests in Microsoft 365 Copilot from the 1st of November will pay $30 per user per month. Note that initially, the licensing will not appear on a price list and must be purchased alongside the organisations Microsoft Account team. There is a minimum number of seats of three hundred.

When will Microsoft 365 Copilot be released?

Microsoft 365 Copilot will be generally available from 1st November 2023. There have been several hundred large organisations on a paid (around $100,000) Early Access Preview since the summer who have been helping Microsoft with performance, accuracy and tuning guidance as well as helping Microsoft to capture and prove use-cases and guidance for other future organisations and to help them justify the cost of ownership. I am sure that next year, we will see a Total Economic study from Microsoft and Forrester on this!!

Note: Initially, Microsoft 365 Copilot will not be available to EDU customers or in the government/Gallatin clouds. All apps, except for Copilot in Excel, will be available in the
following languages: English (US, GB, AU, CA, IN), Spanish (Spain, Mexico), Japanese, French (France, Canada), German, Portuguese (Brazil), Italian, and Chinese Simplified. Copilot in Excel is currently only available in English. Support for additional languages will be extended through the first few months of calendar year 2024.

Copilot is very new. As such expect it to evolve quickly and get better…

The ROI of Microsoft 365 Copilot.

Even after the 1st of November, most organisations, Microsoft partners and many of Microsoft, will still not have access to Microsoft 365 Copilot. There have been those on the paid early access program, some of the global solution partners have also been involved.

Due to the minimum limit of three hundred licenses, I expect that many organisations may wait a little rather than rush in. Wait until they are ready, they can learn from other organisations successes and blips and (I imagine) for the entry point to be lowered and in fact I have heard rumours that this might drop to fifty.
Note: Smaller organisations and anyone who buys licensing via a CSP provider will also have to wait a bit.

There is plenty of information out there to help organisations start strategizing and preparing for what will be one of the most significant uplifts (both in cost of their Microsoft 365 license, and in capability) in the history of IT and IT budgets.

The questions of course that the CFO and CEO will want to understand are

  1. What will the actual cost be?
  2. How will affect our bottom line?
  3. Are the perceived benefits worth the price?
  4. How can we keep our Microsoft licensing costs under control?
  5. What do we need to do to make sure we can really get the best from Microsoft 365 Copilot.

1. Understanding the cost of Microsoft 365

Microsoft Copilot is an add-on license – meaning it is purchased (at $30 per user per month) and applied to a base-level license. Also, not every Microsoft 365 license will be eligible for a Copilot “bolt-on”. Currently Microsoft 365 Copilot can only be attached to:

  • Microsoft 365 E5,
  • Microsoft 365 E3,
  • Microsoft 365 Business Premium,
  • Microsoft 365 Business Standard.

Whilst the above is good news for smaller businesses (in that they dont need to upgrader to an E3 or E5 base license), the cost is (currently) the same regardless of what base-level license you are attaching it to. This means the cost uplift (as a percentage) is much higher for organisations on Microsoft 365 E3 or Microsoft 365 Business. Nothing is of course set-in-stone as we are still in early preview, and we might see pricing changes or tiering as we get nearer to release. I’d also expect customers on large Enterprise Agreement to pay less (and be able to haggle!).

Frontline workers (or anyone with a Microsoft 365 “F” license) are not currently able to use Copilot without being upgraded to an enterprise E3, which means a cost difference (for M365 E3 plus Copilot) of a staggering 8.25x.

If we look at the cost of the current licenses and the effect of adding Copilot to every user, then the costs can look scary (this is based on Online RRP pricing).

Base LicenseBase CostM365 Copilot*License + Copilot% Increase
Microsoft 365 E5£52.40£25£77.4048%
Microsoft 365 E3£33.10£25£58.1076%
Microsoft 365 Business Premium£18.10£25£42.10133%
Microsoft 365 Business Standard£10.30£25£35.30242%
Costs before and after Microsoft 365 Copilot (pupm RRP).

Things to note:

  1. Microsoft 365 Copilot is optional – it’s your choice as to whether you invest in it or not, but it is not and will not be included in any of the base licences – for some AI features in Bing Chat or the use of ChatGPT may be enough.
  2. You don’t (and won’t) need to buy it for every employee – persona mapping and use case studies will be vital to determine who is likely to benefits most.
  3. The pricing for Copilot for Business SKUs may change (as will the rest of the pricing)
  4. Organisations may be able to “fund” their Copilot investment through savings in smart licensing procurement and consolidation of third-party products (especially for M365 E5 organisations). We are seeing a lot of this and makes sense if you have most of your “eggs” in the Microsoft Cloud Basket.

2. How will Copilot affect our bottom line?

One of the recurring questions I get asked when talking to organisations about Microsoft 365 Copilot is “how can we ensure we get a measurable ROI when planning for or investing in Microsoft Copilot?”

Even so, adding $30 (around £25 pupm) to your existing productivity toolset does seems a lot, especially if you are paying for M365 E5 + Teams Premium + Calling Plan already, plus of course things like Microsoft Viva Suite, etc.

At Microsoft’s recent Envision event in London, Microsoft talked a lot about usecases from customers on the Early Access programme, talking about various diffferent use cases that improve work experience, remove creative blocks and speed up decision-making across a number of different sectors including retail and finance.

So – from an ROI perspectives some of the maths you may look at are:

  • Assume a sales exec, data analyst or admin position that earns £50,000 annual salary.
  • With Microsoft 365 Copilot at $30 a month, thats ~$1 a day or ~80p in UK money. If we also assume the normal 250 working days a year then that equates to ~£200/day or ~£25/hr.
  • If these “roles” can each save just two hours a month using Copilot to sumamrise meetings, take notes, automate and send a customer propsosal out, then that is already a productivity saving (in time) of 2:1 or £50 per person per month.

I have already heard other organisations share ROI stories for the use of ChatGPT Premium since its commercial introduction with organisations reporting ROI’s of over 25:1 on a $20 pupm subscription. Given the extensive enterprise data integration and interaction into the Microsoft 365 apps and services that Copilot will bring out of the box, I would not be suprised to see ROIs (once studies are done) of more than 30:1

There is then a moral and emotional play here too. Everyone loves a productivity gain [I think there will be loads], but there may also be instances where entire roles (or aspects of roles) may no longer needed because AI will do that part of the job for us. The same goes to be honest for automation technologies like Power Automate. Then is there the case, where you as an organisation (whether you are involved in B2B or B2C) may win more business because you have “the power of AI” either helping make decisions, responding to a client/customer faster or helping you make sales faster by directly interfacing with the customer or following up on things.

Advice is to ensure you work with Microsoft and your partner(s) to identify which departments or individuals are likely to benefit the most from the features within Microsoft Copilot’s features and make sure they are part of a pilot.

This usually starts with a well thought out and managed pilot programme during which you’ll be looking at identifying, testing, and proving the potential timesaving and productivity gains it can bring to roles like sales, finance, and your data teams.

3. Are the perceived benefits worth the price?

I think so – but again this will all loop back to the point above. Whilst it wont just be about price, these GenAI tools are likely to improve the way most people work. These pilot phases, will require organisations to explore and experiment with Copilot’s features and capabilities to discover new ways to enhance their work experience.

Using these tools also requires that users are on-board, educated and informed. As such, once you have identifyied the most suitable users and scenarios for the “pilot”, you’ll need to ensure you provide adequate training and support and closely monitor and measure the outcomes and champion quick wins whilst soliciting feedback and suggestions from employees.

A report on the early findings on the promise of Generative Al put together by Harvard Business School and Boston Consulting Group found that Generative Al in the workplace lead to a:

  • 12.2% increase in task completion rates
  • 25.1 % decrease in time spent to complete tasks
  • 12.5% increase in the number of subtasks completed
  • 40% increase in the quality of responses to subtasks

4. How do we keep our costs under control?

A good question…let’s look at cost reduction to free budget (either for cakes, salary rises, bottom line or, yes, Copilot).

Organisations may be able to “fund” their Copilot investment through savings in smart licensing procurement and consolidation of third-party products (especially for M365 E5 organisations). We are seeing a lot of this and makes sense if you have most of your “eggs” in the Microsoft Cloud Basket.

Mch of the above is general good practice but I’m seeing lots of organisations looking at this to “free” budget to drive Copilot “pilots”.

5. What do we need to do to make to get the best from Copilot?

I have covered this before in previous blogs and videos, but in short the key focus organisations need to do outside of runing a pilot, training users and streamlining how you fund it, is data data data.

The key advantage that Microsoft Copilot will have over its rivals is that it seemlessly integrates with Microsoft 365 applications and uses enterprise data to provide personalised and contextual assistance. As such, ensuring your data is accessible (in the cloud or cloud connected at least), managed correctly, classified, labelled and protected. I have covered this a few times here.

Successful adoption of Microsoft 365 Copilot is much more than the technology and licensing. Organisations need to see this as a significant technology project and not just a product you buy. As such they key activies critival to success are:

  • Having a defined vision and identification of how Microsoft 365 Copilot will be used
  • Obtain proactive support from key roles in the organisation to accelerate the use of Copilot. including senior leadership, legal, IT and key Business Development Managers.
  • Enable Champions and provide business relevant, snackable and on-demand training for end users this includes leveraging the “power of the prompt”.
  • Raised awareness through launch event & omni-channel communications planning.

Copilot Q&A

Will CoPilot be included in Microsoft E5?

No, Microsoft 365 Copilot is not included in the Microsoft 365 E5 license. Microsoft 365 Copilot is an add-on license at an additional cost [$30] irrespective of the Microsoft 365 licenses you have within your organisation. This means that even if you are on Microsoft 365 E5, you will need to pay for it separately if you decide to implement and use it.

Whats the minimum number of licenses we can buy?

Currently the minimum liceses you will be able to buy from 1st November is three hundred at a cost of $30 pupm.

Will there be free trails?

No – at the moment Microsoft have confirmed that trials will not be available.

Will I be able to get Microsoft 365 Copilot for free?

If you do – let me know!!

No… as of the information available, Microsoft 365 Copilot will not be available for free. At the time of writing, there are six hundred organisations globally that are currently on an Early Access Programme, and they all paid $100,000 for the preview. Microsoft Copilot is positioned as a premium add-on with huge substantial benefits. The initially announced price is $30 per user per month, but it’s this price is not yet finalised, and we don’t know if different sectors or license volumes will affect the price.

We don’t have Microsoft 365 – can we still use Copilot?

No, Microsoft 365 Copilot will only be available for organisations that use Microsoft 365 Business, Business premium, Enterprise E3 or Enterprise E5. I is not availbale for organisation of Office only plans, or Front-line worker SKUs (Microsoft 365 F SKUS).

We also do not yet know the intentions Microsoft have for Copilot with Education and Not for Profit organisations.

Will I be able to negotiate the price for Microsoft 365 Copilot?

It depends. The size of your organisation, the level of your base licensing and demand will all likley affect what you pay for Microsoft 365. I suspect the largest organisations – those with huge Enterprise Agreements will get a better deal than smaller organisations, but I’d expect tie ins to the higher licnese SKUs like Microsoft 365 E5.

My advice is to speak to a product and licensing specialist to work with your Microsoft Account team and who can help you assess your deployment roadmap from various angles.

Summary and Key Points

  • Microsoft 365 Copilot will be available to Enterprise customers at a price of $30 per user per month on top a Microsoft 365 E3 or E5 license.
  • Initially there will be a minimum license purchase of three hundred licenses, Though I have heard that this might get reduced to fifty.
  • Initially it’s only available to Enterprise sized organisations though will be coming to CSP customers and small, medium, and commercial organisations by end of the year.
  • ROI should be significant if Copilot is properly implemented, but organisations need to prepare to pay for this and it’s not “cheap”. Expect Copilot to impact everyone person in the organisation.
Posted on

Microsoft Envision 2023 – AI is the fuel for the next generation of digital transformation

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending Microsoft Envision in London.

Hosted by Clare Barclay [Chief Executive Officer, Microsoft UK], this was the first in-person only event Microsoft had run in some 4 years, and it was absolutely packed with a real buzz and energy I haven’t seen at an event in years.

The theme of the entire event, including breakouts and exhibitors was all centred around AI – which is hardly surprising with the upcoming 1st November date for “general availability” of Microsoft 365 Copilot

The Keynote – AI Transformation

The event comprised of a keynote delivered by Judson Althoff [Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial officer].

AI transformation is going to follow many of the same rules of digital transformation…Many of you embarked upon your cloud journeys many years ago, and one rule really applied – that digital transformation was business transformation, empowered by technology, and in that order.

Judson Althoff | Microsoft VP and CCO

His 45-minute session was all about AI about and how “to lead in the era of AI” at the keynote.

During this session. Jedson explained how generative AI technology is opening doors for any, and all business from healthcare, to manufacturing to public sector and finance to “imagine new ways to solve challenges”, while unlocking innovation and delivering greater business value that any technology has ever done before. As well as some demos and in-person interviews from some leading UK brands like Sainsburys and ASOS who talked about how they were leveraging Microsoft AI to build new shopping experiences.

Judson spent most of his time on stage bringing the audience up to speed and on the same page about Microsoft 365 Copilot, Sales Copilot, Security Copilot and then spent some time talking around GitHub Copilot and the huge benefits this is bringing to developers. He showcased the ever expanding “collaboration” between Microsoft and OpenAI, which most recently has also resulted in the creation of Llama 2, a powerful generative AI model that can generate text, images, code, music and more which will soon be available on Azure and Windows platforms as part of the expansion of the Azure AI model catalogue.

Finally, he introduced the new Vector Search, a new feature in Azure Cognitive Search that enables searching across different types of data using natural language queries with a live demo (which mainly worked), in which he showed off how Vector Search can help find relevant information from documents, images, videos and more through semantic indexing (the same powerful index too that will power Microsoft 365 Copilot.) Jedson also re-introduced Microsoft Fabric which has been in preview for six months and goes into General Availability next month.  

AI transformation is going to reshape how companies think about their employees, how they think about engaging with their customers, how they think about their own businesses, and how they think about innovation

Whilst Microsoft covered a lot of ground in this session, much of it was a rinse and repeat of things many of us had seen before. What Microsoft did though through event was kept the fire burning. Delivering this on stage in front of thousands of people had real appeal. You could feel the buzz from the audience and the conversations leaving the main hall were all of excitement and energy – Microsoft really did capture hearts and minds.

The Breakouts

I was less impressed by many of the breakouts though to be fair I only attended a handful of them. Many were met with repeats of what we had already seen earlier on, but with less passion and energy. Most demos were impressive to those that had not seen them before, but for partners and “tightly managed” Microsoft customers, there wasn’t much we hadn’t already seen before – that said, it didn’t stop the buzz and interest through, and the exhibition halls were buzzing.

Networking

For me – these events are all about the networking. We had a team of people there – some there to learn and see what was coming and how it was being presented to customers (this was not a technical event, and it was aimed at business leaders). For me it was great to meet many of our customers, who I’d previous only met over Teams) and was even nicer to get a chance to really interface with people from different industries, from Microsoft product and Client Success teams and to get some deep dive demos on some other aspects of the solutions Microsoft offer that we don’t specialise in. I was extremely impressed by just how powerful Dynamnics 365 is now for example.

Satya’s Closing Points

Unlike previous events, this even stayed busy until the end (and beyond)- this was probably due, in-part to the closing note being delivered by Satya Nadella (in person), followed by Steve Bartlett (CEO and Founder of Diary of a CEO).

Satya brought his usual passion and twist to the day, summarising the key points delivered throughout the day but homing in on GitHub Copilot and the enormous potential this has to help software developers, businesses and citizen developers have in building AI powered apps for the future. He talked about Microsoft’s commitments to ethical AI, AI for good and the new wave of AI transformation that is taking over every facet of our lives and every business big and small.  He talked about this next wave being about “digitising people, places and things with new reasoning engines that can really analyse data in seconds”.

There were a few points which you could feel really resonated with the audience.

  1. This AI wave is bigger than when the Windows PC transformed the office in the nineties
  2. We are on the cusp of interfacing with technology in true natural language where our computers can now actually “understand” us
  3. For the first time, we will be able to interface with technology in true multi-modal and multi-domain and engage in full meaningful discussions.

He finished by re-iterating the work many organisations need to do to get the best from Generative AI. Much of this was around data. He said, which I think is the most relevant bit of advice for every organisation, that “The Cloud is what makes AI possible, but it is your data that makes AI work”.

My Take: What organisations need to do next

For me this resonates as this is what we see every day and on the back of every discussion around AI we have with our clients.


Data is the fuel of AI: Many have lots of work to do to get their data in shape. Whether that is getting it in the cloud, managing stale and duplicate data, controlling security and governance, and protecting it from mis use or leakage. Many are not there yet and fear that many will miss this important step and jump straight it – resulting in poor results, low ROI, and poor adoption.

Adoption is the accelerant: Cloud Adoption is what makes AI possible . The UK has good cloud adoption the main, but it’s very hit and miss. Some are full in and others are still starting the journey. For AI to work we need good Cloud Adoption and it’s not just about migrating to the cloud. We need data and apps structured to get the best from AI -we need data accessible (but secure) to allow these LLMs to surface and make decisions or conclusions based on this data and it needs people to understand the true power of what these tools can do. I still feel many see AI as something of a fad, a promise of something and something others will do. Even looking inside our own organisation we have a lot to do – to really deeply understand and appreciate what AI will do for us.

If you haven’t used it – dive in , start interfacing with your PC via Windows Copilot, leverage Bing Enterprise Chat, get ready for Microsoft 365 Copilot by working with your Microsoft Partner.

AI is the future – it’s here and it’s for everyone and every organisation – but your data is what will make it successful and useable.

Posted on

Microsoft September 2023 News: The new and exciting stuff

Microsoft hosted a live Surface and AI event on Thursday 21st September where they announced a lot of new and exciting features and products across its various platforms and services. In this blog post, I have tried to summarise the most notable ones and explain how they might benefit you and your organisation. 

Disclaimer (and product plug) - Since this was an AI event in whole, I also want to state that other than some slight tweaks, this blog post was written by Bing Enterprise Chat - Microsoft Designer created the image. The whole thing took less that 10 minutes.

Copilot: Your AI Assistant at Work and Beyond

Copilot is a new feature that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help you with various tasks, such as drafting emails, summarizing texts, creating images, and more. You can access Copilot from Windows 11, Microsoft 365, Edge, and Bing, and chat with it in natural language. Copilot will understand your intent and provide relevant assistance based on the context and your data.

For example, you can ask Copilot to draft an email for you with a specific tone, or to generate a graphic art based on your description. You can also use Copilot to answer questions, troubleshoot your PC, control your settings, and access recommendations. Copilot is designed to save you time, reduce your cognitive load, and ignite your creativity.

Copilot will be generally available for enterprise customers on November 1st, and for a select group of consumers and small business customers as part of the Early Access Program (EAP). It will initially be limited to three hundred licenses and will cost $30 per user per month.

Windows 11: The Most Powerful and Personal Windows Ever

Windows 11 is the latest (and IMO best) version of the Microsoft’s desktop operating system that powers millions of devices around the world. Windows 11 offers a fresh and modern design, improved performance, and security, and a more personalised and connected experience. They announced the latest update coming next week (Sept 26th). Some of the new features in Windows 11 will include:

  • An updated Start menu that gives you quick access to your apps, documents, and settings.
  • An updated Taskbar that lets you easily switch between multiple instances of each app, hide the time and date, and end tasks with a right-click.
  • A new Dev Home that helps you set up your development environment by downloading apps, packages, or repositories, connecting to your developer accounts and tools, and accessing experimental features in WSL.
  • A new Dev Drive that provides a fast and secure storage volume for developers, with a file system that delivers both performance and security.
  • A new WinGet Configuration that simplifies the setup process for developers by reducing it to a single command.
  • New Gallery in File Explorer that makes it easy to access your photo collection across all your devices.
  • A new Snipping Tool that lets you record your screen with audio and mic support, copy and redact text from a screenshot, and edit your images with Paint.
  • A new Photos app that has new editing capabilities to achieve stylish background blur effects and makes it easier to find specific images backed up in OneDrive.
  • Updated Narrator that uses natural human voices in new languages, and lets you use voice access to log in to your PC and access other areas on the lock screen.
  • Refreshed Notepad app that automatically saves your session state, allowing you to close Notepad without any interrupting dialogs and then pick up where you left off when you return.
  • A new Instant Games feature that lets you play your favorite casual games directly from the Microsoft Store without the need to download and install them on your device.
  • Windows Copilot – Your Copilot for Windows.

Windows 11 also announced general availability of Windows 365 Boot and Windows 365 Switch, which allow you to log into your Windows 365 Cloud PC as the primary Windows experience on the device or easily switch between the Cloud PC and the local desktop. Windows 365 is a cloud PC service that lets you stream a full Windows experience from anywhere on any device and is fully managed from Intune.

This update will start rolling out as a free update on September 26th.

Surface: The Ultimate Devices for Work and Play

Surface is Microsoft’s line of devices that combine innovative design, powerful performance, and versatile functionality. Surface devices are built to work seamlessly with Windows 11 and Microsoft 365, offering the best productivity and creativity tools for work and play. I am a massive fan of Surface

The new / refreshed Surface devices include:

  • Surface Laptop Studio 2: The most powerful Surface ever built, with the latest Intel Core processors, NVIDIA Studio tools for creators, touchscreen display, and flexible design with three unique postures.
  • Surface Laptop Go 3: The lightest and most portable Surface Laptop, with touchscreen display, premium features like an incredible typing experience and a Fingerprint Power Button, and four stylish colours.
  • Surface Go 4: The baby Surface Pro is this time, available only for corporate and not consumer market (why??), the device is the same dimensions as before but is more repairable (the most repairable and sustainable device int he Surface Fleet). It ditches the 4GB RAM option (good) and brings a higher spec entry level processor. Pricing increases too which is a shame as is ditching consumer market. These are great for school kids.
  • Surface Hub 3: The ultimate collaboration device for teams, with a large interactive display that runs the Microsoft Teams Rooms experience. Surface Hub 3 pairs seamlessly with Teams-certified devices and supports Hub on day one. There was also an upgrade announced for Surface Hub 2S customers to upgrade to Surface Hub 3,

The new Surface devices are available for pre-ordering now.

Microsoft 365: The World’s Productivity Cloud

Microsoft 365 is a cloud-based subscription service that offers the best productivity apps for work and life. Microsoft 365 includes apps like Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, OneDrive, Teams, Stream, Loop, Clipchamp, and more.

Microsoft 365 Copilot (which will be available from 1st November) is an add-on service at $30 per user per month and provides in-built AI-powered features and services that help you get more done across all your Office 365 apps and services – with support also coming to Microsoft Designer, Loop and Clipchamp and more.

Some of the new features and services in Microsoft 365 include:

  • Copilot in Outlook, Excel, Word, Loop, OneNote, Stream, and OneDrive: Copilot is integrated into various Microsoft 365 apps to provide AI assistance for different tasks. For example, you can use Copilot in Outlook to draft emails, in Excel to create charts, in Word to summarize documents, in Loop to generate content blocks, in OneNote to take notes, in Stream to transcribe videos, and in OneDrive to find files.
  • Generative Expand, Fill, and Erase in Microsoft Designer: These features let you manipulate images in creative ways, such as expanding the canvas, filling in missing areas, or erasing unwanted objects. Generative Erase is generally available now, and Generative Fill and Expand are coming soon.
  • Copilot Lab: Copilot Lab is a feature that lets you learn how to use Copilot effectively, share your favorite prompts with coworkers, and get inspired by other users. Copilot Lab will be accessible to all Microsoft 365 Copilot users once it’s generally available in November.
  • Mobile Application Management (MAM) for Windows: This feature allows employees to access organisational resources through Microsoft Edge from an unmanaged device, while giving IT the ability to control the conditions under which the resources can be accessed.

Bing and Edge: The Smartest Way to Search and Browse

Bing and Edge are Microsoft’s search engine and web browser that offer a fast, secure, and personalized way to search and browse the web. Bing and Edge use AI to provide relevant information and assistance based on your needs and preferences.

Some of the new features and improvements in Bing and Edge include:

  • DALL-E 3 in Bing Image Creator and Microsoft Designer integration: Bing Image Creator is a feature that lets you create images from text descriptions using AI. Bing Image Creator is now powered by DALL-E 3, which produces more realistic and detailed images. You can also access Bing Image Creator directly from Microsoft Designer for further editing.
  • Content Credentials: Content Credentials is a feature that uses cryptographic methods to add an invisible digital watermark to all AI-generated images in Bing. This helps you verify the origin and authenticity of the images. Content Credentials will be supported in Bing Image Creator, Microsoft Designer, and Paint soon.
  • Bing Chat Enterprise: Bing Chat Enterprise is a feature that lets you chat with Copilot from the Edge mobile app. You can also use multimodal visual search and Image Creator from Bing Chat Enterprise.
  • Copilot in Microsoft Shopping: Copilot in Microsoft Shopping is a feature that helps you find what you’re looking for more quickly. You can ask for information on an item, and Bing will ask additional questions to learn more. Then, Bing will use that information to provide more tailored recommendations. This feature will be available soon on both PC and mobile.
  • Personalised Answers: Personalised Answers is a feature that uses your chat history to inform your results. For example, if you’ve used Bing to track your favorite soccer team, next time you’re planning a trip it can proactively tell you if the team is playing in your destination city. Personalized Answers will begin to roll out soon.

Microsoft Advertising: The Best Way to Reach Your Customers

Microsoft Advertising is a platform that helps businesses connect with their customers across the web. Microsoft Advertising offers various solutions and tools to create effective and engaging ads that reach the right audience at the right time.

Some of the new features and improvements in Microsoft Advertising include:

  • Copilot in the Microsoft Advertising Platform: Copilot in the Microsoft Advertising Platform is a feature that simplifies and enhances every aspect of your experience with the platform. You can use Copilot to create campaigns, get content recommendations, optimize your performance, and more. This feature will be coming soon.
  • Compare & Decide Ads: Compare & Decide Ads are a new type of ads that pull relevant data of various products or services into a succinct table. This helps users easily evaluate different options based on their criteria. Compare & Decide Ads will be available for cars initially and will be brought to closed beta in early 2024.

Conclusion

These are just some of the highlights from the Microsoft September 2023 News. There are many more features and products that we didn’t cover here, but you can find them on the current web page context. I hope you are excited about these new developments, and I would love to hear what you are most excited about.

Posted on

Windows 365 and Azure Virtual Desktop recognized as a Leader in 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Desktop as a Service

Microsoft has been recognized as a Leader in the inaugural Gartner Magic Quadrant™ for Desktop as a Service (DaaS). According to Gartner, DaaS is defined as “the provision of virtual desktops by a public cloud or service provider” and encompasses a variety of cloud solutions, such as Windows 365 and Azure Virtual Desktop, which are described in a way that is familiar to customers of varying backgrounds and technical expertise.

Given the newness to the market of Microsoft’s two offerings in this space, it’s incredible to see Microsoft leading in this catagory (ahead of the golden players like Citrix and VMware).

Gartner stated in their report that “Microsoft is one of the few vendors with significant global presence,” and “Microsoft is in a unique position, as it owns the architecture for Windows, Intune, Microsoft 365 applications, Azure, Azure Virtual Desktop, and Windows 365.”

Microsoft have two offerings in this space which are both designed to provide organisations with secure and versatile cloud desktop solutions that support flexible work options.

  • Windows 365 – a fully managed DaaS solution that securely streams personalised Windows desktop, apps, settings, and content from the Microsoft Cloud to your Cloud PC which can be accessed from the device of your choice.
  • Azure Virtual Desktop, a full enterprise cloud virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) platform that delivers hosted remote desktops and apps with flexibility and control without compromising on security.

You u can check out my short user experience demo on Windows365 here.

Posted on

Considerations for the transition of PSTN to Cloud Calling

What is happening to the PSTN network?

As the telecommunications landscape continues to evolve, the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) is gradually being phased out in favor of modern communication technologies. It will be completely switched off by the end of December 2025, and new PSTN lines can no longer be bought or sold.

This transition presents both opportunities and challenges for organizations that rely on traditional phone systems. The future and replacement, of course, lie in Cloud Calling. However, achieving a smooth transition requires careful thought, planning, and migration.

Moving calling into the cloud also helps extend the functionality and reach of collaboration solutions like Teams, Zoom, and Webex, for example.

This blog discusses key considerations for businesses in preparation for the PSTN switch off next year and covers seven essential areas.

  • Assessing your existing calling infrastrucure.
  • Expore the different options.
  • Remember to carry out a network readiness assessment.
  • Consider all the Cloud Calling Options.
  • Ensure you have a solid testing plan.
  • Don’d forget security, compliance and privacy.
  • Adoption and Training are key.

Assess your current calling infrastrucutre

To prepare for the PSTN turn-off, you should first examine your current telephony infrastructure. Find out how many PSTN lines, hardware devices and related costs you have. Check if you have any legacy systems that depend on PSTN connectivity, such as fax machines or alarm systems that use analogue connections. This assessment will help you measure the impact and look for appropriate alternatives.

Action: Speak to your UC or voice partner. They will be able to carry this out for you and help you with costings and options.

Explore Different Cloud Calling Options

With traditional PSTN services becoming obsolete and being turn off, cloud-based communication solutions, such as Microsoft Teams not only offer more advantages but make lots of sense for organisations by having a singl platform for meetings, chat, calling and apps. Moving towards integrated solutions help you save costs, scale up and down as needed and provide a simpler unified and easier to use platform with everything in one place. It also is proven to improve adoption and make communication more “frictionless” as well as providing better integratation with other line of business applications.

The same applies to organisations who are already invested in wider UC platforms such as Webex or Zoom. To find the best solution for your organisation, you need to assess your needs and goals. You may also benefit from working with a trusted technology partner who can guide you through the migration process.

Remember to carry out a Network Readiness Assessment

Before implementing your chosen cloud voice solution, make sure your network infrastructure can support it. Unlike traditional PSTN or dedication “voice solutions”, putting cloud calling along side your collaboration and productivity solutions like Teams, Zoom or Webex typically means that IP routing, VLANs, bandwidth and QoS settings will need to change. You’ll need to check internet bandwidth, wired and wireless etworking, VLANs, VPNs and network security. You may also need to add or implment CoS and QoS to to ensure quality of service. Your cloud provider, IT or technology partner will be able to help – so will the chosen vendor you decide to work with and many will have “tools” to help you check connecivity health.

Not all Cloud Calling is the same so consider your options

To transition from PSTN to a different phone system, it is essential to carefully compare the various methods of connecting your calls. When considering the inclusion of cloud calling in your collaboration suite, such as Webex, Zoom, or Teams, multiple options are available. Whilst these vendors all provide their own native “calling plans,” which may be the simplest and most suitable choice in certain cases, . it is also important to explore alternative connectivity methods, such as Direct Routing (via SBCs managed by you or your partner) or Hosted Direct Routing (a managed service). Additionally, you may even consider utilising solutions that are not inherently integrated into your collaboration suite. Instead, these solutions involve an app that runs alongside or within the Teams, Webex, or Zoom app, providing calling capability.

For each of these options, it is crucial to thoroughly consider the advantages and disadvantages, such as cost, seamless communication, geographical coverage, SLAs, and level of integration with other line of business applications like Office 365, Contact Centre, and CRM. It is highly recommended to conduct tests whenever possible to evaluate the performance of each solution.

Have a solid test and rollout plan

An inclusive testing and migration plan must be formulated to ensure a seamless transition to the new environment. This plan should encompass pilot testing, deployment and migration milestones, specific timelines, and clearly defined responsibilities for each stage of the transition.

Prior to proceeding with a full-scale production rollout, it is strongly advised to conduct a network readiness assessment (as mentioned above) in conjunction with systems testing involving a select group of users based on a user acceptance test plan.

In order to aid employees in adapting to the new system and to facilitate their feedback, it is imperative to incorporate comprehensive training and change management activities. Regular communication with stakeholders and designated “champion groups” should be established and their expectations managed consistently throughout the transition process.

Security, Compliance and Privacy

For organisations operating in regulated industries, it is imperative to carefully consider and select an alternative communication solution that aligns with regulatory and compliance requirements. Factors such as data privacy, security measures, and industry-specific regulations should be taken into account when evaluating communication solutions. Additionally, the seamless integration of features like language translation, call recording, and transcription into your existing collaboration tools should be carefully considered.

A recent development worth noting is Microsoft’s announcement regarding the inclusion of Copilot functionality in Teams Phone. However, it is crucial to involve your legal and compliance teams in order to address any potential issues and adhere to relevant standards. If necessary, consult with your vendor or partner to ensure compliance and resolve any concerns.

Training and Adoption

Summary

As the deadline for switching off the PSTN approaches, organisations can benefit from adopting a modern and integrated cloud calling platform that offers better features, more flexibility, and greater affordability and future-proofing. They can also use this opportunity to streamline and simplify their communications by choosing solutions that integrate with their wider communication and collaboration tools such as Microsoft Teams, Webex or Zoom.

Posted on

Legal Damages Covered by Microsoft for their AI Customers

Microsoft said yesterday in a blog post that they will “pay legal damages on behalf of customers using its artificial intelligence (AI) products if they are sued for copyright infringement for the output generated by such systems“.

In the post, Microsoft said that they will assume responsibility for the potential legal risks arising out of any claims raised by third parties for copyright infringement so long as their company’s customers use “the guardrails and content filters” built into their AI powered products which include Bing Enterprise Chat and Microsoft 365 Copilot. Microsoft said that this offers functionality that is designed to reduce the likelihood that their AI-powered services will return content that infringes copyrighted content.

Microsoft is announcing our new Copilot Copyright Commitment. As customers ask whether they can use Microsoft’s Copilot services and the output they generate without worrying about copyright claims, we are providing a straightforward answer: yes, you can, and if you are challenged on copyright grounds, we will assume responsibility for the potential legal risks involved.

Microsoft

Microsoft’s say that their Copilot Copyright Commitment will protect customers so long as they have “used the guardrails and content filters we have built into our products” said Hossein Nowbar, [CVP and Chief Legal Officer at Microsoft] in their blog post yesterday. Microsoft also pledged to pay related fines or settlements and said it has taken steps to ensure its Copilots respect copyright.

Microsoft’s pledge comes are part of their ethical use of AI commitments and say that “We believe in standing behind our customers when they use our products – we are charging our commercial customers for our Copilots, and if their use creates legal issues, we should make this our problem rather than our customers’ problem“.

Generative AI is now everywhere

Generative AI applications leverage existing content such including news, images and artwork, and evening programming code and use it to generate new “AI generated” content which may use combinations of different data sources. Microsoft is embedding much of this technology, powered by their partnership with OpenAI Inc, into their core technology products like Windows 11 and Microsoft 365 which as a potential to put their customers in “legal jeopardy”.

With the proliferation and growing use of generative AI – people are using these tools to generate text, images, sounds, other data, and people have raised concerns over the technology’s ability to generate content without referencing it to its original authors. To address this Microsoft, said that “We are sensitive to the concerns of authors, and we believe that Microsoft rather than our customers should assume the responsibility to address them. Even where existing copyright law is clear, generative AI is raising new public policy issues and shining a light on multiple public goals. We believe the world needs AI to advance the spread of knowledge and help solve major societal challenges. Yet it is critical for authors to retain control of their rights under copyright law and earn a healthy return on their creations“.

Protecting and upholding Copyright Laws

Artists, writers, and software developers are already filing lawsuits or raising objections about their creations being used without their consent which has accelerated since the available of Generative AI tools exploded with the release of ChatGPT back in November 2022. This includes programmers, artists, and authors.

I cannot show you that, as it would be unethical and illegal to do so. AI breaching copyright is a genuine issue that affects many artists and creators who have their original works used without their permission or compensation.

There are already several lawsuits against AI firms, which are testing issues of copyright. For example, three artists have filed a case against Stability AI, the company behind Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, and DeviantArt, an online art community with its own generator called DreamUp. They allege that the company unlawfully copied and processed their artworks without permission or license.

Microsoft say that their Copilot Copyright Commitment extends their existing intellectual property indemnification coverage to copyright claims relating to the use of its AI-powered assistants called Copilots and through to their AI powered Bing Chat Enterprise.

Microsoft state in their blog that “we have built important guardrails into our Copilots to help respect authors’ copyrights. We have incorporated filters and other technologies that are designed to reduce the likelihood that Copilots return infringing content. These build on and complement our work to protect digital safety, security, and privacy, based on a broad range of guardrails such as classifiers, meta prompts, content filtering, and operational monitoring and abuse detection, including that which potentially infringes third-party content”.

You can already see evidence of this safety net in tools such as Bing Enterprise Chat where the tools will do what it can to avoid purposely breaching copyright.

Further Reading

Microsoft on-the-issues blog (source): https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/06/08/announcing-microsofts-ai-customer-commitments/

Microsoft AI Commitments:
https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/06/08/announcing-microsofts-ai-customer-commitments/

Five things you need to know about Microsoft 365 Copilot: http://robquickenden.blog/2023/08/microsoft365copilot-5keythings/

Posted on

Bing Chat Enterprise is now available “free” to businesses

Microsoft have unveiled another way for employers to empower their workforce with the announcement and preview availability of Bing Chat Enterprise by giving them better answers, greater efficiency, and new ways to be creative. Microsoft say it’s “Secure AI-powered chat for work.”

Bing Chat Enterprise | Microsoft

Secured with Microsoft Entra – Conditional Access

Bing Chat brings the power of generative AI to work, however, consumer Generative AI services like ChatGPT and Bing Chat (consumer), are helping people get answers, generate code, content and find things, but using these consumer servers for work, inadvertently puts corporate data at risk since it’s being shared with public AI services which use your data and your searches to train and teach their language models.

This is where Bing Chat Enterprise comes in! With Bing Chat Enterprise, organisations gets all the goodness of “AI-powered chat for work” with the commercial data protection organisations demand. “What goes in—and comes out—remains protected”, Microsoft say, which means employees get secure and managed access to better answers, greater efficiency, and new ways to be creative. User and business data is protected and will not leak outside the organisation, and chat data is not saved, viewed or accessible by Microsoft or used to train their language models.

What’s more, access to Microsoft Bing Chat Enterprise is secured and governed for seamless, managed access to using Microsoft Entra ID (Azure Active Directory) and organisations can also customise “Microsoft Search” to build out and map business answers within the Microsoft 365 Admin Centre.

How do you enable Bing Chat Enterprise?

To enable this, you need to ensure that Microsoft Search has not been disabled in your tenant and then go to https://aka.ms/TurnOnBCE as a Tenant Admin in Microsoft 365 and then enable the Bing Enterprise Chat feature as shown below ⬇️. The settings can take up to 4 hours to apply….

Enabling BCE in Microsoft 365 Admin Centre

How does Bing Chat Enterprise Work?

Video (C) Microsoft.

Privacy and Data Protection

Because workplace chats might contain sensitive data, Bing Chat Enterprise is designed with commercial data protection in place to keep organisational data safe.

Chat: When users ask questions in chat, it’s called a prompt. Those prompts can send generated searches (also known as queries) to Bing, and the resulting answer is called a response. User and business data is protected and won’t leak outside the organization. What goes in—and comes out—remains protected. Chat data isn’t saved, and Microsoft has no eyes-on access to it—no one sees it. And your data isn’t used to train the underlying models.

Search: Any searches generated by Bing Chat have workplace identities removed before they’re sent to Bing. The searches aren’t linked to users or business by Bing and any searches sent to Bing are under the terms of the Microsoft Services Agreement and covered by the privacy statement.

Organisational data: Bing Chat Enterprise doesn’t have access to organisational resources or content within Microsoft 365, such as Word documents or PowerPoint presentations. Only content provided in the chat by users is accessible to Bing Chat Enterprise.

Plugins: Importantly, Bing Chat Enterprise doesn’t have plugin support to prevent any commercial data from being sent to any external providers.

Chat history: Bing Chat Enterprise doesn’t retain chat prompts or responses. With Bing Chat history disabled for Bing Chat Enterprise users, no previous chats are maintained or available to users.

Posted on

ChatGPT vs Bing Chat | Why you need to try Bing Chat!

Image of Bing Logo and ChatGPT logo

Everyone has been talking ChatGPT, but here I want to talk about the similarities, differences, and in my view, the HUGE ADVANTAGES OF BING CHAT OVER CHATGPT. Whilst both look similar in the way they work, are both powered by the OpenAI’s Generative AI technology and are conversational based, the speed, accuracy, quality of their responses and capability differs hugely.

Both Bing Chat and ChatGPT are based on the OpenAI GPT technology.

Natural language chatbot ChatGPT, quickly become the focal point in the tech industry since it was annouced and released to the masses at the backend of 2022. Whilst most initially saw it as a “fun way” to write poems, essays, answer exam questions and even generate computer code, 6 months later we are starting to see the true potential of AI as digitial assistants

We now have a plethora of AI tools, with new ones (it feels) coming every day. Outside of this fun stuff, the AI technology behind these tools is capable of so much more, and we are just at the beginning of what will change the way we interface with our devices and apps such as Microsoft Copilot – more on that here:

ChatGPT debuted in Nov 2022, and in Feb 2023, Microsoft their new AI powered version of Bing with Bing Chat being its’ standout feature, powered by the same technology (be it a Peter, better version) behind ChatGPT – a generative artificial intelligence algorithm created by Open AI. Recently Google had also released their AI chat tool Bard, which is not based on OpenAI GPT technology.

ChatGPT debuted in Nov 2022.

In Feb 2023, Microsoft their new AI powered Bing Chat, powered by the technology behind ChatGPT, a generative artificial intelligence algorithm created by Open AI.

Bing Chat vs ChatGPT – What’s the difference?

Bing Chat and ChatGPT both fall under the category of generative AI, which means they can generate brand-new text that has never been written before.

This kind of AI is useful since rather than leveraging keywords to look for text and return results based on a ranking, it works by providing the answer to the question you ask. Of course, it is only able to do this if it can provide accurate information. To do this is needs access to an entire world of data – like the Internet! So how does it work?

Both Bing Chat and Chat GPT are both built on a large language model (LLM), developed by OpenAI, of which Microsoft now own a majority share.

  • ChatGPT’s model, known as GPT-3.5, has been trained on billions of articles from across the internet but only as recent as end of 2021.
  • Bing Chat uses a newer, advanced, GPT-4 language model which can work with more different media types and not just text. Free to use.
  • ChatGPT offers a paid/premium version of its LLM (also using GPT-4), but it is only available today as a $20 per month subscription service.

The first major advantage of Bing Chat is that it, (since it’s also integrated into their native Bing Search, their Edge browser, and Windows 11), is that it can also search the internet for information and references in real-time. This is a huge advantage, because it’s up to date, but can lead also make it less accurate, since any misinformation it finds upon this search can introduce bias or error into its response. In most cases though, Bing Chat does reference its sources at the bottom of each response, which allows you to quickly verify the Bing’s accuracy and appropriateness by clicking on one of the citations.

Who “knows” more? Bing Chat vs Chat GPT

If you’re looking for information on a technical subject or recent event, Bing Chat will always deliver a higher-quality response as it can search the internet in real time so is “up to date”. ChatGPT does not do as well in recent events as it only has knowledge of events prior up to 2021.

This is the second big win for Bing, since it can be used as a copilot for the Internet, for anything from breaking news headline, shopping, days out, and travel since it does not have date limitations and can use the Internet to keep its LLM up to date.

The third key differentiator between the two is that Bing Chat lets you choose from three modes of conversation – Creative, Balanced, and Precise. Creative mode is closest to ChatGPT’s default behaviour.

  • More Creative: Longer, more descriptive, and “imaginative” answers.
  • More Precise: Shorter, straightforward search-focused answers.
  • More Balanced: Default mode – informative, yet friendly – middle of the other styles.

Visually Speaking | Bing Chat vs ChatGPT

The fourth standout feature for me is that you can use Bing Image Creator to generate images based on text prompts as pictured above. OpenAI does offer DALL-E for the same purpose. However, it’s not integrated within ChatGPT currently. What makes Bing Chat great is that you can use it in the flow of the conversation – or can use Bing Chat to create you an image on the fly. Bing uses also uses OpenAI’s DALL-E AI image generator (it is powered by Bing Image Creator) and has fewer limitations that the official OpenAI DALL-E website.

As shown below, by using the “More Creative” conversation style, you can start with a simple question and then elevate to an image all in the same context and without switching to a different tool.

Image showing text and image in Bing Chat

Where can you use it? Bing Chat vs ChatGPT

ChatGPT launched in late 2022 as a web-based tool and whilst there are a few third-party browser extensions the browser remains the main mode of use.

Bing Chat is free and available to all and accessible via the new Bing home page at https://www.bing.com.

The fifth standout feature for me, is all the other places you can access Bing Chat from. For example, there is a dedicated Bing app, you can access it via the Skype app, directly from the Edge Brower, from the Windows 11 search and via the SwiftKey keyboard app.

    Current limitations | Bing Chat vs ChatGPT

    Bing Chat is free and available to all and accessible via the new Bing home page at https://www.bing.com. as well as via Skype, Edge, Windows 11 and more. Bing Chat uses he newer, more powerful GPT-4 model and supports image search and image creation.

    ChatGPT is also free but available only via the web and is limited to Text and uses GPT-3.5, though you can pay for the premium version ($20 a month) where you get higher-quality responses, thanks to the GPT-4 model and should also get priority access to the service, faster response times, and early access to new features. as they become available.

    Bing Chat limits conversation length (currently) to twenty conversations per topic before you need to start again, meaning long back-and-forth conversations may not always be possible. Microsoft says that most people find what they’re looking for within five replies or fewer.

    ChatGPT doesn’t have such restrictions and imposes very few restrictions on usage (even the free version), allowing for almost unlimited length conversations.

    Bing Chat can understand most major languages including French, German, and Japanese.

    ChatGPT will also respond in other languages, but the underlying GPT-3.5 model was primarily trained on English samples and text so responses in other languages are not as accurate.

    Bing Chat does not impose limits on use and there is no premium tier. Responses are funded by advertising, meaning you may see ads that show up embedded inside the chat responses. For example, if you ask for holiday recommendations, you may see suggestions from local travel agents.

    ChatGPT uses a token system, and you are limited to a set number of tokens per day for the free version. The premium (paid) version removes these limitations. Additionally, ChatGPT does not currently use an advertising model so is cleaner not biased.

    So which one? Bing Chat or ChatGPT?

    So, ok, I may be biased, but that doesn’t mean I am wrong, but in my experience, Bing Chat offers a far more premium offering over ChatGPT. It is free and is (if you like that), integrated across more of the applications, services, and platforms that you most likely use. My reasons to use Bing Chat are:

    1. Bing Chat can be accessed from Windows 11, Skype, Edge, Bing app and SwiftKey
    2. Bing Chat can search the web – it is natively integrated into Bing Search (the new Bing).
    3. Bing Chat lets you tailor your chat experience – providing a richer experience than ChatGPT.
    4. Bing Chat is not just about text chat, it can use images and even create AI powered images
    5. Bing Chat is uses GPT-4 and is still 100% free. ChatGPT 3.5 is also free but not as good and you have to pay $20 a month to use the better GPT-4 version. So just use Bing!

    Questions and Answers

    Is Bing Chat the “same” as Chat GPT?

    No. While both leverage Open AI’s Chat GPT, Bing AI uses a more advanced model codenamed Prometheus that has more capabilities than ChatGPT. Prometheus is a proprietary technology from Microsoft that uses Bing and GPT to generate responses based on real-time data. Microsoft’s new Bing also leverages real-time information and OpenAI’s next-generation GPT-4 model to generate responses and can also search the internet. You cannot do this with ChatGPT, though there are browser extensions which provide some search functionality.

    What does GPT stand for?

    GPT stands for Generative Pre-Trained Transformer. “A GPT is a language model that has been trained on a vast dataset of text to generate human-like text. For example, the “Chat” part of “ChatGPT” refers to it being a chatbot”. [source: HowToGeek]

    Who Owns ChatGPT?

    ChatGPT was created by OpenAI, a San Francisco-based start-up. The same Large Language Model (LLM) also powers Microsoft’s Bing Chat. Microsoft owns a majority share in OpenAI and is also using the technology along with its propriety Prometheus model to power upcoming features in Microsoft 365 co-pilot.

    What’s the difference between Bing Chat and ChatGPT?

    Chat GPT uses GPT-3.5. Bing Chat uses, GPT-4 – OpenAI’s latest language model that’s smarter, safer, and more accurate. GPT-4 supports image inputs for the first time, allowing you to submit visual prompts like a drawing, graph, or infographic. GPT-4 is also smarter and more “creative”.

    Chat GPT does have a version based on GPT-4 but is a paid-for premium service. Bing Chat uses GPT-4 already. Bing Chat is also integrated into Bing, Edge, Skype, and Windows 11.

    What is Generative AI?

    Put simply, Generative AI is a term used to describe computer algorithms that can generate text, images, videos, and audio all on their own based on natural language queries.

    Before Generative AI, most AI systems weren’t highly creative and would deliver far worse results than a human. However, that’s no longer the case with generative AI. With Generative AI, you can ask an AI tool like Bing Image Creator to create a photorealistic image of a “cute blue AI creature with orange eyes” and it will deliver the results you see above. In this case, the AI has not been explicitly taught or trained to produce this image, it creates a unique image based on what it knows and what it has therefore “learnt” based.

    As such generative AI is designed to mimic the way humans perform tasks. The first step is to extract patterns from existing data (the LLM), so if you want an AI that can generate a face for example, you will need a large dataset containing different images of faces. With enough training, the learning algorithm will learn what a face looks like as well as understanding the common features that a face has, such a nose, eyes ears, and lips. From here, it can start working on smaller details like expressions, facial hair, and skin tones to create unique images.

    Image of people, created by Bing Images.

    Summary

    Hope you found this blog useful and informative and above it, that it’s made you want to try to Bing Chat. As a reminder, here’s how Bing Chat differs from ChatGPT.

    1. ChatGPT and Bing Chat both use GPT as their large language model (LLM), but Microsoft has adopted a more advanced model for Bing Chat which is more accurate and faster (currently) than Chat GPT.
    2. Since Bing Chat is built into Bing Search, the new Chat feature is more up to date that ChatGPT since it can also leverage web results to feeds it LLM. ChatGPT (currently) does not have knowledge of most recent events like up-to-date news.
    3. Bing Chat is available on more platforms than ChatGPT which seamless integration into Edge, Bing Search, Skype and even SwiftKey keyboard for iOS and Android.
    4. Whilst ChatGPT is great with text-based stuff, Bing Chat also has in-built AI image generators powered by Bing Image Creator (try it – it’s awesome).
    5. Bing Chat uses GPT-4 and is free whereas to get equivalent premium access to ChatGPT, you need to pay circa $20 a month which gives you priority usage and other benefits which include GPT-4 LLMs.
    6. Bing provides three different Chat modes (Creative, Balanced and Precise), while ChatGPT does not have any settings or fine-tuning its output and response mode.
    7. Bing Chat always provides links to its’ data sources whereas ChatGPT does not.
    8. Bing Chat supports many non-English languages and is trained on more than English. Whilst ChatGPT can understand non-English languages, its training was primarily on US English words and samples.

      Posted on

      What is Semantic Index for Copilot?

      Semantic Index for Copilot promises to help organisations get ready for AI within their workplace. What is it? How does it work? and Why will we need it?

      Last week as part of Microsoft’ annoucement about the next stage of the early previews of Copilot, they also annouced Semantic Index for Copilot, which will allow organisations to better prepare their data and users for Copilot by creating a “sophisticated map” of user and corporate data.

      Image (c) Microsoft

      This map is formed by encoding and indexing the keyword searches by uses into a vector that combines the phrsses, meanings, relationships and context of the data. This map is used to help Microsoft 365 Copilot to essentially learn more about your organisation (privacy and data protection being preserved of course), allowing it to better respond to user queries or “prompts.”

      Available soon (for no additional cost) for Microsoft 365 Enterprise [E3 and E5] customers as well as Microsoft 365 Business Standard and Premium, it will work with the Copilot subsystem and the Microsoft Graph to create a sophisticated map of all the users, data and content in your organisation. It’s purpose will be to identify relationships between people and data, helping it to create important connections between them. Organisations will be able to use this to test the responses, answers and deductions formed by Copilot to help clean up, secure and better govern data eliminating the “garbage in, garbage out”, ensuring it will be able to deliver relevant, actionable responses to prompts based on data held within the company. This little video from Microsoft helps bring the process to life:

      Microsoft video on Semantic Index for Copilot

      Copilot’s new Semantic Index feature should help the chatbot locate and fetch the correct data requested by a user rather than spitting out every result based on a keyword search.

      As the technology community eagerly anticipates the wider release of Copilot, Microsoft’s ongoing efforts to enhance its functionality and expand its accessibility represent a significant step forward in harnessing the power of AI to empower users and streamline work processes. Last week the early preview was extended to 600 (invite only) organisations across the US.

      Microsoft also shared new upcoming improvements to their existing products which will become AI infused. These annoucements include the integration of Copilot into Whiteboard, Outlook, OneNote, Loop, and Viva Learning. They also said that new image generation features powered by DALL-E are coming to PowerPoint.

      Finally, a reminder from Microsoft that they are committed to ensure tbeir AI solutions adhere to their strict Responsible AI Standard while providing meaningful benefits to their customers.

      Microsoft’s Work Trend Index reenfoced our ‘need’ for AI

      In order to further remind us, why we lift like Copilot is needed in today’s work environments, Microsoft also revealed the results of their 2023 Annual Work Trend Index.

      This report is based on surveys of 31,000 individuals spread across 31 countries. Microsoft’s findings this year indicated that there has been a drastic increae in the volume of assigned work and the pace required from employees. The report claims that leaders, managers and workers are more looking towards AI solutions to reduce their respective workloads, rather than being scared about jobs it may replace.

      The work trend index also highlights the following key points..

      • 62% of employees spend unnecessary time searching for information, as well as communicating and coordinating across teams, leaving little focus time
      • Nearly two-thirds of the respondents noted that they did not find enough time to do their actual job
      • 70% of respondents would prefer delegating some of their workload to AI copilots
      • With the rise in AI-powered solutions, 49% are concerned about job security
      • Managers are 2x more likely to empower their employees with AI rather than replace them with it
      • 82% of enterprise leaders believe that their employees will require new skills in this age of AI, including prompt engineering and enhancing their workflows by integrating AI
      • There has been a 79% year-over-year increase in LinkedIn job postings which have used words like “GPT” and “GAI” (generative artificial intelligence)

      More reading..

      Posted on

      Preparing for Microsoft Copilot

      Everyone got very excited when Microsoft introduced the world to Microsoft Copilot back in March this year and just yesterday they reached a new milestone, after annoucing a private preview with just 600 global customers.

      But… One of the questions I get asked a lot (between colleagues, partners and customers) is “…are there things we need to do to be ready for Copilot when it becomes available”.

      The simple answer is yes – if you want it to work as expected

      The longer answer is “it depends” on if you plan to use it, how well your current data is structured, organised and governed, and what processes you have in place around user education, training and change management.

      Based on the work I have been doing with Microsoft, this list is aimed to provide the key things, suggestions and considerations for IT, managers and leadership on things you’ll want to get ship-shape while we wait for Copilot to be more generally available, which my sources tell me will be late 2023 to Q1 2024.

      1. Get your data in shape.

      The reason Microsoft 365 is the productivity suite of choice for so many (arguably most) organisations is because it brings together applications, data, groups, users and services into a common and integrated suite, as well as providing thousands of connectors to allow organisations to connect third-party apps and data into mix.

      Powered by the Microsoft Graph, Microsoft 365 already has the power to connect people, teams, and organisations across all their apps and services in an intelligent and context aware, with AI powered services scattered across the Microsoft 365 apps and services you use every day….

      With Microsoft Copilot….this will move to a whole new level.

      Copilot will put conversational AI at the front and centre of every app and service you know and use. Leveraging personal context, re-generative learning and of course the Microsoft Graph, Copilot will make its’ own deductions on what you ask, what you mean, and how you work. Whilst it will learn and evolve, it will of course, still be dependent on your organisational data, and how its structured, governed and secured.

      This means if you have say 50 different documents spread out in 15 different locations that talk about your company strategy or business objectives, and only one of them is the up-to-date version. How will Copilot know which version is correct when it needs to surface information based on a request? In the same way, if the management and reporting structure, job titles and other information is incorrect in Azure AD, Copilots’ decisions and advice around people will also likely be incorrect.

      To help, organisations get AI-ready, Microsoft have announced that they will soon start to roll out a service known as Semantic Index for Copilot. This is a new service coming to Microsoft 365 which will create a sophisticated map of your data to help you test how Copilot will ingest and act on your data. Image for example a sales manager asking for “FY23 Sales Report,”. Copilot will be data and context aware, meaning that it will not simply look for documents that contain keywords in the filename or text body. Instead, Copilot will try to “understand” and “learn” about who within the organisation produces such reports, when they are shared, and where they are shared to.

      Microsoft say that Semantic Index for Copilot will be a vital tool to help organisations ensure that employees will get predicable, relevant, accurate, and actionable responses to their asks of Copilot and will help your organisation to “tweak” their data lifecycle and governance to ensure that the data Copilot acts on is correct and accessible (or not) by the right people. 

      What should you do?
      1. Check and refine your SharePoint and Teams lifecycle, governance and compliance policies
      2. Speak to your Microsoft partner about a funded data governance workshop 
      3. Review and update Active Directory (or connect to HR to ensure these are up-to-date)
      4. Look out for the release of Semantic Index for Copilot to "test your data"

      2. Get your security in order

      In a similar fashion to making sure our data is correct from a version and validty perspective, if we dont get our security and access control polcies in shape, we risk Copilot duiscovering data that a employee or team may not “meant to have access to”.

      In the much the same way that the Office 365 apps “discover” the data around you – presenting files that your collegaues and teams are working on together, Copilot will do the same but on a whole new level, as what is searches for, indexes and uses, will be instructed by the user rather than simply surfaced.

      Just like the rest of Microsoft 365, Copilot will adhere to the security, privacy, data governance and data sensitivity policies that has been set-up within your organisation, and will not provide information that the user doesn’t have access to. It may suggest for, example, “you dont have access to that, you may need to request this from Pam in accounts”.

      The potential problem of course is that many (ok most) organisations have a sprawl of Teams sites, poor or inconsistent data governance, and inadequate user training, meaning that put simply, you may not realise the sheer amount of information and documents that is being shared within your organisation, and more importantly who actually has access to what data and how many copies may exist and where!

      We all worry about Security – do we have MFA? Do we have conditional access configured? Are account protected? Is sensitive information protected? etc. We know the slogan “hackers dont hack in, they login” – just imagine if you have Copilot, and a users’ identity gets compromised. They log in, and with Copilot at their fingertips, they don’t need to worry about where stuff is stored as Copilot will do all the discovery for them!

      So what can you do?
      1. Review and refine your document management, security and privacy policies - perhaps introduce or enforce DLP and Data Classifcation  - aka Microsoft Purview
      2. Review your security posture, MFA enforcement, risk based conditional access etc 
      3. Create straightforward instructions and train people where to store documents and how to protect and secure them
      4. Run a pilot and look at adoption data loss prevention and information classification to protect sensitive data.
      5. Speak to your Microsoft partner about a funded workshop for 1, 2 and 3.

      3. Explore, Plan, Experiment – but treat it as organisational change!

      The release of Microsoft Copilot is still a little way away (it is a closed Private Preview today with around 600 global organisations) and there are currently no dates on the roadmap for a public preview mainstream release. There is also no pricing yet about pricing.

      What we do know is – it is coming and it will fundamentally impact and change how your people and teams will work. Yes, there is still an element of hype, lots of desire to test it out, loads and loads of questions and lots of unknowns.

      Communication and training is going to be a key part of sucess. How do you interface with AI? Yes its’ intelligent, but it’s not a human, therefore people need to be taught how to best work with Copilot. Bear in mind most people use around ten percent of the functionality of say Teams (with most just using basic functions like chat and calling), but to get the most from it, users need to know what to expect, how to use it and how the organisation wants (or not) employees to use it…

      Create a pilot group and mini success team. Use this team to keep up-to-date with the news and blogs and above all make sure leadership, management and IT are “in the know”.

      Start communicating your plans for Copilot and AI in general. Employees will and should have questions. Are there roles that might change or not be needed? Will you stop hiring? Will you wait and see? It will be important to talk to, and listen to employees, and ideally form a “success with AI” unit, bringing people together from different parts of the business, to discover the challenges they face in their everyday work and how they think and hope AI will help them.

      Above all – think of this like a project (one of continual change). Depending on your business, AI will have an impact, and the whole organisation will need to understand and embrace this change (once we have it all working of course). Consider an AI abmassador and follow your usual approach to change management with a roadmap, PoCs, pilots and feedback groups so you hit it head on, with ideas, and a solid vision but with room for hiccups, course changes and surprises on the way.

      That sounds like a lot - what can we do?
      1. Build a success unit (could be a Team site of Viva Community)
      2. Get onto early adoptor programmes when availble, go to the AI conferences and start to leverage demos etc when available. 
      3. Talk to your peers, partners, and Microsoft Team and look out for funded workshops which will likely be available from summer.
      4. Read Microsoft's Worklab report on working with next generation AI (it's a good read).

      4. Keep Calm – it is coming but there is time to prepare

      Microsoft has just announced the launch of their Microsoft 365 Copilot Early Access Program. It’s an invitation-only, paid preview program that’s set to roll out to only 600 clients across the globe at first in the coming weeks.

      They say that they have received overwhelming feedback from their initial early preview clients, they have been “testing the concepts” with. They say those clients have indicated huge benefits to business and the ways in which it can transform and reshape work. In recent months, Microsoft have also released further information around how Copilot will will impact other applications such as Viva, Dynamics 365, Teams and more with new capabilities being announced almost weekly.

      This new generation of AI will remove the drudgery of work and unleash creativity…There’s an enormous opportunity for AI-powered tools to help alleviate digital debt, build AI aptitude, and empower employees

      Satya Nadella |Chairman and CEO |Microsoft

      We will know more as we move forward – there are lots of moving parts – previews, public previews, (potentially) governments getting in the way, data soverignty issues (today data is only processed in the US and not local in local geo), licensing prices and of course availabilty….

      In fact – this is probably already out of date as its a rapid moving landscape, and this is just the tip of the iceberg and just Microsoft. 

      What should you do?
      1. Keep checking with your Microsoft team,. your partner and the Microsoft 365 Roadmap
      2. Start thinking roles that will be positively affected by AI in the workplace. Speak to users, buid your success team. 
      3. Think about new skills your teams will need to work along side AI. 
      4. Read Microsoft's Worklab report on working with next generational AI (it's a good read).

      What is next in CoPilot?

      A good question….

      When Microsoft annouced Copilot in March, where they showed the value concepts in apps like teams, Powerpoint and Excel, they said that this was “just the beginning”. Over the last couple of months, Microsoft have continued to tease new Copilot capabilities to bring AI to every part of Microsoft apps and services. The key annoucements (since the actual annoucement include):

      • Copilot in Whiteboard – which will make Microsoft Teams meetings and brainstorms more creative and effective. Using natural language, you will be able to ask Copilot to generate ideas, organize ideas into themes, create designs that bring ideas to life and summarise whiteboard content.
      • Copilot in Outlook will offer coaching tips and suggestions on clarity, sentiment and tone to help users write more effective emails and communicate more confidently.
      • Copilot in OneNote will use prompts to draft plans, generate ideas, create lists and organize information to help customers find what they need easily.
      • Copilot in Loop will helps your team stay in sync by quickly summarising all the content on your Loop page to keep everyone aligned and able to collaborate effectively.
      • Copilot in Viva Learning will use a natural language chat interface to help users create a personalized learning journey including designing upskilling paths, discovering relevant learning resources and scheduling time for assigned trainings.

      Q&A – This will evolve

      QuestionWhat we knowSource
      Where will the data be processed by Copilot?Microsoft have said that currently all processing will take place is the US. It will eventually be regionalised based on customer tennant. No time scales yetMay 2023: Microsoft 365 Conference
      Will Copilot respect data seciuroty and soverienty?Yes -Microsoft have made it clear that Copilots’ sphere of access will be limited to the user context in which it runs, goverened by your organisation’s policies. May 2023: Microsoft 365 Conference.
      When will Copilot enter public preview?No dates annouced yet. Be sure to keep an eye on the Microsoft 365 Roadmap.
      Will there be charge for Copilot.No offical news but the expectation is yes.
      Q&A Table.

      What do you think?

      Like you, I am still working out what this means for our business, my teams and my people. I welcome your feedback, thoughts and ideas.

      Posted on

      Collaborative meeting notes now available in Teams

      Microsoft are making pre, during and post meetings more effective with a new capability which aligns and integrates across both Microsoft Teams and the wider Microsoft 365 apps such as Loop, Planner, To Do, Office apps and OneDrive for Business. They will also be supported in wider apps such as Microsoft Dynamics 365.

      The aim is to make pre, during and post meeting experience better, more seamless and more integrated across the rest of Microsoft 365, and will be enabled by default when it rolls out (as of June 5th, it is rolling out now). This is part of number of improvements Microsoft are making to the Microsoft Teams meeting experience and also shows the further extensibility of Microsoft Loop.

      Collaborative meeting notes in Teams

      Using Collaborative Meeting Notes

      1. Adding Collaborative notes to a meeting.

      When an organiser creates a new meeting from within Microsoft Teams, they will see a new agenda section at the bottom of the meeting form.

      This new Collaborative experience uses a Loop component, meaning that rather than being static – they are live and can be updated on the fly before, during and after the meeting. Since these are loop components, they can also be copied / referenced easily outside of the meeting, into chats, emails and other docs.

      This makes pre and post meeting follow-up more seamless and inclusive.

      2. Using collaborative notes during a meeting

      When joining a meeting, a new Notes Button will be visible during meetings that will allow users to leverage the new capability.

      Any existing meeting notes will be shown on the right pane of the meeting window and there will also be the ability to pop the window out to make more room or move to your second screen/monitor. This is essential just a loop component.

      All meeting participants can read and collaborate with the agenda in real time. They can update the agenda, take manual meeting notes and add tasks or actions. When participants are assigned a task in the meeting, they will also receive an email notification as well as have the tasks synced with Planner and their To Do apps.

      Meeting organisers will also see have the ability to add Collaborative notes before meetings, enabling then to recreate an agendas as well keep all meeting materials available in a central place for all to access.

      One the meeting has finished, the collaborative notes will remain accessible for all participants on the Teams calendar meeting details page. They can also be shared into other apps like chat or email.

      Read more.

      This update is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 101509

      Posted on

      Evaluating the user experience and cases for Windows 365

      Windows 365 is “Windows as a Service – a cloud-based service that automatically creates a new type of Windows virtual machine (Cloud PCs) for users. Each Cloud PC is assigned to an individual user and is their dedicated Windows device. Windows 365 provides the productivity, security, and collaboration benefits of Windows and Microsoft 365.”

      Windows 365 is “similar” to a dedicated virtual desktop assignment in an Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) environment, but is delivered as a SaaS service, providing a dedicated Cloud PC that users can remotely sign in to. It is also significantly simpler to set-up and manage that VDI infrastructure and offers a simpler commercial model.

      You may ask yourself, “Why would I want to stream a computer to….well another computer?” Well – there is more to that – let’s look at Microsoft Marketing!

      Fruit of the Loom – because one-size doesn’t fit all.

      Just like your Microsoft 365 subscriptions, Windows 365 is available in both Business and Enterprise Versions.

      • Windows 365 Enterprise is designed for organisations who have already invested in Microsoft’s Endpoint Manager and using Endpoint Manager to deploy and manage their Windows 10/11 devices. This means that if you want to start using Windows 365 Enterprise you will also need a license that includes Intune.
      • Windows 365 Business is aimed at any size organisation with less than 300 users that need a Cloud PC. This is the same service – but a little more no-frills. Windows 365 Business does not support joining to a custom (Azure) Vnet, and also does not allow users to connect to on-premises resources (yet) – it is for Cloud Native users.

      What is best for your organisation is based on a couple of things. If you want to have a quick lightly managed device for your end users or are just running a pilot – Windows 365 Business is a good place to start (it’s cheaper too). If you want to have more control, access on-prem resources and manage the Cloud PCs in the same way you manage your physical desktops then Windows 365 Enterprise is best. To see a full comparison, check out the docs from Microsoft.

      Pricing

      Windows 365 is available through three plans. Each plan is available as Windows 365 Enterprise or Windows 365 Business edition and each plan is of course priced differently ranging from £23.90 (RRP) for Business Basic all the way up to £56.20 for Enterprise Premium which has 16GB RAM/4 CPUs and 128GB Storage – you can also customise your own spec if you like!

      • Basic: For running light productivity tools, frontline tools and browser-based apps
      • Standard: For most users that need full range of productivity tools & line-of-business apps.
      • Premium: For users that need high-performance compute and heavier data processing.

      I’ve been running on a mid-range Windows 365 Enterprise Cloud PC with 8GB RAM and 128GB Storage which was ample for all my day-to-day use

      The User Experience – Test Flight

      Windows 365 is available on a browser or dedicated app on Windows 10 and Windows 11 (and soon for iOS and Android). Regardless of how you access it, the user experience is an instant (well actually always on if you prefer), high-performance and reliable personal desktop experience (that’s also optimised for Microsoft Teams and your other Microsoft 365 apps) regardless of the apps you use. Once running fall screen, you totally forget is a Cloud PC – even things like touch and pen work if your physical device has those properties.

      Windows 365 User Experience

      Who’s is Windows 365 for?

      Windows 365 isn’t designed for the consumer market. Instead, it’s for companies and enterprises that need to deploy a network over a large area. It’s also designed to allow businesses to utilize computing power as they see fit.

      The question – will the Cloud PC “era” revolutionise business computing, after VDI has (and is in some areas) still heavily used from a security, agility, and remote purpose.

      One view is that organisations will be able to offer more choice, support BYOD and no longer need to money spend on high-end physical compute devices, deal with logistics, repairs, maintenance, and lifecycle management. All employee’s need is an existing device / browser and a reliable internet connection access their Windows 365 Cloud PC. Since this is a subscription service (like other SaaS apps), they can avoid capital expenditure on laptops and desktops that may not get used 100 percent of the time, allowing them to be more efficient with the use of their resources.

      On the other side, many organisations have been investing in modern mobile computing like the Surface Pro 9 5G for hybrid work with local apps that access cloud services like Microsoft Teams and Office 365 etc.

      Common Scenarios? There are many scenarios in which neither model is best and as such we typically seem a blended approach (some with physical devices some with Cloud PCs or even both!!). Some may compliment their laptop and local app deployment model with technology like Cloud PC for accessing certain apps, apps that require additional security such as finance apps or development platforms. There will also be scenarios in which a Cloud PC only environment works. Let’s explore some of these below.

      • Long term remote or contract workers that may not need a corporate device because they choose to use their own or because providing them with one is cumbersome and logistically difficult. For example, you may have a new contractor working with you full time for a period of weeks or months. Windows 365 Cloud PCs can be be used to create a dedicated, cloud-based environment for contractors with access to a specific set of applications, access to specific parts of your network and have specific conditional access policies. With Cloud PC, IT can quickly enable this securely on their personal device, with whatever restrictions you choose, completely isolated from their personal desktop.
      • Remote Work / work from anywhere – For example, you might be working from home or the office on your laptop and leave to go home, into the office or just to grab a coffee at the local cafe. Instead of lugging your laptop along, you could simply take your tablet/iPad and access your Cloud PC where you left off. This is also a great use case when on holiday and you need to access your desktop.
      • For specialist apps or secure environment – You may have roles within the business such as finance, surveyors, 3D modellers, programmers etc, who work on petabytes of data on a dedicated high-end workstation. For these people working remotely may not be an option or accessing seamless is a security nightmare. With Windows 365, these employees could have access to the same PC power as their office workstation on a secure environment on their own home PC or tablet.
      • To get super-fast internet access if you have isolated remote workers. Another advantage of Windows 365 is superfast internet. How? Well, since your Cloud PC runs from the Microsoft Cloud, you are essentially streaming just the screen – all your local apps, file and processing are done in the Cloud, so when you download large data from Office 365 or any other source, it’s actually being downloaded to and from Microsoft’s data centres, which means super-fast internet. Microsoft demo’d a speed test which showed download speeds of up to 10 GBPS and upload speeds of up to 4 GBPS. In my tests I received the following.
      • New employees and for improving the break-fix experience – For employees that develop a fault with their corporate laptop or for new employees that don’t yet have a laptop, Windows 365 can be a great fit. Instead of getting them to use their own device as a BYOD device mode (which is not secure, breaches company security policy, could increase risk of breach, malware infestation etc), while they wait for a device or repair, use Windows 365 to quickly provision them a corporate Cloud PC which they can access from any device and that looks and feels exactly like the experience they are used to. This minimises impact to the user, keeps them productive, reducing urgency in repair or device procurement and can make for a super slick process for all involved.

      Windows 365 from an Admin Experience

      Now then, I am not an IT administrator anymore (I was once), but from the experience I have had setting up demo and test environments, it is so simple. Reason being, there is no setting up and maintaining complex VDI network and software infrastructure or different tools to use for management, since everything is managed through Intune – which you probably already use!

      Using Intune, IT can manage both physical and virtual devices in one place making it simple to deploy software, add new Cloud PCs, upgrade Cloud PCs and of course, reset them, delete them and re-provisioning them. IT can also easily see how much computing power each Cloud PC or user is using and because they run in Azure (which is Carbon Neutral), you can technically deploy an entire fleet of Cloud PCs with zero CO2 overhead! Onboarding users is simple too, as you can simply make a user part of the right group (ensuring they also have a license) and a new Cloud PC is automatically provisioned which takes less than an hour. If you have autopilot enabled, then just like a physical device, the apps, configuration, settings etc are all applied as part of the build!

      Since device specification is controlled by a license – should a user needs a more powerful device, IT can simply assign a different license – no waiting on a complex configuration change or buying a new physical PC (also good for the environment). The opposite also applies as a Cloud PC can be changed to a lower power device – saving compute power and licensing costs! Network performance monitoring is also built inside Windows 365 and because every Cloud PC runs from Microsoft’s Cloud they get laser-fast and direct connect connectivity to your Microsoft 365 app and Azure and being a Microsoft Cloud Service – Microsoft continuously monitor and run diagnostics on your Windows 365 environment – meaning if they detect an issue (either with your config or theirs), IT get notified!

      Quick Intune Tour of Windows 365

      Security First

      One of the big appeals of Windows 365 is for remote work, temporary staff, new joiners, contractors, and students. Since the Cloud PC is…well in the cloud, it’s inherently more secure – protected by the same enterprise class security, identity, and compliance solutions from Microsoft that most admins will already use. Since Cloud PC is accessed via a secure browser or the Windows 365 app, it is isolated and insulated from most threats, and since is not directly installed on your device, it’s inherently more secure and can be configured to have no local access removing the risk from malware or ransomware from the underlying physical device.

      Cloud PC also supports Azure AD Single Sign (and even password-less sign-on) on which gives a frictionless user experience without the need to use separate passwords – reducing the risk of credential theft in your environment which is especially useful when used with personal devices.

      “By leveraging Windows 365 we can quickly and easily provide contactors with Windows 11 desktops which they can access on their own laptops meaning they are protected by our security and compliance policies. These Cloud PCs are instantly available from any device and any location, with little to no risk from the physical device they use to connect from”.

      A customer quote!

      Windows 365 vs Azure Virtual Desktop

      How is Windows 365 different to Azure Virtual Desktop then?

      Where Windows 365 Cloud PC is a dedicated desktop, managed by Microsoft as a SaaS app, Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) service which runs in Azure. With AVD, organisations have more full granular control over the environment build, and can configure a fully tailored, customised desktop and application virtualisation experience using either pooled or dedicated (one to one) desktops. Windows 365 is dedicated desktop and does not support multi session like AVD does. Billing of AVD is based on Azure usage whereas, Windows 365 is a single subscription per user and billed on a flat per user, per month fee (based on the spec of the machine).

      Both Windows 365 and AVD make use of some overlapping technology, so they may seem similar but there are major differences.

      How to Get Started with Windows 365

      1. Procure some licenses from your partner or Microsoft direct
      2. Configure Windows 365 from Intune
      3. Configure the on-premises network connection
      4. Create Security Group for Cloud PC users
      5. Assign a Cloud PC license to your users (or at group level)
      6. Create a Provisioning Policy
      7. Configure Hybrid Azure AD Join or Native Azure AD Join
      8. Create or assign a custom or stock image
      9. Enable and configure updates for Windows 365 (you can even use Autopatch)
      10. Assign users to the group created in step 5
      11. get the user to download the Windows 365 App or connect via a browser at

      There’s a full guide on Microsoft Learn or speak to your partner to help you set up a PoC via FastTrack or as a paid PoC.

      Posted on

      Cisco Thousand Eyes: End-to-End visibility into Cloud App performance.

      Hybrid Work and the growth of SaaS makes troubleshooting end user experience so much harder.

      ThousandEyes by Cisco is a digital end user experience monitoring solution that helps ensure your business SaaS apps are running at optimum performance wherever your employees or customers are.

      ThousandEyes proactively monitors, alerts, and provides visual “route cause analysis” within minutes of a User Experience issue, regardless of if whether the issue is the LAN, WAN, Internet, “XaaS”, ISP, Collaboration Service (such as Teams, Webex or Zoom), or Cloud Provider. It can even determine whether the issue is caused by any third-party dependency such as Content Delivery network, Application, Connector, Secure Web Gateway, Identity Provider, or firewall.

      What is ThousandEyes?

      ThousandEyes enables organisations to rapidly increase the responsiveness of support teams and managed service providers by providing end-to-end visibility and performance monitoring across the ever-changing and distributed IT landscape wherever your applications, data, infrastructure, user, and devices are located by.
      This helps organisations to:

      • Better support their hybrid workforce with near-real-time visibility of the employee’s experience.
      • Quickly identify and solve app experience issues by continually monitoring employee interactions with web and SaaS-based applications.
      • Gain end-to-end visibility from the user, across the network, WAN, and the Internet as well as to their cloud service providers and SaaS applications.

      Cisco Thousand Eyes provides and end-to-end End user Experience Monitoring to help ensure that your employees / customers experience of your service or applications is “as expected” and helps proactively detect when there are issues which might impact this performance before users start complaining.

      End to end visibility with Cisco ThousandEyes

      Thousand Eyes provides end to end visibility and intelligence”. Its aim is to help IT provide the best possible employee and customer experience, whatever the application or service by comprehensively measuring and monitoring network performance end-to-end. This means that IT get complete visibility across the internet or WAN, edge, network, application, routing, and device layers to see exactly how and where the Internet and WAN connectivity is impacting employee or customer user experience.

      Paying customers of ThousandEyes – and one of its’ killer features, is its’ ability to perform performance “snapshots” which provide clear-cut information – either on demand, or on a schedule. These can be shared with people outside your organisation and is pivotal to proving where the fault lies, therefore helping to help SaaS vendors troubleshoot their own infrastructure and it won’t be a surprise that many of the worlds’ largest SaaS providers are also Cisco Thousand Eye customers!

      It does this by using “active monitoring” that utilises a software agent that simulates user activity and checks availability from multiple locations. Cisco leverage Thousand Eyes agents across much of their network equipment including wireless access points and switches (such as the Cisco Catalyst 9k), Cisco SDWAN solutions and SASE services, and is even incorporated into their Webex Meetings platform. There are also agents for desktop devices that can be deployed and what’s more you don’t need a Cisco network to use it. Thousand Eyes is proven to work well with leading SaaS and collaboration platforms such as Slack, Webex and Microsoft Teams.

      Cisco Thousand Eyes – Image (c) Cisco.

      The Synthetic testing constantly simulates user interaction with SaaS and Web applications, represented by a series of page loads interspersed with interactions like typing in fields and clicking buttons, making the synthetic test “feel” like a user to the actual applications under test. These tests are invaluable to application and network operations staff, since it helps IT and App Support better understand actual user experiences rather than playing the best guess or deflect game. These are presented back as “experience scores” which can be reported on, alert and track trends over time, providing an early warning before issues arise.

      What problem does ThousandEyes fix?

      In short, when an employee or a customer has a bad digital experience, they don’t care where the problem is, or what has caused it – they simply want to know what is wrong and when it might be resolved.

      Marketing slide from Cisco ThousandEyes

      The need and therefore market for this kind of tool is increasing, as the global pandemic dramatically accelerated the shift to the cloud and SaaS apps, and with the hybrid work, now just the way we work, we need a better way of monitoring and managing the end-to-end employee experience in an environment that no longer directly in control of IT!

      As the world settles into what is now a hybrid work world dominated by the continual adoption of SaaS apps and work from anywhere mindset, visibility into how applications are performing for your employees and customers across the internet and various cloud services is critical to business continuity, employee, and customer experience.

      Hybrid Work and the growth of SaaS
      makes troubleshooting end user experience so much harder.

      Today, we, many organisations are still reliant on “self-diagnosis” (or no diagnosis), which leads to conversations like “it’s the network” or “my broadband is slow” or “XXX application is running slow”. This might have been ok during the peak of the pandemic when everyone was sent home to work and was “making the best out of temporary situation”, but three years on this from this, diagnosing and troubleshooting performance related issues is still too commonplace. Now, more than ever, the ability to monitor the end-to-end performance of your business apps, dictates the experience of your customers and employees and the excuses of before are no longer tolerated.

      When an employee or a customer has a bad digital experience, they don’t care where the problem is or what has caused it – they simply want it fixed quickly.

      Many of these issues are not new, but the shift to cloud and our new distributed hybrid workforce, means that it is becoming increasingly more difficult to understand and support the right “experience” using traditional legacy application performance management tools. What’s more the lack of visibility can often means employees and customers can be having a poor experience without IT or support evening knowing about it until someone complains!

      Who needs ThousandEyes?

      1. Do you have employee experience issues due to lack of Internet, WAN or SaaS visibility?
      2. How do you know your Content Delivery Provider is serving your content quickly and consistently whether users at home or in the office?
      3. Do you have inhouse web apps and need a better way of understanding how they perform? when your users work remotely or from disparate offices?
      4. Does your IT help desk struggle to add value and provide answers to users experience issue with SaaS applications?
      5. Is the lack of visibility and ability to monitor cloud apps, impacting employee productivity and/or customer experience?

      If the answer to the above is mainly “yes”, then it’s worth looking at investing your time in a proof of concept to see how Thousand Eyes could help.

      Why Cisco?

      Personally, I think ThousandEyes is a great fit for any organisation with a cloud-first approach that has offices globally and leverages a high degree of hybrid workers (that’s most of us right!)! Whilst it’s not limited to those with only Cisco networks, the economics work well for organisations that already leverage Cisco networking, due to native integration across most of Cisco’s core product offerings including their Cisco Catalyst networking, SASE, SDWAN and their Collaboration suite (Webex).

      This makes integration and deployment slick and negates the need to deploy additional agents, since Cisco include the ThousandEyes agent across many of their devices. Customers that buy into Cisco Enterprise Agreements also get a more competitive price point for ThousandEyes and from a support perspective it’s an integrated suite which means less finger pointing.

      Speak to a Cisco partner for help

      Speak to your favourite Cisco Gold Partner (I’m happy to help you need one) and they will be able to help demonstrate, deploy, configure, and support ThousandEyes for your organisation.

      You will find your trusted Cisco partner can help in many ways including:

      • Demos, PoCs or specific product/application performance assistance
      • Cisco funded free trials
      • Help with business case development following a successful PoV
      • Scoping, deployment and tuning to ensure you can monitor all your in-house web and public SaaS hosted applications, connecting into your underlying Wireless LAN, WAN, MPLS, Internet connectivity and WFH remote locations to provide end-to-end visibility and end user performance monitoring.
      • Consultancy and support to ensure key departments, locations, users, and application estate is under cover.
      • Access to the best pricing through your Cisco Gold Partner.

      See it action and find out more

      Cisco provide free to access to this awesome “live outages site” where you can look at the live state of the world’s most popular commercial and consumer cloud services and see just how comprehensive and simple it is to use.

      https://thousandeyes.com/outages
      Cisco ThousandEyes Outages Site
      Posted on

      Webex Contact Center now certified for Microsoft Teams

      Bread with Teams and Cisco Logo

      Webex Contact Center is an Enterprise Class CCaaS solution that enables skill-based routing of inbound “call centre” type calls and is designed to provide a seamless end-to-end customer service experience across voice, chat, email, and social media channels.

      The big news this week is that Cisco Webex Contact Centre has just received office Microsoft Teams certification.

      This is great for organisations, Microsoft, Cisco, and solution partners.

      Great for Organisations

      The Webex Contact Center Integration for Microsoft Teams combines rich omni-channel customer engagement capabilities with Microsoft Teams to break down barriers between contact center agents and the enterprise.

      Whilst the CCaaS space in Teams is already quite well served by other vendors such as Luware, Anywhere 365, and Enghouse, Cisco Webex Contact Centre is a true Enterprise Class Contact Centre, trusted by many of the world largest enterprise organisations including EasyJet for example.

      Some organisations who have been keen to fully embrace the potential of Microsoft Teams have often found themselves compromising on alternative “certified” CCaaS platforms. They can now have the best of both in a fully supported environment.

      Great for Microsoft

      In short this helps them protect their install base, since Microsoft certainly does not want to see their competition like Zoom, RingCentral, or Google muscle into their accounts base on the strength of their CCaaS offerings. By working with Cisco (as they are also doing in the Meeting Room space) they can now work more strategically together since Cisco and Microsoft already share around 90% of the same customer base.!

      • Adds a truly enterprise class CCaaS platform into the Teams ecosystem
      • Will further strengthen the partnership and collaboration between Microsoft and Cisco, the two leading technology companies that offer complementary solutions increasing the overall value proposition to their shared customer base.
      • Helps Microsoft expands the market reach of Microsoft Teams, which is already boasts more than with 280 million monthly users without (less) fear of losing market share to Cisco.
      • For organisations who require the best CCaaS solutions without compromising or mixing their collaboration and productivity tools, they leverage Cisco Webex Contact Centre without disrupting the flow of work for loyal Teams users with a seamless and integrated CCaaS solution from Cisco.

      Great for Cisco

      For Cisco this enables them to compete less and instead offer enterprise CCaaS services to their existing customer base who have been migrating or plan to migrate their UC platform to Microsoft Teams. Rather than risk losing out on the Contact Centre solution, Cisco can now meet their customers on their “turf“, providing the Contact Centre and CX solutions their customers need on their collaboration and productivity platform of choice whether that is Webex or Microsoft Teams.

      Great for Microsoft and Cisco Partners

      OK, so a little plug here for Cisilion (my employer), but for us (and therefore for me personally) I am excited about this because this brings an immense opportunity for Cisilion to leverage our unique position in our Cisco and Microsoft partnerships expertise and capability which will hugely benefit the services and solutions we can deliver to our clients.

      • As a Microsoft Teams specialist partner and Cisco Master Collaboration partner in the we are now empowered to deliver the best in enterprise CCaaS solutions to our customers alongside their choice of wider collaboration and productivity tools whether that is Cisco CUCM, Cisco Webex, or Microsoft Teams.
      • It helps us to attract and retain customers who are looking for a seamless and reliable customer service experience across multiple channels without having to shift partner due to technology choice changes.
      • It enables us to strengthen our deep partnerships and experience with enterprise class calling, meetings, platform and contact centres solutions across the two leading trusted technology providers.
      • Extends our ability to provide end-to-end design, implementation, integration, support and manged services across Cisco and Microsoft Collaboration solutions.
      • Enables us to provide cost and operational efficiencies both internally and to our customers.

      Cisco Webex Contact Centre for Teams

      The key outcomes that Webex CCaaS provides when integrated with Teams includes:

      • For the first time, brings a Unified calling platform between Cisco Webex Contact Centre and the organisations Microsoft Teams environment.
      • Allows for improved cross-function collaboration, knowledge sharing, and Customer Experience reporting among agents, supervisors, and other Teams users.
      • Advanced intelligent skill-based routing and queuing, which means customers can reach the right agent faster and more efficiently.
      • Providing a full and seamless customer service experience across voice, chat, email, and social media channels.
      • Delivers the core functionalities that high-performing multi-disciplined customer service teams require, such as call recording, voicemail, auto attendant, intelligent AI powered chat services, call back and rich social media integration.
      • Includes next-generation end-to-end Cisco security for Enterprise Class data protection and privacy in combination with that provided across the Microsoft 365 Security suite.
      • Brings exceptional management and supervisory controls and actional insights over “customer call handling”, with features like call analytics, call quality management, sentiment analysis, call control and full customer Lifecycle management.

      Find out more

      For more information about the announcement please see the following links.

      Microsoft Announcement

      Cisco Webex Contact Centre

      Posted on

      Reasons to fall in Love with the Yealink A24 DeskVision:

      The Yealink DeskVision A24 is a revolutionary all-in-one collaboration device that blends the best of innovate monitor and UC hub with a leading class Android powered Teams Collaboration display that can be used as a personal device, huddle or bookable meeting endpoint. The Yealink DeskVision A24 is a leading example of innovation in this space, integrating a 24 inch 4K touch-display, “pop-up” privacy camera, high definition speaker, wireless charging, microphones, and touch screen monitor to offer a best-in-class desktop collaboration experience.

      if you’d rather skip to the video review – you can do so here:

      The device costs £1,699 RRP which is great value compared to the competition on the market and adds to the huge line up of premium Teams and Zoom certified devices that they have to offer.

      Yealink A24 DeskView
      Yealink A24 DeskVision

      Innovative, Sleek and Beautifully crafted

      What I love about this device that sets it aside, IMO, to other devices in this space, is that the display can be positioned from 90 degree vertical to almost horizonal with it’s smooth arm, in motion very similar to that of the Surface Studio. This makes it idea for Whiteboard use as a second screen [though if it supported use of a Surface Pen that would make it even more awesome].

      Yealink A24 Deskvision in horizonal Position
      Yealink A24 DeskView in lay flat position

      This is a really premium device – good quality, sturdy and functional. The look and feel is clean and minimalist and offers seamless switching between “Teams” mode and Second Screen mode. The movement of the device is also sleek and simple, offering full range of motion from vertical to almost horizonal making it perfect for different uses such as meetings, whiteboarding and collaborative apps – this is made possible through the unique light hinge designed to enable the screen to be tilted as needed in a very “Surface Studio” like design.

      Using the A24 as a second screen (with touch).

      For added usability, there’s also lot of ports to plug peripherals into allowing it to serves as a UC workstation complete with a USB hub (which could power and charge my Surface Pro) and wireless charger for smartphones.

      Yealink A24 DeskVision Rear
      Yealink A24 DeskVision rear

      Yealink DeskVision A24 Key Features

      • Microsoft Teams Display running Android 10
      • Dual Display Mode (Teams Display and second screen)
      • Superior audio and video
      • Qi wireless charging for mobile phones etc
      • Touchscreen for whiteboard collaboration
      • Ports include 2x USB C (65w charge), USB C, Ethernet, headphone jack, HMDI In,
      • Wireless Connectivity
      • Bluetooth.

      Leaders of the pack

      At the launch of the device, Albert Kooiman, Director of Microsoft Teams Devices Partner Engineering and Certification said “Yealink consistently keeps expanding their portfolio with powerful Teams devices. These devices will offer sought after hybrid workplace collaboration experiences, delivering a great meeting experience combining quality Teams audio, video, and touch and inking, that can all be easily deployed across personal, hot desking and meeting rooms scenarios.”

      As of Feb 2023, Yealink are the global market leader for Teams Rooms devices with a market share of [Source: Yealink].

      Summary and Verdict

      In short, Yealink’s DeskVision device is a great device that really can help bridge the gap between whiteboard collaboration and video conferencing device that can also serve as a really premium second-screen.

      Through customer demos, feedback in the channel and colleagues, the A24 is real market leader in this (rather crowded vendor and product space) and delivers real people-centric meeting experiences and empowering meetings with all the capabilities and power of Microsoft Teams.

      The device costs £1,699 RRP which is great value compared to the competition on the market.

      Posted on

      RM’s 2002 Windows XP Tablet PC Edition Review in 2023

      I recently found an old RM Tablet PC from my days working as a Solution Architect at RM Education. After powering it up (it still worked), I decided it was time to write a back dated review of the device (which was powered by Windows XP Tablet PC Edition) that in my opinion, introduced and innovated the touch and Tablet centric world we are now so familiar with.

      Education First XP Tablet Edition

      In 2002, under the leadership of CEO Tim Pearson, RM Education became the education launch partner for not only a new class of device that we now just take for granted. These devices ignited and innovated not just the education sector, but future waves of tablet and touch devices across, not just Windows based devices, but through to Apple, Amazon and Google.

      Windows XP Tablet PC Edition was an edition of Windows XP built exclusively for this new era of  Tablet PC computers with pen-sensitive screens, which was released on 7 November 2002.  More on this later.

      RM Plc Original Tablet PC (2002)

      Windows XP Tablet Edition was full a windows XPs but also included various tools and accessories that could be used with a pen and included apps such as Windows Journal, InkBall, Sticky Notes, Office XP and Tablet PC Input Panel.

      Microsoft also released an major update to the OS, Version 2005 (codenamed Lonestar)a couple of years later in August 2004 and both an OEM version and as a service pack update for the original Windows XP Tablet PC Edition.

      Who was it for?

      The RM Tablet PC saw three iterations – the original (pictured above) and an updated version a couple of years later and then the RM discovery tablet after that. These marked an evolution and true innovation in mobile computing world at the time  – providing an entirely new interface and method of working that was natural, flexible and highly effective.

      The innovative ‘slate’ design (totally unique at the time) focussed on leveraging the full power of a PC (Intel Celeron or Pentium M processors) into an ultra-portable device. There was no need for a keyboard and mouse – (though it of course supported it) and controlling the desktop was achieved through a pen used directly onto the screen, which incorporates the convenient and intuitive aspects of pen and paper into a radical new technology, along with new paper like apps like Microsoft Journal and the debut of Microsoft OneNote.

      RM Tablet was build for educators and learners

      In 2002 (wow.. that’s twenty one years ago) were the education launch partner for Windows XP Tablet and had built a tough, education focussed touch device that fitted well into the classroom (along with charging trollies to let teachers hand them out to students on a one to one ratio).

      The RM tablets took mobile tablet computing way beyond standard laptops and current pen computing devices of their time, such as PDAs, by delivering a full Microsoft Windows XP Professional powered device that could be used either on or off the network (with 802.11b wireless) just like a notebook or standard PC. In fact, the RM Tablet PC exceeded existing PC hardware by utilising Microsoft’s most advanced operating system (at the time) with a version of XP enhanced specifically for touch and pen. RM also bundled their whole class teaching tools like Easy Teach worked a treat as teachers were already familiar with the software.

      This was a real differentiator to just another laptop (RM Education used to manufacturer their own devices here in the UK in Abingdon, Oxford). Windows XP Tablet PC Edition included all the tools needed to effectively use the pen and touch through the OS, as well as many additional functions, including the added ability to annotate directly onto documents and text using ‘Digital Ink’.  This is not to underestimated in terms of its innovation and revelance today. Digital Ink was the cornerstone of this now daily use technology, but at the time was a revolutionary new approach used across tablets, phones and covertable devices like Surface Pro.

      This brought huge advantages to the classroom, and in my time working with Schools and Colleges back then, I witnessed 2005 some of the enormous impact it could bring, such as enabling students to use pen and ink in a digitial canvas with all the other benefits of word processing etc not taken away. Teachers used it for notes, printed onto whiteboards, removing the need for clunky overhead projectors that used to dominate classrooms.

      IMO, there is no doubt that the RM Tablet PC opened up many possibilities for teaching and learning in ways that  simply didn’t previously currently exist.

      Life after Windows XP Tablet Edition

      In many ways, as Microsoft often do, Windows XP Tablet Edition, set the groundwork and lot a fire for much of the next 10 years or so of innovation in touch and Tablet development which Apple, Google and Microsoft now dominate in their own ways.

      With the release of Windows Vista in 2006, all Tablet PC components were then natively included with the OS itself without the need of a separate edition. This marked the start of the Tablet PC era from Microsoft which aimed to bring the best of touch and pen to traditional Windows devices without the need for a separate OS or dedicated apps.

      Winding forward to today, 2023, tablet devices and 2-in1s dominate the workplace, front line workers, our personal lives, education and more. Apple have gone the route of dedicated tablets (with keyboards in some cases), whereas Microsoft have stuck by the original ethos that XP Tablet Edition started with touch and ink now firmly dynamically embedded within the Windows OS.

      Did you know? : Windows Vista (which was seen as a failure in the eyes of many following the success of XP and the early teething and stability issues of Vista) was the seventh operating system in the Windows NT operating system lineup and was the version succeeding Windows XP and preceding Windows 7. It was the only version of Windows to later support upgrade paths from Windows XP and to Windows 7

      Posted on

      ISE 2023 — Is Teams on Cisco Rooms just the beginning?

      With ISE 23 kicking off this week in Barcelona, the UC world will no doubt be excited to see the developments, fruition and live demos of Cisco tech running Microsoft Teams.

      This is significant for several reasons. Of course, Microsoft can run Webex, Zoom, RingCentral, and others from within Teams and many of the Teams hardware from Yealink, Poly, Logi etc can also run both Zoom and Teams on the same hard hardware, but this requires a reboot of the hardware causing a less than slick experience.

      Is Cisco Rooms on Teams the beginning of a bigger plan?

      What Cisco and Microsoft have done differently is that with this partnership, Cisco devices will not only run Webex or Teams, but the Cisco Meeting room kit will be able to do this seemlessly without a reboot. 

      Cisco Room Kit running Microsoft Team

      It will be interesting to see if any other Annoucements this week suggest that other Teams & Zoom meeting room kit will be lookimg to do the same!

      Why is this significant?

      The big questions is why would Microsoft find value in this after all Microsoft now has close to 300 million monthly active users and is the clear leader in is this space which it continues to innovate with new services and revenue streams expected from the recent launch of Teams Room Pro and Teams Premium.

      According to analysts, Cisco and Microsoft share close to 90 percent of the same customers. Not necessarily in the collaboration space but across the board. Where that is Cisco’s networking business or Call Manager or Webex, Security or indeed their Contact Contact centre (which is soon to be certified for Teams.)

      Most organisations like the idea of a smaller number of vendors to work with and if they can standardise on Cisco and Microsoft for their meeting room technology (since Microsoft don’t make the hardware for their Teams Rooms), this could be a big advantage.

      For Cisco, this also means that they don’t loose the hardware and maintainance on their room systems should their Webex customer base decide to move partly or in full to Microsoft Teams.

      For Microsoft, I think this also means bringing Cisco in as more of an advocacy – protecting both their install bases from their joint competition in this collaboration and voice space – Zoom, Google and RingCentral…vendors both Cisco and Microsoft do not want to see penetrate or weave into their account base.

      Is this really about CPaaS?

      Cisco is betting heavily on the success of its redefined Contact Centre solution Webex Contact Centre which could become a real significant player in the CCaaS space for Teams users and not just Webex customers.

      Since the partnership was announced at Ignite, just before Xmas, much of Cisco messaging has been around  adding value to Teams rather than replacing it (though Cisco hope of course customers will still invest in Webex). The focus of much of the marketing is around making the user experience on Teams better by using Cisco technology.

      “Elevate your Microsoft Teams Rooms experience with Cisco devices”.

      Here’s where CPaaS comes in. This partnership with Microsoft is also a great opportunity for Cisco to leverage its broader UC portfolio to add their Webex Contact Center natively into Team, attacking the plethora and crowded market of Teams certified contact centres such as Luware, Anywhere 365 and Enghouse.

      Organisations with Teams, looking to replace their contact centre solutions are continually looking at Teams Certified solutions.

      The Cisco Webex Contact Centre is already a  highly-regarded CCaaS solution, soon to be certified by Microsoft for Teams (maybe as soon as this week?).

      Cisco Webex CC on Garner Magic Quadrant 2022

      Cisco and Microsoft – Better together?

      Only time will tell.. If the plan plays off Cisco should certainly be able to capitalise on market growth and their reputation and proven success in the CCaaS space. If they can secure Webex as the CPaaS of choice for Teams, this could significantly reverse the declining marketshare that Cisco has been suffering of late.

      This will also help Microsoft block their other completion and prevent players like Zoom getting into their accounts. Together Cisco and Microsoft should be able to protect their join customer base making it harder for other UC vendors to eat their share.

      Who might loose out to this partnership?

      The Teams Room space is already well served by flexible, innovate solutions from the likes of Yealink, Poly, Neat and Logitech etc. For Teams organizations already invested in these brands, I see them sticking, but customers moving from Cisco to Teams now have the ability to reduce cost, maintain ‘brand’ and leverage thier investment and partnership with Cisco with less disruption, upheaval and change.

      The CPaaS providers that develop Teams certified contact centres may be most worried by this partnership, since Cisco will now able to compete in their space which, whilst already crowded, lacks many true enterprise grade solutions like Cisco have.

      Posted on

      My 5 years as a Microsoft MVP

      This week I was delighted to be re-awarded as a Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP) for the 5th year running, but what does it mean and why am so thrilled to be rewarded?

      What are MVPs?

      Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals, or MVPs, are “technology experts who passionately share their knowledge with the community”. They are always on the “bleeding edge” and have an unstoppable urge to get their hands on new, exciting technologies. MVPs have deep knowledge of Microsoft products and services, while also being able to bring together diverse platforms, products and solutions, to solve real world problems. MVPs make up a global community of over 4,000 technical experts and community leaders across 90 countries/regions and are driven by their passion, community spirit, and quest for knowledge. Above all and in addition to this, part of the “role” of the MVPs is our passion and desire to help others. For Microsoft, this is what sets MVPs apart, through formal product feedback, community events, forums, blogs, reviews etc and of course through social channels our mission is to drive awareness, adoption, constructive feedback, ideas and suggestions to help continually improve Microsoft products and services.

      What is the MVP Award?

      For more than two decades, the Microsoft MVP Award has been Microsofts’ way of saying thank you to community leaders within in their MVP catagory. The contributions MVPs make to the community, ranging from speaking engagements, to social media posts, to writing books, to helping others in online communities, have incredible impact.

      As MVPs, we receive a number of technical benefits from Microsoft to help be the best at supporting our passion for technology and innovation. Key benefits to MVPs include early access to Microsoft products, direct communication channels with our product teams and an invitation to the Global MVP Summit, an exclusive annual event hosted in our global HQ in Redmond. They also have a very close relationship with the local Microsoft teams in their area, who are there to support and empower MVPs to address needs and opportunities in the local ecosystem. Other benefits include an executive recognition letter, a Visual Studio technical subscription, and an Office 365 subscription.

      The Windows Insider Most Valuable Professional

      The Windows Insider Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award recognises people who are passionate about Windows and are positive Windows advocates within their communities. Like other MVPs, we can be found across the globe and are driven by a passion for flighting Insider Preview builds and filing feedback to help improve the current and future generations of Windows, contributing to the technical community through forums, chats with the Windows product team and creating how-to content with the goal of helping others achieve more and making Windows the OS of choice for every person and every organisation.

      I have been a Windows Insider for 11 years and seen the development and evolution of Windows 10 and Windows 11 and Windows Insiders are now looking at what comes next after the current release (Windows 11 22H2) release. As new devices and new form factors are being tested, I’m excited by what 2023 and beyond will bring to Windows.

      Can I nominate someone to be an MVP?

      You can!

      If you know someone who is outstanding and passionate around Microsoft technology and think they should be recognised as an MVP, you can nominate them (or yourself) here: https://mvp.microsoft.com/en-us/Nomination/nominate-an-mvp

      What I plan to do more of in 2023

      As I look forward to 2023, the main topics of interest, content and testing for me that I will explore, showcase and blog will include:

      • Continuing to test, drive and promote some of the awesome accessibly features that span across the Windows 11 OS
      • Tracking and reporting on Windows Insider and production releases, updates, issues and fixes for Windows 11 and Windows vNext
      • Evalusations and reviews of the latest Microsoft hardware such as the Surface devices, accessiblity devices and peripherals building for Windows 11 and Windows 365
      • Dive deeper into Security features across Windows consumer, professional and enterprise editions and into the realms of Windows 365 (Cloud PC) and Microsoft 365
      • Report on my other observations and ruminations on Windows technology, changes and developments and do my best to respond to comments or asks from the community,
      • Increase my contributions to the windows communities and in-person events.

      Find out more about the Windows Insider Program

      To find out more about the Windows Insider Program and to get involved, visit the following pages.

      Posted on

      Microsoft increase Cloud Services pricing inline with Global Pricing and FX

      April 23 Price Increase

      In what Microsoft call “price harmonisation”, it has been confirmed that Microsoft will be aligning the pricing of their Cloud products and services (for example Microsoft 365) by introducing consistent global pricing for its services across the globe. For many regions, such as the UK and EU, this means price rises as the dollar has continued to fall in recent years again the Euro and Pound.

      What and why are prices changing?

      Microsoft are aligning costs (like they do today with Azure) to US dollar FX rates which means that customers will have consistent pricing reflected by the exchange rate of the local currency to the US dollar (USD), which is reviewed twice a year.

      While a price increase is never well received, it is worth noting that this latest increase relates to their commercial cloud products such as Microsoft 365. Azure is already priced by on regional FX rates and is not affected by this announcement. Microsoft are simply aligning their commercial pricing in line with their competition and their other cloud services.

      Countries that use the Great British Pound (GBP), the Danish Krone (DKK), the Euro (EUR), the Norwegian Krone (NOK), and the Swedish Krona (SEK) will all see a price increase from April 1, 2023.

      “In the future, Microsoft will assess pricing in local currency as part of a regular twice-a-year cadence, taking into consideration currency fluctuations relative to the USD.

      This will provide increased transparency and predictability for customers globally and move to a pricing model that is most common in our industry.

      The Microsoft Cloud continues to be priced competitively, and Microsoft remains deeply committed to the success of its customers and partners.”

      Microsoft

      How much are prices increasing by?

      Microsoft has confirmed that the price increase for the following currencies will be:

      • GBP: +9%
      • DKK, EUR and NOK: +11%
      • SEK: +15%

      Microsoft have said they are committed to continuing to invest in their cloud services to “enable customers to innovate, consolidate and eliminate operating costs”.

      Thoughts and Actions

      While a price increase is never well received, it is worth noting that this latest increase relates to their commercial cloud products such as Microsoft 365. Azure is already priced by on regional FX rates and is not affected by this announcement. Microsoft are simply aligning their commercial pricing in line with their competition and their other cloud services.

      This therefore represents a good time for organisations to do some “house keeping” to keep licenses and costs in check. For example:

      • Check 3rd party duplicate products you can displace (and use the services included in your Microsoft 365 subscription)
      • Check if you need the tier of license you are using. Would Microsoft 365 E3 deliver what you need? Do you need the same licenses for everyone?
      • Ensure you leverage Fast Track services or your partner to help you adopt and get best value of your investment in Microsoft Cloud
      • Speak to your licensing provider or Cloud Solution Provider to ensure you get the best commercial costs
      Posted on

      Windows 365 now supports Azure AD SSO

      Windows 365 now supports (Dec 2022) the creating of Azure AD Cloud PCs that use single sign-on. Previously this required a dual-sign in step.

      This is a big improvement, and now means users only have to logon once to the Windows 365 Cloud PC app – from here on in, their CloudPC desktops will seamlessly sign-in (subject to any specific conditional access polices you may have applied of course.) It even works with passwordless sign-on . You can see the user experience below.

      Windows 365 Cloud PC SSO Demo

      Enabling the SSO setting

      To enable SSO, administrators can update their existing Cloud PC provisioning profiles or create new Cloud PC policy with the “single sign on” setting enabled.

      Enabling SSO for Windows 365 Cloud PC

      Note: Existing Cloud PCs will not automatically support SSO – these will need to be re-provisioned, which can be done from the device pane in endpoint manager as show below.

      Reprovision a Windows 365 Cloud PC

      Read more from Microsoft

      What’s new in Windows 365 Enterprise | Microsoft Learn

      Proudly powered by WordPress
      %d