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CrowdStrike Update caused “Global IT Outage” with “Blue Recovery Screen” Issue on older Windows devices

BSOD - Crowdstrike

We have seen social media frenzy this morning following a triple whammy of issues impacting Azure Virtual Machines (running Windows 10 and Server 2016) and Windows devices across hundreds of organisations where devices are rebooting to the Windows Recovery Screen issue on Windows 10 devices and Server running older versions.

19/7/24 11:00am: The impacts of the issue are still on-going although the root cause is known and CrowdStrike and working with Microsoft on getting a patch out…

19/7/24: 15:00: CrowdStrike have updated their sites to take accountability of the issue (Microsoft still helping) that has impacted devices due to a “bug” in their software update which caused the BSOD. They have pulled and fixed the update and are working with their customers to remediate the impact. Microsoft have also offered guidance on what can be done to reverse the issue – links to this below.

29/7/2024: 18.00: this is not a Microsoft problem (yet I imagine they will be blamed) but it affected millions of Windows systems… Read to the bottom to see why.

Summary

Since the early hours of the morning, several media companies, airlines, transport companies, tech companies, and schools / universities are reporting a Blue Screen (actually a safety recovery screen) issue Windows 10.

The issue is impacting Windows 10 devices that are using CrowdStrike Falcon agent – their flagship Extended Detect and Response (XDR) Security platform.

Impacted devices are crashing following this Falcon Client update and then getting stuck at the “Recovery” screen due to a critical system driver failure that is preventing the device from starting back up.

CrowdStrike and Microsoft are actively working on this to drive a permanent fix, workarounds are available which require manually preventing this service from starting on affected devices.

The issue is not known to be affecting devices running Windows 11 and Server 2019 and beyond.

What is CrowdStrike?

CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm based in the US, assists organisations in securing their IT environments, which encompasses all internet-connected resources.

Their mission is to “safeguard businesses from data breaches, ransomware, and cyberattacks” and they position themselves as having leading offerings that compete with other vendors including Microsoft themselves, SentinelOne, and Palo Alto Networks. Their client base is extensive and includes legal, banking, finance, travel firms, airlines, educational institutions, and retail customers.

A key offering from CrowdStrike is their Falcon XDR tool, touted on their website for delivering “real-time indicators of attack, hyper-accurate detection, and automated protection” against cybersecurity threats.

Root Cause

Information available from CrowdStrike and Microsoft state that the issue is caused by a “faulty” version of the csagent.sys file which is key system start-up file needed by CrowdStrike’s new sensors update for their Falcon Sensor agent. It is this file that has been responsible for the BSOD errors on Windows 11 and many servers running older Windows Server OS running in private and public data centres such as Microsoft Azure. .

George Kurtz, the CEO of the global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, stated that the issues were due to a “defect” in a “content update” for Microsoft Windows devices.

“The issue has been identified, isolated, and a fix has been deployed.” he said as he clarified that the problems did not impact operating systems other than Windows 10 and WIndows Server 2016 and older and also emphasized, “This is not a security incident or cyber-attack.”

Impact

  • Windows 10 devices are primarily affected.
  • Devices running Windows Server 2016 and older in Azure are also impacted if they run the CrowdStrike Falcon agent.
  • Limited/less impact on devices running Windows 11 or Windows 2019 and later.

Note: Windows 10 enters end of support in October 2025.

Is there a fix?

Updated: 21/7/2024: Microsoft have updated their guidance and provided additional support for fixing these issues using managed devices via Intune. This can be found here.

The formal advice if this issue is affecting your organisation is to contact your CrowdStrike Support representative – CrowdStrike and Microsoft are actively working to address the issue both as a response to the issue and preventative to ensure more devices are not impacted.

Since the issue is known to be caused by the csagent.sys file, there are ways to manually prevent this file being loaded, allowing the device to load. There are a couple of ways to do this.

  1. Use Safe Mode and delete the affected file:
    • Boot the device to Safe Mode
    • Open Command Prompt and navigate to the CrowdStrike directory which should be C:\Windows\System32\drivers\CrowdStrike
    • Locate and delete the file matching the pattern C-00000291.sys* – you can do this using the by using a wildcard dir C-00000291*.sys.
    • Remove or rename the file.
  2. Use Registry Editor to block the CrowdStrike CSAgent service:
    • Boot to Safe Mode
    • Open Windows Registry Editor.
    • Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\CSAgent
    • Change the Start value to 4 to disable the service.

Dan Card, of BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT and a cyber security expert said: “People should remain calm whilst organisations respond to this global issue. It’s affecting a very wide range of services from banks to stores to air travel.“

He also said that whilst the cause is now known, it is still causing worldwide issues and impacts on consumer services, banking, healthcare and travel and will take some time to remediate.

“Companies should make sure their IT teams are well supported as it will be a difficult and highly stressful weekend for them as they help customers of all kinds. People often forget the people that are running around fixing things.”

Updated: 21/7/2024: Microsoft have updated their guidance and provided additional support for fixing these issues using managed devices via Intune. This can be found here.

Conclusion

CrowdStrike has acknowledged the issue and is investigating the cause. Users can follow the above steps to resolve the recovery screen issues  and boot their PCs normally.

Crowdstrike and Microsoft worked tirelessly to resolve this issue and prevent further widespread impact.

“The issue has been identified, isolated, and a fix has been deployed.” he said as he clarified that the problems did not impact operating systems other than Windows 10 and WIndows Server 2016 and older and also emphasized, “This is not a security incident or cyber-attack.”

Devices running Microsoft’s latest Operating Systems seem to be less impacted (though information still being collated).

How did Microsoft allow this to this happen?

How did this happen? Many people are asking why Microsoft are shifting blame to Crowdstrike (who have admitted fault) asking why and how did Microsoft allow this?

In short, it’s not their fault and there really wasn’t anything they could have done to prevent it…. Here’s why..

Many Security products such as XDR products made by Crowdstrike, Palo Alto, and even Microsoft’s own XDR product defender, are what is known as “kernel mode products” . Whilst this issue affected Windows the same “hiccup error with the update” could have equally of affected other OS such as MacOS and Linux since they are kernal extensions.. This means is they had made the same mistake on the updates for these OS’s the same product mess up would have occurred. 

In an ideal world all applications and services would run in user mode rather than Kernel Mode, but with many security and AV products, these have a need (a legitimately one) to monitor at the lowest levels of the OS in order to detect attacks… This is not possible if running in user mode as the kernel is protected.

The Blue Recovery Screen (which was mistaken by most as the Blue Screen of Death (BSoD) which it actually was not is actually the Windows OS safety net.

As such, there is not much more Microsoft can do here. These are third party applications not managed or developed or controlled/updated by Microsoft. If Microsoft were to manually vet every update and change to an application, Microsoft would be classed as control hogs and the world will crucify them for it!

Microsoft cannot legally wall off its operating system in the same way Apple does because of an understanding it reached with the European Commission following a complaint. In 2009, Microsoft agreed it would give makers of security software the same level of access to Windows that Microsoft gets.

The outage is awful and has impacted so many organisation including crutiic services, but it’s also not fair IMO that Microsoft and Windows have been dragged through the dirt simply because it’s their OS that was impacted by the poor updates and issues another third party application caused. 

It’s not the first time this had happened…to other OS’s

According report by Neowin, ” similar problems have been occurring for months without much awareness, despite the fact that many may view this as an isolated incident. Users of Debian and Rocky Linux also experienced significant disruptions as a result of CrowdStrike updates, raising serious concerns about the company”s software update and testing procedures. These occurrences highlight potential risks for customers who rely on their products daily.

In April, a CrowdStrike update caused all Debian Linux servers in a civic tech lab to crash simultaneously and refuse to boot. The update proved incompatible with the latest stable version of Debian, despite the specific Linux configuration being supposedly supported. The lab”s IT team discovered that removing CrowdStrike allowed the machines to boot and reported the incident. “

What this shows it the vital importance on update testing and deployment rings.

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Kings Speech : What the New Cyber Security Bill is about.

Cyber Security Bill

Yesterday 17th July 24, a new Cyber Security Bill was announced as part of the King’s Speech with industry experts and cyber security firms and advisory boards applauding the greater scrutiny and policies being placed on protecting the nation, our public services, critical infrastructure, and businesses – small, medium, and large.

The bill, will hand more power to regulators around cybersecurity incidents – and also includes a mandate reporting for ransomware attacks. The bill was announced in today’s King’s Speech, alongside 40 others.

… strengthen the UK’s cyber defences, ensure that critical infrastructure and the digital services that companies rely on are secure

Kings Speech | July 2024

In parallel, a new Digital Information and Smart Data Bill also announced, would have security concerns and implications if this Cyber Security Bill had not also been announced since one of it’s aims is to further support and speed up the digitising of more central and local government services as well as bring in new data-sharing standards, whilst giving the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) new powers.

CyberSecurity – State of the nation

The newly introduced Cyber Security Bill acknowledges that the UK as a whole faces increasing attacks from both financially-motivated cyber criminals and state actors, with entities of all sizes being frequent targets. The bill was proposed in response to cyber attacks on the UK’s digital economy, which have affected public services and infrastructure. Its aim is to enhance the protection of essential services and critical national infrastructure, which are particularly vulnerable to hostile actors. This is underscored by numerous cyber attacks in recent years on the NHS, NHS Blood supply, UK Trusts, the Ministry of Defence, the British Library, the Electoral Commission, Royal Mail, and various other government entities.

Life vs Death- The NHS Blood Supply Attack: The announcement comes after a severe Russian cyber-attack on Synnovis, a private firm offering pathology services like blood tests to the NHS. As a result of the attack, some patients were notified that their blood test appointments could be delayed by up to six months. It also affected supply of blood and much needed transfusions.

What’s in the Cyber Security Bill?

The new Cyber Security Bill consists of two main objectives.

  1. To expand the remit of existing regulation
  2. Provide regulators with a stronger foundation for the protection of digital services and supply chains, and enhance reporting requirements to develop a more comprehensive understanding of cyber threats.

The bill will expand the remit of regulators to cover supply chains and companies providing service/managed services to organisations – addressing the growing prevalence of supply-side attacks, where malicious actors gain access to organisation’s networks and systems via third-party suppliers such as MSPs, network providers and CSP providers or though APIs and systems which connect to other systems for things such as stock control, support and remote access. The bill also promises to create a stronger regulatory environment to ensure cyber safety measures are actually being introduced.

What about NIS2?

The Cyber Security Bill aims to revise the current UK Network and Information Security (NIS) Regulations 2018. These regulations originate from the EU’s NIS Directive, which outlines specific cybersecurity and incident reporting duties for operators of ‘essential services’ and digital service providers.

The EU has initiated an update to the original NIS framework, with ‘NIS2’ scheduled for implementation across EU member states by 17 October 2024. Whilst ‘NIS2’ does not expliciitly apply to UK companies, this bill is likley to align closely to it and may even add “icing on top”.

About mandatory reporting on ransomware attacks

Today, whilst organisations need to report data breaches, there is no law/rule about reporting ransomware attacks. This bill changes this. This is a good move since, introducing the requirement to report of ransomware attacks (whether successful or not) will help the UK better understand the wider cybercrime landscape.

What the Cyber Security Bill means for IT and Security Teams

Cyber Secrity and protection remains one of the biggest threats to organisations and government today and remains one of the biggest budget spends which continues to see an year on year increase along side AI of course.

As we live in an increasingly digital society across almost every industry and service, every organisation needs to have, and will be obligned under the new bill, to have robust security governance and controls in place. Organisations need to shift away from simply deploying products in the hope they will stop attacks and instead ensure they also have effective data on attack vectors and trends as well as having clear kill chain risk analysis and mapping across their entire estate from users and devices, to identity and access, data protection, threat detection, isolution, remiation and of course prevention.

In the context of state-sponsored attacks, national conflicts, and wars, it is evident that cyber attacks have become a standard component of such conflicts, targeting infrastructure, governments, and individuals alike. The Cyber Security Bill emphasizes that sectors such as communications, power, finance, health, education, and transportation, including traffic control systems, are all potential targets.

Cyber Security Bill – Things you can do

The new Cyber Security and upcoming NIS2 requirement presents several opportunities for organisations to prepare and get ready which shoudl underpin their existing cyber security and resiliance programme.

In Cyber Security report by Microsoft earlier, Microsoft Security said that they have seen a ten fold increase in cyber attacks along with a similar attack attempot growth of their own platforms and systems include Microsoft 365 and Azure.

Microsoft say that passwords and account compromose (often leading to phisghing attacks and ransomware attacks) continue to rise the fastest with password attacks per month increasing from 3 Billion attacks per month in 2022, to more than 30 Billion a month in 2023.

Microsoft also say that the UK CyberSecurity market in the UK worth $6.2bn in FY25 and is said to continue to increase at around 20% YoY for the next 4 years. For Microsoft, they see the following key areas of security being of the biggest opportunoity driven by customer demand to protect their businesses and critical infraastucture.

  • Threat Protection – $2.4bn
  • Identity Protection & Secure Access – $2.2bn
  • Security Analytics – $1.6bn

Note: Values are UK TAM for 2025.

Consulting, Assessments and Workshops

Leverage your security partners to help you conduct comprehenise reviews.

Many Cyber Security partners have pre-packaged (often vendor funded) offerings to help businesses of all sizes, through the delivery of tailoured, comprehensive workshops and assessments around the core Zero Trust Security Pillars which loosely fit into the catagories above.

The Cyber Security bill strengthens the powers of regulators, which is likley to lead to more frequent and rigorous security assessments and audits. This means you will likely need to prove you are undertaking these regualry and that you have clear, definaed and proven attack simulation plans, prevent and detect and remediation plans in place.

Security Adoption and Consolidation

In the ever-evolving landscape of cybersecurity, the complexity of security has become a significant challenge for many organisations. With an average of 76 security tools to manage, info sec magazine reports that many organisations are overwhelmed by excessive support tickets, ungainly rulesets, redundant alerts, and cumbersome integrations of different often overlapping security products. This complexity can lead to gaps in security, making organisations vulnerable to cyber threats and huge costs.

As part of any review and assessment, contract renewal and negotiation, most organisations can strengthen their security posture while reducing both spend and complexity through a strategy known as security consolidation. This involves streamlining and integrating various security tools and processes into a cohesive system and leveraging/adopting many of the technologies they may already have but have not turned on – examples of this are the vast security products and services offered in Microsoft 365 E5 which may be under-used or not switched on.

Security consolidation super important is essential for several reasons. Firstly, it can enhances threat detection and response by providing a holistic view of security events, facilitating faster identification of anomalies and coordinated response strategies pulling information from products and suits of products rather than trying to connect. Secondly, it simplifies management and operations, making it easier for security teams to manage and operate, leading to increased efficiency and effectiveness in managing cybersecurity risks. Thirdly, it can massively reduces complexity and cost by eliminating redundant systems and streamlining processes, improving the security posture, and reducing the chances of errors.

The National Cyber Security Centre provides a wealth of resources and guidance on various cybersecurity topics, including security consolidation.

Managed SOC and XDR

In light of the cyber security bill, organisations may consider moving to a Managed Security Operations Centre (SoC) or Managed Extended Detection and Response (XDR) service offered from their MSP provider, CSP provider or specialist Managed Security Provider. These service provide a huge a range of benefits for organisations who dont have the time, resources or desire to manage their security operations including:

  1. Comprehensive Cybersecurity: Managed SoC and XDR services provide comprehensive cybersecurity across an organisations entire IT environment – monitoring threat landscapes, including IT networks, devices, applications, endpoints, and data, for both known and evolving vulnerabilities, threats, and risks.
  2. Reduced Complexity: In most cases, investing in such services can significantly reduce the complexity of managing multiple security tools and processes. Whilst these services “may” take on and suppoprt an organisation’s existing security products , in many cases they will require (as part of onboarding) a more steamlined approach to security management, making it easier for organisations to maintain a robust security posture without having to manage multiple products and services.
  3. Faster Response Times: Managed SoC and XDR services can provide significantly faster and more accurate detection and response times to real and high-risk potential threats. Many will leverage their vast experience, Machine Learning and other advanced technologies like AI and automation to make threat detection and response faster than humanly possible.
  4. More Cost-Effective: Whilst not cheap on the surface, consolidating security operations under a managed service, organisations can potentially reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) of securioty operations, by eliminating the need for multiple standalone security solutions and sometimes expensive security analysts and consultants.
  5. Access to Expertise: These services give organisations access to highly skilled security experts, which can be particularly beneficial given the current shortage of skills in the cybersecurity industry.

Employee Training and Education

The importance of end-user adoption and training around security awareness must not be overstated. It is a critical component of an any organisation’s cybersecurity strategy. The human factor is often the weakest link in corporate security, with studies suggesting that most cyber attacks are caused by human error. Educating end users on cybersecurity best practices is crucial for reducing the risk of insider threats, phishing attacks, and other cyber threats.

Every business, large and small, needs to develop an effective security strategy mindset that is built into their culture. This ensures that every employee, from frontline staff to managers and executives, understands the importance of cybersecurity and the far-reaching impact that a data breach can have. This means that regular training sessions and awareness needs to be conducted to keep all levels of the organisation updated on the latest threats and defensive practices.

Management plays a key role in this process. They should demonstrate leadership by actively participating in security awareness training, complying with the company’s own cybersecurity policies, and encouraging staff to participate in trainings. This helps to create a culture of enhanced cybersecurity awareness and empowering employees to come forward with observations, suggestions or issues they have seen.

End-user adoption and training around security awareness is a commitment that needs to be made at all levels of an organisation. It is not just about protecting the organisation’s digital assets, but also about safeguarding its reputation and credibility. By making security awareness a priority, organisations can significantly reduce their vulnerability to cyber threats.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the King’s Speech has outlined a much needed robust and forward-thinking approach to cybersecurity in light of the every increasing wave of state nation and cyber terrorism combined with the rapid adoption of generative AI.

The introduction of the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill, as announced in the speech, is set to expand regulation to cover more digital services and supply chains, empower regulators to ensure cybersecurity measures, and mandate increased incident reporting to improve the government’s response to cyber attacks. This initiative is a significant step towards strengthening the UK’s cybersecurity infrastructure and resilience.

In light of these developments, every organisations should take proactive steps to align with these new measures. One of the key steps is preparing for the NIS2 Directive, which aims to establish a higher level of cybersecurity and resilience within organisations of the European Union and will also impact UK organisations. Organisations should start preparing by defining their compliance roadmap and optimising their cybersecurity awareness. They should conduct a thorough audit to identify gaps in their cybersecurity regimen and develop a comprehensive plan to address these gaps and achieve compliance with NIS2 requirements.

Read more:

What is NIS2? What is NIS2? Get the Complete Picture (nis2directive.eu)

National Cyber Security Centre: National Cyber Security Centre – NCSC.GOV.UK

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Forrester: Microsoft Leading the Charge in XDR Innovation

This blog post captures Microsoft’s latest achievements, innovations and recognition in cybersecurity as reported by Forrester in their recent wave report on Extended Dedection and Response (XDR) plafforms. Here is have focussed on the latest developments and Microsoft’s move to leading in this report.

The ever-evolving landscape of cybersecurity, organisations face the challenge of defending against increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks. Based on the analysis performed by Forrester in their 2024 Wave report, Microsoft has yet again risen to the occasion, with them being placed at the far out leader in Forrester Wave: Extended Detection and Response (XDR) platforms – Q2, 2024, pushing them ahead of both Palo Alto and Crowdstrike in this recent report. They have been leaders in this space for over 4 years but this year pulled further ahead than ever before.

In the last year, 75% of security professionals witnessed an increase in attacks with 85% attributing this rise to bad actors using generative AI

Report By Security Magazine 2023


The Forrester report details how to protect against the constant and more spohisticated AI powered “intelligent attacks”, a Unified Approach to Cybersecurity is needed rather than a traditional add-on and multi-vendor approach. Forrester comment how Microsoft Defender XDR stands out with its unified visibility, investigation, and response capabilities. It integrates seamlessly across endpoints, IoT, OT, identities, email, collaboration tools, SaaS apps, cloud workloads, and data insights, providing end-to-end protection.

Generative A is the Game-Changer

Forrester say that the introduction of Microsoft Copilot for Security marks a significant milestone in Microsoft’s approach to XDR. This generative AI solution simplifies incident remediation, reverse engineers malware code, and empowers analysts with natural language processing to generate Kusto Query Language (KQL) queries.

Microsoft’s Automatic Attack Disruption – also powered by their latest AI and Threat Hunting services, has led to the development of automatic attack disruption features in Defender XDR. This technology can detect and disrupt ransomware and other advanced attacks within minutes, showcasing the power of AI in cybersecurity. The services work seemlessly toegther across their wider Azure and Microsoft 365 security portoflio making these a real multi-layered protect, detect and respond approach rather than multiple products stacked on top of each other.

The Future of Cyber Defense

Microsoft’s recognition by Forrester underscores its dedication to innovation and excellence in cybersecurity. As cyber threats continue to evolve, Microsoft’s XDR and unified security operations platforms will remain essential tools in the arsenal of cybersecurity professionals.

In Microsoft’s own blog post on the matter they state that “We believe Forrester’s recognition showcases that Microsoft Defender XDR is the broadest native XDR solution on the market and that our most recent additions of Microsoft Defender for Cloud data and Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management data are critical to give the SOC access to end-to-end data. Its incident-level visibility, automatic attack disruption of advanced attacks, and accelerated detection and response now work across endpoints, Internet of Things (IoT), operational technology (OT), on-premises and cloud identities, email and collaboration tools, software as a service (SaaS) apps, cloud workloads, and data insights.”

“Microsoft is refining the most complete XDR offering in the market today, their dedication to innovation is demonstrated by its percentage of the R&D budget by revenue, which rivals the most innovative vendors in security.”

Forrester Wave Report: Q2 2024

Summary

Great to see Microsoft continue to innovate in this area, after Satya Nadella stated that they are “priotitising security above all else” in a recent report.

The recent report from Forrester does not of course mean that the other vendors in this report are no good. The familiar vendors such as Palo Alto, Crowdsrike continue to innovate in this space and the others are working hard to move up the quadrant.

Others to mention are Cisco who have moved into the Challengers Quadrant this year, following huge investments in thier Cisco Secure Cloud platform and their continued invenstment to bolster their security portfolio.

It is worth noting that XDR is just one of the security pillars reported on by Forrester and other leading analysts like Gartner.

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Microsoft are adding a Copilot for Copilot (well sort of).

Yesterday, (8th May, 24) Microsoft released their 2024 Work Trend Index Report which covered the State of AI at Work (you can see this here) as well as announcing some more improvements coming to Copilot for Microsoft 365 in the coming months.

The new features annouced are all aimed at helping to optimise prompt writing, making it easier for people to get a prompt that does what they need first time (a Copilot for Copilot essentially). These updates will include.

  • Auto-complete for prompts
  • Prompt re-write
  • A new catch up feature
  • Copilot Labs upgrade.

Let dive into these quickly. All. Images (c) Microsoft.

Auto Complete for Prompts

Copilot’s new “autocomplete” feature is similar to what you get in a search engine, where it will anticipate (using Machine Learning) what you are writing and help you to complete your prompt when you start typing one out.

Image (c) Microsoft

The aim here to suggesting more details to ensure you get the intended outcome. It will also offer an expanded library of ‘next prompts’.

This means if you start typing “summarise” then Copilot will display options to summarise the last 10 unread emails and chat messages or other tasks that might be related.

Prompt Rewrite

The “rewrite” feature is something that many image AI tools have had for a while. The aim is to be able to takes a person’s basic prompt rewrite it to me more thorough, “turning everyone into a prompt engineer,” according to the Microsoft.

Image (c) Microsoft

Also known as “elaborate your prompt”, Microsoft say this will be able to rewrite any prompts people create making it much easier to do more complex tasks especially when working with documents or ‘connected apps’.

Copilot Catch-up

Copilot Catch Up aims to start making Copilot more “proactive”. Here the chat interface will be able to presents people with “responsive recommendations” based on their recent activity. As an example, it will be able to notify you about upcoming meetings and suggest ways to help you prepare for that meeting, by bringing a summary of recent email and chat threads, meetings notes and documents write in the chat thread. This feature is also coming into Copilot in Outlook.

This feature brings Copilot more into the realms of good ol Clippy (ok I’m kidding here) but will enable Copilot to start proactively helping rather than waiting for its pilot to issue a command and bring the genie out of its lamp!

The aim is to further integrate Copilot into the user’s workflows. Imagine for example having a morning prompt that tells you about your day, tickets logged via Service Now, or a project that is over running (via Project or Planner) or has  completed early perhaps!

Updates to Copilot Labs

Similar to Microsoft app Prompt Buddy, Microsoft will also start to allow people to create, publish, and manage prompts in Copilot Lab.

Image (c) Microsoft

This will bring new features that that can be tailored for individual teams within businesses. This is aimed to make it a lot easier to share useful prompts for employees, Teams and departments to use.

Will these help adoption?

What do you think about the new updates, will these help remove the dark art of promoting and make Copilot easier to use and faster to help people get the desired results.?

Let me know on the comments..

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Introducing the new Surface IT Toolkit

The new Surface IT Toolkit which was officially released on April 25th 2024, promises to be a significant tool to help IT managing and optimise their coporate fleet of Surface devices.

We are excited to announce the Surface IT Toolkit, a modern desktop application that compiles essential commercial tools and streamlines the Surface device management experience for IT admins – all in a single application.

Microsoft.

Replacing an older mixture of admin tools, the refresh and centralising of these essential tools into a one application should simplify the deployment and management process, addressing the common challenge of using disparate tools across various locations and versions. This should greatly enhance efficiency and ease of use for IT admins.

What is in the Surface IT Toolkit?

The Surface Tool kit contains a number of new and updated apps. These are:

  • Data Eraser – Which is a NIST [Special Publication 800-88 Revision 1 NVM Express] compliant data erasure tool that also includes the ability to create certificates of sanitization for compliance and auditing. This is beneficial when repurposing, recycling, or retiring a device to guarantee that no sensitive data is left on it.
  • UEFI Configurator – enables IT to implement Surface Enterprise Management Mode (SEMM) UEFI configurations on Surface devices and peripherals such as Surface docks and other accessories. The UEFI configurator allows IT to efficiently and consistently manage and disable components at the firmware level. This enhances security and compliance by safeguarding against unauthorized modifications to device settings. For example it could be used to prevent the camera being used to comply with privacy in schools, or block USB ports being used to connect to external disks for data compliance.
  • Recovery Tool – This feature enables a full device reset, reverting it to its factory state for troubleshooting and re-building purposes. It also manages previously downloaded factory images for reuse, helping to resolve common issues and restore the device’s original performance. The latest update provides a new guided process and no longer requires the serial number to be entered. It also includes ability to build from new or build from an existing image.
  • Tool Library – The updated Tool Library houses the most recent versions of supplementary tools and installers for deployment to end users, offering IT descriptions of their functions and links to the most up-to-date documentation. This tools here include the Surface Asset Tag Tool, Surface Diagnostic Toolkit for Business, Surface Brightness Control Tool, among others.

Video: Install and using the Surface IT Toolkit

Here’s little video that shows the relevant webpages, installing the toolkit and first run experience and tools available.

Usng the Surface Tool Kit.

For more information from Microsoft on this – use the following link

How do I get the Surface IT Toolkit?

You can grab the IT Toolkit from Microsoft > here <.

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Microsoft 365 Copilot now available for everyone including CSP customers.

Today, 15th Jan 2024, Microsoft has announced that Copilot for Microsoft 365 is now available for organisations of all sizes and individuals with no seat minimum. Microsoft Copilot Pro was also announced for Microsoft 365 Personal and Family users.

Originally annouced in March 2023 and then hitting general availability for enterprises in November 2023 with a 300 seat minimum commitment.

Copilot for Microsoft 365 is Microsoft’s AI-powered productivity tool that uses/is based on the OpenAI ChatGPT 4 large language models (LLMs) and integrates your business data with the Microsoft Graph and Microsoft 365 Apps, working alongside employees core business apps such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and of course Microsoft Teams.

Copilot Pro and Copilot for Microsoft 365

Copilot for Microsoft 365 Business

Microsoft has today announced that Copilot for Microsoft 365 is now also generally available for small businesses with Microsoft 365 Business Premium and Business Standard licenses. What’s more, they can purchase between just one and three hundred (well 299) seats for $30 per person per month.

Copilot for Enterprise and Commercial with no minimum purchase

Microsoft has also removed the 300-seat purchase minimum for commercial plans and made Copilot available for Office 365 E3 and E5 customers.

Copilot for Microsoft 365 teaser video. (c) Microsoft

Commercial customers can now purchase Copilot for Microsoft 365 through Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider partners such as Cisilion.

Plus Copilot ‘Pro’ for individuals

Finally, Microsoft has also annouced Microsoft Copilot Pro which is aimed at comsumers/individuals.

Available “soon”, this is a subscription bolt on for Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscribers bringing the power of Copilot to everyone.

Unlike the free Copilot experience (available in Edge and Windows 11), Microsoft’s Pro version will serve as a “single AI experience” that runs across your devices and also works (like the version for Business) from within the Microsoft Office apps including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Microsoft 365.

Users will also get “priority access” to OpenAI’s latest AI model GPT-4 Turbo even during peak usage times and can also choose between different GPT models in a later update. Users also get enhanced AI image creation with Image Creator from Designer (formerly Bing Image Creator), with 100 boosts per day while bringing more detailed image quality as well as landscape image format.

Copilot Pro for Individuals. Video (c) Microsoft

Copilot Pro will also (soon) allow users to build their own Copilot GPT, a customised Copilot tailored for a specific topic, in the new Copilot GPT Builder with just a simple set of prompts.

People/families will be able to subscribe to Copilot Pro for $20 per month/per user.

You should still prepare though…

Whilst this makes it more attractive to organisations of all sizes and also helps organisations “test it out”, my worry is this will just be treated alike a product and as such organisations risk dabbling and not putting the effort in to making this a success.

My advice is to still follow the adoption and readiness guidelines around data protection, life cycle management and governance and security to ensure that Copilot gives the best results, provides real ROI and drives real outcomes. For now though the huge barrier to a pilot of Copilot is removed which in turn should help adoption, testing and business case development.

Adoption, training and change management is also super important..

The cover lots of this in my previous sets of blogs amd articles here.

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Prompt Engineering: AI prompts that punch!

What is an AI prompt?

Generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Google Bard and Microsoft Copilot in are becoming increasingly popular among developers, content creators and, now almost any and everyone with the release of Copilot Edge (formerly Bing Enterprise Chat) and of course, Copilot for Microsoft 365.

I often hear “of ChatGPT is better than XYZ or Copilot is better than ABC. The fact is, whilst these tools can yield incredible results, getting started can be challenging, and getting the prompt to do exactly what you “had in mind” takes practice – especially for those who are new to generative AI.

In this blog post, I provide some tips on how to work with generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Copilot, including how to write, and perfect, good AI prompts. Prompts are essentially instructions that are used to tell/ask the AI what you’d like it to do…

Understanding how Generative AI works

Generative AI chatbots use complex language models (LLMs), machine learning algorithms, internet data and organisational data (in the case of Microsoft Copilot) to generate text, create, summarise, rewrite or transform content, write code, generate images and even help people build low code workflows or model driven apps in Power Platform. These GenAI tools do this based on user input and context, known as “prompts”.

Whilst these tools are incredibly smart (having been trained on a decade of data, images, writing styles and even the works of Shakespeare, the results are not perfect and can sometimes generate inaccurate or irrelevant content, known as hallucinations.

These hallucinations are usually caused by a lack of understanding of the ask from the user, conflicting requests or poor data upon which they base their response. Remember these tools can access your company data (under the context of the user) and the web.

Writing good AI prompts – the ingredients

To get the best results from generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Copilot, it’s essential to write good AI prompts. Here are some AI 101 tips on what good AI prompts look like:

  • Be specific with the ask: Make sure you are being clear about what you want the AI model to do. The more specific you are, the better the AI model can understand your prompt and provide accurate results.
  • Avoid using ambiguous language: If what you ask could be interpreted in different ways, you may not get the result you hoped for. Be clear and concise in your prompt to avoid any confusion.
  • Provide context: this is crucial to ensure that the AI model understands the intent behind your prompt. The more context you provide, the better the AI model can understand your prompt.
  • Use simple language: that is easy for the AI model to understand. Avoid using complex words or phrases that the AI model may not be familiar with. Slang words are generally OK but take your time to read the prompt back to make sure it makes sense.
  • Take advantage of turns: A turn is essentially your response to the AI’s answer. You can use this to either rephrase your ask or to fine tune the response and is a good alternative to trying to write long complex prompts in one go.
  • Make it a conversation: Building on the above, think of how you might ask a human to help you with a task. You can use the “turns” to perfect the prompt and even ask the AI why it gave a particular answer or to explain something you don’t understand. This may feel unnatural at first but soon it’s just IM’ing a friend or co-worker.

Good and bad prompt examples

Here are some examples of good and bad AI prompts. Try these and see how you get along.

I’ve included a video which walks though these and shows the differneces in the results based on the prompts we gave. You’ll see we can be quite specific in what we want. The video also showcases how we can “perfect” our answers through additonal turns.

Goal: Create a product update for the Flux Capacitor 2

Bad prompt: “Create me a product update for the Flux Capacitor version 2”.

Good prompt: “Create me a product update for the Flux Capacitor version 2. This is a fictional product, based on the original flux capacitor used in the film Back to the Future 2. Make up some new improvements that the Flux Capacitor V2 could have over the first version. Be creative with improvements.”

Write a product brief in Copilot.

Explanation – the second prompt is better because we have firstly provided context of the ask (this is a fictional product), been specific with the ask (we have told it what we expect).

Goal: Create a Lego avatar of yourself

For this, I am using Microsoft Designer Image creator.

Bad prompt: A picture of a person with brown hair as a Lego man.

Good prompts: A person with short dark brown hair, wearing a tuxedo and holding a glass of champagne sitting on a chair outside a large country house on a cold dusk evening in the summer. Lego Style, illustration, 3d rendered.

Explanation: The second prompt is better (well depending on what we want) because again we have given specific asks about what we want, been specific with the ask, provided some context about what we want to produce and described the image we want.

Goal: Write a story about a dog called Benji

Bad prompt: Write a story about a dog named Benji

Good prompt: Write a story about a dog name Benji. Benji a small puppy and lives a family with four people including two young children called Jack and Jill. Benji is a lazy dog but discovers a passion for going for walks to train stations and barking at trains. Creative Style writing.

Explanation – the second prompt is better because we have firstly provided context of the story we would like and have also given a background to the story. We have guided the AI to how we’d like the story to flow and then left it to the AI to write. We have also specified a mode we want it in “be creative”. We can use another “turn” to make the story shorter or to write a catchy title for the story.

Goal: Extract key information from a document

Note: For this example, I am using a document here: Energy Consumption in the UK 2023 (publishing.service.gov.uk). I have opened this page in Microsoft Edge and am using Copilot in Edge to ask about the document.

Bad Prompt: Tell me about this document.

Good Prompt: Read this document and create a table that shows the main energy usage across different key areas in order of highest to lowest. Also provide a short commentary after the table that describes more about these areas and whether these are increasing over time or reducing.

Using Copilot in Edge to discuss and extract data from a document.

Explanation: the first prompt simply creates a summary of the document. This is useful (try it), but we haven’t told it what we actually want to see (which might be fine) and usually we have a specific thing we are looking for when we analyse a document. The second prompt is much more specific. It gives the AI clear direction (specific ask) about what we want and how we want the data presented.

Perfecting your “Prompts”

Writing good AI prompts is just the first step in working with generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Copilot. To get the best results, you need to perfect your prompts over time and practice. Don’t think of it as a chore. Enjoy it as you learn… You’ll soon become a pro.

Here’s my tips on how to perfect your AI prompts:

  • Timing: I find it best to think of a task you need to perform and use a real example to see if you can get what you need. As an example, if I’m doing a customer demo on AI, I tend to use an example relevant to organisation I am working with and make the request about them (or make up a scenario specific to them).
  • Experiment: Don’t be afraid to experiment with different prompts and see what works best. Try different variations of your prompts and see which ones generate the best results.
  • Adapt: Generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Copilot are constantly evolving and improving, so it’s essential to adapt your prompts to keep up with the latest changes. This also means the result you get from the same prompt may change a week or month later. The data it’s referencing may also change.
  • Enjoy the learning experience: Working with generative AI tools can be challenging, but it can also be a lot of fun. Enjoy the learning experience and don’t be afraid to try new things.
  • Use image creation as a fun way to learn whilst text-based requests are usually caused hat we need to do, practicing on image creation using something like Microsoft Designer is great fun and people tend to share their prompts on social media… Here is an example of one I shared.
Bing Image Creator in Designer.

Conclusion

Working with generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Copilot can be challenging, but it can also be rewarding. By following the tips outlined in this blog post, you can write and perfect good AI prompts that generate accurate and useful results. Remember to experiment, adapt, and enjoy the learning experience.

With practice, anyone can become proficient in working with generative AI tools.

The video I have included hopefully provides more context – feel free to follow along in Copilot in Edge or ChatGPT

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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.
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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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: https://robquickenden.blog/2023/08/microsoft365copilot-5keythings/

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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.

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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
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