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)
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
Question
What we know
Source
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 yet
May 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.
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 NotesButton 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
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 vsAzure 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
Procure some licenses from your partner or Microsoft direct
Configure Windows 365 from Intune
Configure the on-premises network connection
Create Security Group for Cloud PC users
Assign a Cloud PC license to your users (or at group level)
Create a Provisioning Policy
Configure Hybrid Azure AD Join or Native Azure AD Join
Create or assign a custom or stock image
Enable and configure updates for Windows 365 (you can even use Autopatch)
Assign users to the group created in step 5
get the user to download the Windows 365 App or connect via a browser at
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 baddigital 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?
Do you have employee experience issues due to lack of Internet, WAN or SaaS visibility?
How do you know your Content Delivery Provider is serving your content quickly and consistently whether users at home or in the office?
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?
Does your IT help desk struggle to add value and provide answers to users experience issue with SaaS applications?
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.
Webex Contact Center is an Enterprise Class CCaaS solution that enables skill-based routing of inbound “call centre” type calls and is designed to provide a seamless end-to-end customer service experience across voice, chat, email, and social media channels.
This is great for organisations, Microsoft, Cisco, and solution partners.
Great for Organisations
The Webex Contact Center Integration for Microsoft Teams combines rich omni-channel customer engagement capabilities with Microsoft Teams to break down barriers between contact center agents and the enterprise.
Whilst the CCaaS space in Teams is already quite well served by other vendors such as Luware, Anywhere 365, and Enghouse, Cisco Webex Contact Centre is a true Enterprise Class Contact Centre, trusted by many of the world largest enterprise organisations including EasyJet for example.
Some organisations who have been keen to fully embrace the potential of Microsoft Teams have often found themselves compromising on alternative “certified” CCaaS platforms. They can now have the best of both in a fully supported environment.
Great for Microsoft
In short this helps them protect their install base, since Microsoft certainly does not want to see their competition like Zoom, RingCentral, or Google muscle into their accounts base on the strength of their CCaaS offerings. By working with Cisco (as they are also doing in the Meeting Room space) they can now work more strategically together since Cisco and Microsoft already share around 90% of the same customer base.!
Adds a truly enterprise class CCaaS platform into the Teams ecosystem
Will further strengthen the partnership and collaboration between Microsoft and Cisco, the two leading technology companies that offer complementary solutions increasing the overall value proposition to their shared customer base.
Helps Microsoft expands the market reach of Microsoft Teams, which is already boasts more than with 280 million monthly users without (less) fear of losing market share to Cisco.
For organisations who require the best CCaaS solutions without compromising or mixing their collaboration and productivity tools, they leverage Cisco Webex Contact Centre without disrupting the flow of work for loyal Teams users with a seamless and integrated CCaaS solution from Cisco.
Great for Cisco
For Cisco this enables them to compete less and instead offer enterprise CCaaS services to their existing customer base who have been migrating or plan to migrate their UC platform to Microsoft Teams. Rather than risk losing out on the Contact Centre solution, Cisco can now meet their customers on their “turf“, providing the Contact Centre and CX solutions their customers need on their collaboration and productivity platform of choice whether that is Webex or Microsoft Teams.
Great for Microsoft and Cisco Partners
OK, so a little plug here for Cisilion (my employer), but for us (and therefore for me personally) I am excited about this because this brings an immense opportunity for Cisilion to leverage our unique position in our Cisco and Microsoft partnerships expertise and capability which will hugely benefit the services and solutions we can deliver to our clients.
As a Microsoft Teams specialist partner and Cisco Master Collaboration partner in the we are now empowered to deliver the best in enterprise CCaaS solutions to our customers alongside their choice of wider collaboration and productivity tools whether that is Cisco CUCM, Cisco Webex, or Microsoft Teams.
It helps us to attract and retain customers who are looking for a seamless and reliable customer service experience across multiple channels without having to shift partner due to technology choice changes.
It enables us to strengthen our deep partnerships and experience with enterprise class calling, meetings, platform and contact centres solutions across the two leading trusted technology providers.
Extends our ability to provide end-to-end design, implementation, integration, support and manged services across Cisco and Microsoft Collaboration solutions.
Enables us to provide cost and operational efficiencies both internally and to our customers.
Cisco Webex Contact Centre for Teams
The key outcomes that Webex CCaaS provides when integrated with Teams includes:
For the first time, brings a Unified calling platform between Cisco Webex Contact Centre and the organisations Microsoft Teams environment.
Allows for improved cross-function collaboration, knowledge sharing, and Customer Experience reporting among agents, supervisors, and other Teams users.
Advanced intelligent skill-based routing and queuing, which means customers can reach the right agent faster and more efficiently.
Providing a full and seamless customer service experience across voice, chat, email, and social media channels.
Delivers the core functionalities that high-performing multi-disciplined customer service teams require, such as call recording, voicemail, auto attendant, intelligent AI powered chat services, call back and rich social media integration.
Includes next-generation end-to-end Cisco security for Enterprise Class data protection and privacy in combination with that provided across the Microsoft 365 Security suite.
Brings exceptional management and supervisory controls and actional insights over “customer call handling”, with features like call analytics, call quality management, sentiment analysis, call control and full customer Lifecycle management.
Find out more
For more information about the announcement please see the following links.
The Yealink DeskVision A24 is a revolutionary all-in-one collaboration device that blends the best of innovate monitor and UC hub with a leading class Android powered Teams Collaboration display that can be used as a personal device, huddle or bookable meeting endpoint. The Yealink DeskVision A24 is a leading example of innovation in this space, integrating a 24 inch 4K touch-display, “pop-up” privacy camera, high definition speaker, wireless charging, microphones, and touch screen monitor to offer a best-in-class desktop collaboration experience.
if you’d rather skip to the video review – you can do so here:
The device costs £1,699 RRP which is great value compared to the competition on the market and adds to the huge line up of premium Teams and Zoom certified devices that they have to offer.
Yealink A24 DeskVision
Innovative, Sleek and Beautifully crafted
What I love about this device that sets it aside, IMO, to other devices in this space, is that the display can be positioned from 90 degree vertical to almost horizonal with it’s smooth arm, in motion very similar to that of the Surface Studio. This makes it idea for Whiteboard use as a second screen [though if it supported use of a Surface Pen that would make it even more awesome].
Yealink A24 DeskView in lay flat position
This is a really premium device – good quality, sturdy and functional. The look and feel is clean and minimalist and offers seamless switching between “Teams” mode and Second Screen mode. The movement of the device is also sleek and simple, offering full range of motion from vertical to almost horizonal making it perfect for different uses such as meetings, whiteboarding and collaborative apps – this is made possible through the unique light hinge designed to enable the screen to be tilted as needed in a very “Surface Studio” like design.
Using the A24 as a second screen (with touch).
For added usability, there’s also lot of ports to plug peripherals into allowing it to serves as a UC workstation complete with a USB hub (which could power and charge my Surface Pro) and wireless charger for smartphones.
Yealink A24 DeskVision rear
Yealink DeskVision A24 Key Features
Microsoft Teams Display running Android 10
Dual Display Mode (Teams Display and second screen)
Superior audio and video
Qi wireless charging for mobile phones etc
Touchscreen for whiteboard collaboration
Ports include 2x USB C (65w charge), USB C, Ethernet, headphone jack, HMDI In,
Wireless Connectivity
Bluetooth.
Leaders of the pack
At the launch of the device, Albert Kooiman, Director of Microsoft Teams Devices Partner Engineering and Certification said “Yealink consistently keeps expanding their portfolio with powerful Teams devices. These devices will offer sought after hybrid workplace collaboration experiences, delivering a great meeting experience combining quality Teams audio, video, and touch and inking, that can all be easily deployed across personal, hot desking and meeting rooms scenarios.”
As of Feb 2023, Yealink are the global market leader for Teams Rooms devices with a market share of [Source: Yealink].
Summary and Verdict
In short, Yealink’s DeskVision device is a great device that really can help bridge the gap between whiteboard collaboration and video conferencing device that can also serve as a really premium second-screen.
Through customer demos, feedback in the channel and colleagues, the A24 is real market leader in this (rather crowded vendor and product space) and delivers real people-centric meeting experiences and empowering meetings with all the capabilities and power of Microsoft Teams.
The device costs £1,699 RRP which is great value compared to the competition on the market.
I recently found an old RM Tablet PC from my days working as a Solution Architect at RM Education. After powering it up (it still worked), I decided it was time to write a back dated review of the device (which was powered by Windows XP Tablet PC Edition) that in my opinion, introduced and innovated the touch and Tablet centric world we are now so familiar with.
Education First XP Tablet Edition
In 2002, under the leadership of CEO Tim Pearson, RM Educationbecame the education launch partner for not only a new class of device that we now just take for granted. These devices ignited and innovated not just the education sector, but future waves of tablet and touch devices across, not just Windows based devices, but through to Apple, Amazon and Google.
Windows XP Tablet PC Edition was an edition of Windows XP built exclusively for this new era of Tablet PC computers with pen-sensitive screens, which was released on 7 November 2002. More on this later.
RM Plc Original Tablet PC (2002)
Windows XP Tablet Edition was full a windows XPs but also included various tools and accessories that could be used with a pen and included apps such as Windows Journal, InkBall, Sticky Notes, Office XP and Tablet PC Input Panel.
Microsoft also released an major update to the OS, Version 2005 (codenamed Lonestar)a couple of years later in August 2004 and both an OEM version and as a service pack update for the original Windows XP Tablet PC Edition.
Who was it for?
The RM Tablet PC saw three iterations – the original (pictured above) and an updated version a couple of years later and then the RM discovery tablet after that. These marked an evolution and true innovation in mobile computing world at the time – providing an entirely new interface and method of working that was natural, flexible and highly effective.
The innovative ‘slate’ design (totally unique at the time) focussed on leveraging the full power of a PC (Intel Celeron or Pentium M processors) into an ultra-portable device. There was no need for a keyboard and mouse – (though it of course supported it) and controlling the desktop was achieved through a pen used directly onto the screen, which incorporates the convenient and intuitive aspects of pen and paper into a radical new technology, along with new paper like apps like Microsoft Journal and the debut of Microsoft OneNote.
RM Tablet was build for educators and learners
In 2002 (wow.. that’s twenty one years ago) were the education launch partner for Windows XP Tablet and had built a tough, education focussed touch device that fitted well into the classroom (along with charging trollies to let teachers hand them out to students on a one to one ratio).
The RM tablets took mobile tablet computing way beyond standard laptops and current pen computing devices of their time, such as PDAs, by delivering a full Microsoft Windows XP Professional powered device that could be used either on or off the network (with 802.11b wireless) just like a notebook or standard PC. In fact, the RM Tablet PC exceeded existing PC hardware by utilising Microsoft’s most advanced operating system (at the time) with a version of XP enhanced specifically for touch and pen. RM also bundled their whole class teaching tools like Easy Teach worked a treat as teachers were already familiar with the software.
This was a real differentiator to just another laptop (RM Education used to manufacturer their own devices here in the UK in Abingdon, Oxford). Windows XP Tablet PC Edition included all the tools needed to effectively use the pen and touch through the OS, as well as many additional functions, including the added ability to annotate directly onto documents and text using ‘Digital Ink’. This is not to underestimated in terms of its innovation and revelance today. Digital Ink was the cornerstone of this now daily use technology, but at the time was a revolutionary new approach used across tablets, phones and covertable devices like Surface Pro.
This brought huge advantages to the classroom, and in my time working with Schools and Colleges back then, I witnessed 2005 some of the enormous impact it could bring, such as enabling students to use pen and ink in a digitial canvas with all the other benefits of word processing etc not taken away. Teachers used it for notes, printed onto whiteboards, removing the need for clunky overhead projectors that used to dominate classrooms.
IMO, there is no doubt that the RM Tablet PC opened up many possibilities for teaching and learning in ways that simply didn’t previously currently exist.
Life after Windows XP Tablet Edition
In many ways, as Microsoft often do, Windows XP Tablet Edition, set the groundwork and lot a fire for much of the next 10 years or so of innovation in touch and Tablet development which Apple, Google and Microsoft now dominate in their own ways.
With the release of Windows Vista in 2006, all Tablet PC components were then natively included with the OS itself without the need of a separate edition. This marked the start of the Tablet PC era from Microsoft which aimed to bring the best of touch and pen to traditional Windows devices without the need for a separate OS or dedicated apps.
Winding forward to today, 2023, tablet devices and 2-in1s dominate the workplace, front line workers, our personal lives, education and more. Apple have gone the route of dedicated tablets (with keyboards in some cases), whereas Microsoft have stuck by the original ethos that XP Tablet Edition started with touch and ink now firmly dynamically embedded within the Windows OS.
Did you know? : Windows Vista (which was seen as a failure in the eyes of many following the success of XP and the early teething and stability issues of Vista) was the seventh operating system in the Windows NT operating system lineup and was the version succeeding Windows XP and preceding Windows 7. It was the only version of Windows to later support upgrade paths from Windows XP and to Windows 7
With ISE 23 kicking off this week in Barcelona, the UC world will no doubt be excited to see the developments, fruition and live demos of Cisco tech running Microsoft Teams.
This is significant for several reasons. Of course, Microsoft can run Webex, Zoom, RingCentral, and others from within Teams and many of the Teams hardware from Yealink, Poly, Logi etc can also run both Zoom and Teams on the same hard hardware, but this requires a reboot of the hardware causing a less than slick experience.
Is Cisco Rooms on Teams the beginning of a bigger plan?
What Cisco and Microsoft have done differently is that with this partnership, Cisco devices will not only run Webex or Teams, but the Cisco Meeting room kit will be able to do this seemlessly withoutareboot.
Cisco Room Kit running Microsoft Team
It will be interesting to see if any other Annoucements this week suggest that other Teams & Zoom meeting room kit will be lookimg to do the same!
Why is this significant?
The big questions is why would Microsoft find value in this after all Microsoft now has close to 300 million monthly active users and is the clear leader in is this space which it continues to innovate with new services and revenue streams expected from the recent launch of Teams Room Pro and Teams Premium.
According to analysts, Cisco and Microsoft share close to 90 percent of the same customers. Not necessarily in the collaboration space but across the board. Where that is Cisco’s networking business or Call Manager or Webex, Security or indeed their Contact Contact centre (which is soon to be certified for Teams.)
Most organisations like the idea of a smaller number of vendors to work with and if they can standardise on Cisco and Microsoft for their meeting room technology (since Microsoft don’t make the hardware for their Teams Rooms), this could be a big advantage.
For Cisco, this also means that they don’t loose the hardware and maintainance on their room systems should their Webex customer base decide to move partly or in full to Microsoft Teams.
For Microsoft, I think this also means bringing Cisco in as more of an advocacy – protecting both their install bases from their joint competition in this collaboration and voice space – Zoom, Google and RingCentral…vendors both Cisco and Microsoft do not want to see penetrate or weave into their account base.
Is this really about CPaaS?
Cisco is betting heavily on the success of its redefined Contact Centre solution Webex Contact Centre which could become a real significant player in the CCaaS space for Teams users and not just Webex customers.
Since the partnership was announced at Ignite, just before Xmas, much of Cisco messaging has been around adding value to Teams rather than replacing it (though Cisco hope of course customers will still invest in Webex). The focus of much of the marketing is around making the user experience on Teams better by using Cisco technology.
Here’s where CPaaS comes in. This partnership with Microsoft is also a great opportunity for Cisco to leverage its broader UC portfolio to add their Webex Contact Center natively into Team, attacking the plethora and crowded market of Teams certified contact centres such as Luware, Anywhere 365 and Enghouse.
Organisations with Teams, looking to replace their contact centre solutions are continually looking at Teams Certified solutions.
The Cisco Webex Contact Centre is already a highly-regarded CCaaS solution, soon to be certified by Microsoft for Teams (maybe as soon as this week?).
Cisco Webex CC on Garner Magic Quadrant 2022
Cisco and Microsoft – Better together?
Only time will tell.. If the plan plays off Cisco should certainly be able to capitalise on market growth and their reputation and proven success in the CCaaS space. If they can secure Webex as the CPaaS of choice for Teams, this could significantly reverse the declining marketshare that Cisco has been suffering of late.
This will also help Microsoft block their other completion and prevent players like Zoom getting into their accounts. Together Cisco and Microsoft should be able to protect their join customer base making it harder for other UC vendors to eat their share.
Who might loose out to this partnership?
The Teams Room space is already well served by flexible, innovate solutions from the likes of Yealink, Poly, Neat and Logitech etc. For Teams organizations already invested in these brands, I see them sticking, but customers moving from Cisco to Teams now have the ability to reduce cost, maintain ‘brand’ and leverage thier investment and partnership with Cisco with less disruption, upheaval and change.
The CPaaS providers that develop Teams certified contact centres may be most worried by this partnership, since Cisco will now able to compete in their space which, whilst already crowded, lacks many true enterprise grade solutions like Cisco have.
This week I was delighted to be re-awarded as a Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP) for the 5th year running, but what does it mean and why am so thrilled to be rewarded?
What are MVPs?
Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals, or MVPs, are “technology experts who passionately share their knowledge with the community”. They are always on the “bleeding edge” and have an unstoppable urge to get their hands on new, exciting technologies. MVPs have deep knowledge of Microsoft products and services, while also being able to bring together diverse platforms, products and solutions, to solve real world problems. MVPs make up a global community of over 4,000 technical experts and community leaders across 90 countries/regions and are driven by their passion, community spirit, and quest for knowledge. Above all and in addition to this, part of the “role” of the MVPs is our passion and desire to help others. For Microsoft, this is what sets MVPs apart, through formal product feedback, community events, forums, blogs, reviews etc and of course through social channels our mission is to drive awareness, adoption, constructive feedback, ideas and suggestions to help continually improve Microsoft products and services.
What is the MVP Award?
For more than two decades, the Microsoft MVP Award has been Microsofts’ way of saying thank you to community leaders within in their MVP catagory. The contributions MVPs make to the community, ranging from speaking engagements, to social media posts, to writing books, to helping others in online communities, have incredible impact.
As MVPs, we receive a number of technical benefits from Microsoft to help be the best at supporting our passion for technology and innovation. Key benefits to MVPs include early access to Microsoft products, direct communication channels with our product teams and an invitation to the Global MVP Summit, an exclusive annual event hosted in our global HQ in Redmond. They also have a very close relationship with the local Microsoft teams in their area, who are there to support and empower MVPs to address needs and opportunities in the local ecosystem. Other benefits include an executive recognition letter, a Visual Studio technical subscription, and an Office 365 subscription.
The Windows Insider Most Valuable Professional
The Windows Insider Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award recognises people who are passionate about Windows and are positive Windows advocates within their communities. Like other MVPs, we can be found across the globe and are driven by a passion for flighting Insider Preview builds and filing feedback to help improve the current and future generations of Windows, contributing to the technical community through forums, chats with the Windows product team and creating how-to content with the goal of helping others achieve more and making Windows the OS of choice for every person and every organisation.
I have been a Windows Insider for 11 years and seen the development and evolution of Windows 10 and Windows 11 and Windows Insiders are now looking at what comes next after the current release (Windows 11 22H2) release. As new devices and new form factors are being tested, I’m excited by what 2023 and beyond will bring to Windows.
As I look forward to 2023, the main topics of interest, content and testing for me that I will explore, showcase and blog will include:
Continuing to test, drive and promote some of the awesome accessibly features that span across the Windows 11 OS
Tracking and reporting on Windows Insider and production releases, updates, issues and fixes for Windows 11 and Windows vNext
Evalusations and reviews of the latest Microsoft hardware such as the Surface devices, accessiblity devices and peripherals building for Windows 11 and Windows 365
Dive deeper into Security features across Windows consumer, professional and enterprise editions and into the realms of Windows 365 (Cloud PC) and Microsoft 365
Report on my other observations and ruminations on Windows technology, changes and developments and do my best to respond to comments or asks from the community,
Increase my contributions to the windows communities and in-person events.
In what Microsoft call “price harmonisation”, it has been confirmed that Microsoft will be aligning the pricing of their Cloud products and services (for example Microsoft 365) by introducing consistent global pricing for its services across the globe. For many regions, such as the UK and EU, this means price rises as the dollar has continued to fall in recent years again the Euro and Pound.
What and why are prices changing?
Microsoft are aligning costs (like they do today with Azure) to US dollar FX rates which means that customers will have consistent pricing reflected by the exchange rate of the local currency to the US dollar (USD), which is reviewed twice a year.
While a price increase is never well received, it is worth noting that this latest increase relates to their commercial cloud products such as Microsoft 365. Azure is already priced by on regional FX rates and is not affected by this announcement. Microsoft are simply aligning their commercial pricing in line with their competition and their other cloud services.
Countries that use the Great British Pound (GBP), the Danish Krone (DKK), the Euro (EUR), the Norwegian Krone (NOK), and the Swedish Krona (SEK) will all see a price increase from April 1, 2023.
“In the future, Microsoft will assess pricing in local currency as part of a regular twice-a-year cadence, taking into consideration currency fluctuations relative to the USD.
This will provide increased transparency and predictability for customers globally and move to a pricing model that is most common in our industry.
The Microsoft Cloud continues to be priced competitively, and Microsoft remains deeply committed to the success of its customers and partners.”
Microsoft
How much are prices increasing by?
Microsoft has confirmed that the price increase for the following currencies will be:
GBP: +9%
DKK, EUR and NOK: +11%
SEK: +15%
Microsoft have said they are committed to continuing to invest in their cloud services to “enable customers to innovate, consolidate and eliminate operating costs”.
Thoughts and Actions
While a price increase is never well received, it is worth noting that this latest increase relates to their commercial cloud products such as Microsoft 365. Azure is already priced by on regional FX rates and is not affected by this announcement. Microsoft are simply aligning their commercial pricing in line with their competition and their other cloud services.
This therefore represents a good time for organisations to do some “house keeping” to keep licenses and costs in check. For example:
Check 3rd party duplicate products you can displace (and use the services included in your Microsoft 365 subscription)
Check if you need the tier of license you are using. Would Microsoft 365 E3 deliver what you need? Do you need the same licenses for everyone?
Ensure you leverage Fast Track services or your partner to help you adopt and get best value of your investment in Microsoft Cloud
Speak to your licensing provider or Cloud Solution Provider to ensure you get the best commercial costs
Windows 365 now supports (Dec 2022) the creating of Azure AD Cloud PCs that use single sign-on. Previously this required a dual-sign in step.
This is a big improvement, and now means users only have to logon once to the Windows 365 Cloud PC app – from here on in, their CloudPC desktops will seamlessly sign-in (subject to any specific conditional access polices you may have applied of course.) It even works with passwordless sign-on . You can see the user experience below.
Windows 365 Cloud PC SSO Demo
Enabling the SSO setting
To enable SSO, administrators can update their existing Cloud PC provisioning profiles or create new Cloud PC policy with the “single sign on” setting enabled.
Enabling SSO for Windows 365 Cloud PC
Note: Existing Cloud PCs will not automatically support SSO – these will need to be re-provisioned, which can be done from the device pane in endpoint manager as show below.
As tech vendors continue to modernise and revamp their partner programmes to better align with the pace of technology, changing needs of their customers, demands around hybrid work and the continual digital transformation acceleration, Cisco have recently added six new solution specialisations which aim to further build and support their partner competitiveness as well as recognise and reward partners with specific expertise and capability.
Image (c) Cisco
The six new specialisations are tied to Cisco customer priorities and represent fast-growing market opportunities for Cisco and its partners in areas where Cisco has been investing and innovating. These are heavily focussed around Hybrid Cloud and Hybrid Work and the solutions that enable these.
Cisco’s Solution Specialisations
The new solution specialisations are one of the four categoriesof partner specialisations available to qualified Cisco partners, like Cisilion to demonstrate their expertise to customers, including:
Architecture specialisations: demonstrate product expertise in specific technology areas.
Solution specialisations: demonstrate that a partner excels at delivering value with Cisco solutions, including cross-architectural offers prioritized by customers.
Cisco Powered Service specialisations: convey partner proficiency in delivering managed services and as-a-service offers.
Business specialisations: focused on horizontal business practices that are essential to supporting customers’ business goals.
Partners that achieve solution specialisations are recognised and rewarded based on the value delivered to customers. The requirements for each specialisation are tied to knowledge and experience, allowing partners to capitalize on their existing investments with Cisco.
The relevance of the new Solution Specialisations
Cisco say their solution specialisations are designed to “showcase partner value to customers and represent the type of solutions partners are selling today“. These specialisations (which are not simple to earn and retain), reflect how Cisco partners, like Cisilion, are using cross-architectural solutions to solve their customers’ biggest challenges (such as how to address the challenges or hybrid work) rather than just simply selling and deploying technology products. Cisco say that “the specialisations are awarded to partners that can demonstrate how they are working collaboratively with Cisco to help solve customer challenges such as balancing an organisation’s security needs with the flexibility employees want, providing the best digital experience or consistently delivering a secure user experience from anywhere.“
Specialisation is ranked number one as the initial critical partner selection criterion for 74 percent of customers. By tying solution specialisations to customer buying criteria, Cisco makes it easier for customers to identify which partners to work with.
Full-stack Observability (FSO): Which highlights partners expertise in centralising and correlating application performance analytics across the full IT stack. This includes integrations across Cisco’s AppDynamics, Thousand Eyes, Intersight, and Secure Application. Partners with this specialisation can demonstrates expertise in prioritising actions to deliver superior customer experiences, drive revenue streams, and accelerate digital transformation for their customers.
Hybrid Work from Office: Which recognises partners for their skills and experience helping customers evolve traditional on-site and off-site work models, with solutions that power hybrid work, enabling people to work safely and securely from home, the office, and anywhere in between on any given day or time.
Secure Access Service Edge (SASE): Which highlights partners’ ability to help their customers to securely enable the growing universe of roaming users, devices, and software-as-a-service (SaaS) apps without adding complexity or reducing end-user performance.
Hybrid Cloud Computing: Showcases partners that provide customers with simple, secure hybrid cloud computing experiences at home, in the office, or anywhere.
Hybrid Cloud Networking: Recognises partners that securely and efficiently connect and manage customers’ data, workloads, and applications across data centres, edge, and multiple clouds.
Hybrid Cloud Software: Demonstrates expertise in managing operational complexity by helping customers streamline and unify IT operations with secure, hybrid cloud management software.
Benefits for Customers and Partners
The main benefit is that this approach takes away from an old-skool technology/product sell that was all about speeds, feeds, features, and cost, and instead encourages partners to have more meaningful “outcome-based conversation“. Cisco say this should help partners do what they do best – having a more “unified solution strategy” conversation with customers where technologies integrate and work together to provide solutions that are better than the sum of the parts.
Examples of this include the alignment between Cisco’s Webex video, calling and meeting services, the network infrastructure layer, the edge, and the Internet with integrated full stack visibility across these layers to ensure the best user experience whilst simplifying IT operations through management and support.
Cisco’s Desk Camera 4K camera is small, powerful and full of AI features (if you use Cisco Webex) and is also now officially certified for Microsoft Teams.
Cisco is no stranger to making high quality audio and video devices for video conferencing on their Webex platform – but with their partnership with Microsoft around building devices “made” or “certified” for Microsoft Teams a bunch of premium devices now have another route to market.
I’m lucky to have both the new Cisco Desk Camera 4K and Cisco WS-720 series headset which has recently been certified for Teams and even has the Microsoft Teams “button” on the earcup. The Cisco Webex variant has a Webex button.
This is a review of the Cisco Desk Camera 4K.
Cisco Desk Camera 4K
Cisco Webex Desk Camera 4K
The Cisco Desk Camera 4K, is a premium USB web camera for video conferencing, video streaming, and video recording. The camera provides up to 4K Ultra HD at 60 FFS video and features high-definition audio along with dual microphone for great audio pick-up on all your video meetings or streaming and is certified for Cisco Webex and also Microsoft Teams.
The HD camera comes with a range of features to make meetings from anywhere feel more professional and well-managed, including autofocus, low light management, and a custom field of view to suit your office demands. The system also works seamlessly with the Cisco Webex collaboration environment as well as now Microsoft Teams though there isn’t really anything it does in Teams that any high-quality webcam can’t do.
This is a high quality, premium device – features include:
4K Ultra HD camera quality (Windows Hello®️ Certified)
Two built-in microphones
Support for 30FFS and 60 FPS
13MP image sensor
Automatic focus adjustment
Adjustable field of view
Multiple pre-sets (controlled via Cisco Desk Camera App)
Built-in background noise reduction
Physical Privacy shutter
Digital zoom and correction controls
USB plug-and-play functionality
Clip mounting for easy setup
Cisco Webex Certified
Microsoft Teams Certified
Whilst certified for Webex and Microsoft Teams, the Desk Camera can of course be used with any video conferencing aps or streaming services and works nicely as on Xbox! The fast autofocus, face detection (where supported by the apps) and 10x digital zoom really help to enhance the video experience for your remote attendees.
Getting set up
To get started on Windows devices, set-up is as simple as plugging it via USB-C or USB-A with the supplied cables (Cisco provide both in the box for good measure).
The camera itself has an adjustable clip with a tripod screw thread offers mounting flexibility on a laptop, an external display, a tripod, or a desk stand in various open office spaces, huddle rooms, and home offices.
It is a shame there is no carry pouch for the camera though to stop it getting dirty or scratch when travelling.
To customise and configure the device beyond the factory standards, you need to install the Cisco Desk Camera app.
Install the Webex Desk Camera App
The Cisco Webex Desk Camera App provides a host of controls to change all aspects of the device as well as manage firmware updates, which mine was eager to update once connecting to the software. You don’t need to install it to use the camera, but it if you want to change the settings and manage the hardware then you need to!
Within the app it is possible to camera, image and microphone settings such as camera zoom levels (and pre-sets), field of view, auto focus settings and even framerate and resolution.
The Cisco Desk Camera app works with the camera and allows you to record videos, take snapshots, customise the camera settings, and upgrade the firmware.
Using Desk Camera 4K within Teams meetings
As expected, the quality and sharpness of both audio and video within Teams was good. to evaluate this of course I had to seek feedback from remote colleagues which was positive. By that, my video image was clear and sharp – even when sat across the other side of the room with the camera zoomed in. Even 3m away from the camera (which I wouldn’t do when working at home), video and audio pick up was good. It is nice to have such high-quality mics in a webcam – great if you have a more “budget” laptop without premium mics.
Despite the camera supporting 4K, most video meetings services (including Microsoft Teams) only support 1080p. To test the video quality, I move to the back of my office and zoomed the camera in (around 3m). The image quality was pretty good (seeing as this isn’t a room camera. Unfortunately, Microsoft Teams itself doesn’t currently have people tracking or auto-zoom so I had to manually zoom the camera using the Desk Camera app.
You can see the video quality at both close and zoomed in the images below from a Microsoft Teams call.
Close up (left) and 3m (ish) zoom (right)
Using Desk Camera 4K within Webex
The Desk Camera 4K really comes to life in Cisco Webex. Webex provides full access to device controls and settings directly via the app (as well of course within the Camera app). Within Webex, you get access to various settings from within the app.
Webex Video Controls (in app).
Device Management
Cisco have ensured that managing an army of Cisco desk cameras is simple, with integrations with the Webex Control Hub which allows for easier remote management. Today, no such controls exist within the Microsoft Teams Admin console for managing Teams webcams – though I have not tried adding the camera to a Teams MTR to see what I can do here.
The Microsoft Teams client offers limited controls over camera features and settings other than the ability to change basic controls – for everything else, you need to use the Webex Desk Pro camera app.
Webex on the other hand, provides more controls for their intelligent hardware. It will be interesting to see if some of this makes its way into Microsoft Teams since a large part of the partnership between Cisco and Microsoft is also around sharing best practice across the leading eco systems. Cisco also allow you to access advanced camera controls directly from the Webex app meetings app – which is really useful.
Verdict: Why buy the Cisco Webex Desk Camera?
With the many different options available out there for professional webcams then the Cisco Desk Camera 4K is definitely one to consider. This is no is a state-of-the-art webcam solution created for business users (or serious vloggers) who want to ensure they have the best possible video quality in meetings or when streaming video. The Desk Camera 4K is really small and compact too so easy to mount on your home monitor or perch over your laptop lid if you need to. It also supports up to 60 frames per second.
As a USB powered device, this camera is ideal for hybrid work (if you have a cheaper laptop with poor webcam). Whilst certified for Cisco Webex and Microsoft Teams, it can of course be used with video conferencing or streaming tool (as long as it’s supported by the OS).
The camera also supports Windows Hello®️ for business for passwordless and secure sign-on for Windows 10 and Windows 11.
When used with Cisco Webex, you also get access to smart AI enhancements such as facial recognition, tracking, auto adjustment, and more – so if you are a serious Webex user, this is definitely a webcam you want to test out.
The cost of real estate for business is the second largest recurring cost item (first is people) and can often be more than 20% of annual costs. Since even before the pandemic, though fueled hugely because of hybrid work practices, organisations are looking for ways to be smarter with this space and better understand, plan, and manage these expensive costs.
As we talk about ways to optimise cost within an organisation, we often think about cost optimisation with regards to cloud spend, consolidating vendors, smarter hiring and moving more power hungry, space consuming data centres to cloud.
Announced at this year’s Microsoft Ignite Conference, Microsoft Places could be the redeeming feature large organisations need to help optimise their office real estate both now and for years to come.
What is Microsoft Places?
Hybrid work promises us the best of all worlds. The ease and comfort of working from home, the connection and energy of engaging with our coworkers in the office, and the flexibility and opportunity of working where we want. But today, there are still challenges preventing this promise from becoming a reality.
Microsoft Places is a new (coming in 2023) connected workplace platform that promises to deliver on the promise of blending the best of hybrid and in-person work. Microsoft places is a new platform (yes, platform not product), that will deliver solutions that help organisations coordinate where work happens, modernise the office with intelligent technology, and optimise the workplace for the continuing ever-changing needs.
Microsoft Places – Video: Microsoft
I said before, Microsoft Places is not a product – it’s a suite of products and services which will slowly embed themselves across the wider Microsoft 365 services like Team and Outlook which is where people spend their time. In short this is all about making the office space are more responsive to everyone’s needs.
Image: (c) Microsoft
Microsoft Places, aims to intelligently leverage signals, data and building systems to provide a truly connected workspace experience, bringing the best employee experience, through a single, unified platform which builds upon the building and technology infrastructure to create an environment which can adapt to serve the unique and changing needs of hybrid work and allows leaders and facilities management to better plan and manage their real estate.
The key services will include:
Hybrid scheduling – which will leverage common data signals from Outlook and Teams to allow employees to view their week(s) ahead and see when co-workers and others you need to work or collaborate with are planning to be in the office.
Intelligent booking for meetings – will help employees discover available spaces with the right technology to match your meeting purpose and mix of in-person or remote participants. This will also feature recommendations for the shortest commute times, along with prompts that provide guidance on when to leave the office for next meeting and ensuring you don’t get booked back-to-back when you have in person meetings to travel to.
Wayfinding – will help employees quickly find the right meeting room, which is key for larger organisations with many locations, buildings, and rooms. Employees will be able to see live interactive maps from their mobile device that guides them to the to the right location.
Hot desk booking – will mean that employees can see choose where to sit and reserve desks or rooms accordingly. Updates to Microsoft Teams Rooms will bring more inclusive features for hybrid meetings such as auto-framing, content capture and more.
Meet-ups – will allow employees to easily create impromptu meetups and share with others in the office.
Mock-up of Microsoft Places – Image (c) Microsoft
Insights and Data for Leaders
Since all this will leverage the wider Microsoft 365 suite and power of the Microsoft Graph, Microsoft Places will provide a plethora of data driven insights such as utilisation data, energy-saving opportunities, and occupancy trends to better manage the physical space.
This data will help leaders and facilities management make any necessary dynamic space adjustments on a particular day or week such as changing excess huddle rooms to overbooked collaboration rooms or converting meeting rooms into more hot desking areas.
Microsoft Places – Image (c) Microsoft
This data will provide not only trends and usage data but will also allow organisations to better prepare, plan and optimise the real estate they have available and how it’s used to maximum potential. This may include reducing available floors on lighter foot fall days – saving energy expenditures and improving the workplace experience for everyone as well as working with managers and team leaders to better understand office trends around people, and spaces and places across their entire portfolio, creating more flexible, dynamic, and sustainable places that support new ways of working.
Working with Connected Spaces Partners
Since the building fabric, sensors and existing management platforms are critical to the success of a modern intelligent building, Microsoft have partnered with many industry and technology partners. This ecosystem of partners will build on top of the Microsoft Places platform with new and existing solutions, leveraging, and enhancing the rich data of the Microsoft Graph.
The list of partners (which will grow closer to release) include.
Accenture
Appspace
CBRE
Cisco (coming soon with DNA Spaces)
Conseco
EY
Honeywell
Johnson Controls
Swift Connect and
Many more
Availability
Microsoft say that Places will enter preview in early 2023 with general availability later next year. Microsoft will release more information on this over the next couple of months.
Don’t underestimate this announcement. This news is huge in the world of collaboration. Cisco and Microsoft have always been competitors in this space.
For years, customers have been asking for a simpler way to achieve interoperability between Cisco and Microsoft Teams Rooms. At Microsoft’s global tech conference, Ignite last week, their asks may have been answered, giving customers the option to run Microsoft Teams by default on Cisco Room and Desk devices.
Cisco Rooms Powered by Microsoft Teams
Cisco acquired Webex back in 2007 for around $3.2 billion and used their leadership in unified comms to build out a world leading collaboration and conferencing platform. Webex competes with other collab giants including Zoom and of course, Microsoft Teams. This is not simply a “if you can’t beat em join em” thing though – there are some huge benefits to Cisco’s existing customers as well as to Microsoft and Cisco and their partners.
Cisco has been an innovative leader in the collaboration devices category for over two decades and their collaboration products have always been in high demand due to their design, reliability, and security. Cisco Devices for Microsoft Teams will help any organisation considering implementing Microsoft Teams Rooms or those looking to move from Cisco Webex Meetings and Meeting Rooms to Microsoft Teams as their default collaboration and meeting platform, since they will now be able to leverage much of their existing Cisco Devices in the process.
The Teams experience you know, on Cisco collaboration devices you’ll love.
Cisco .
In short, Microsoft Teams certified devices from Cisco promise to unlock greater flexibility and improved experiences for business, IT and employees.
Why this is good for Customers
We see these three key advantages of this newly released partnership for existing and new Cisco customers:
1. Cost Efficiency and Choice
By retaining and re using the investment in Cisco Video Conferencing technology which powers their Webex Meeting experiences today, organisations moving to Microsoft Teams can achieve significant cost savings, not to mention time and effort, from not having to purchase, implement, fit out and deploy new devices.
Organisations that have already got an investment in Cisco Room Devices that will support Microsoft Teams Rooms, will receive a firmware update as part of the update schedule. Once deployed, IT will be able to factory reset the device and choose between the full Cisco RoomOS experience or tailor the software for Microsoft Teams Rooms.
Cisco Devices certified for Microsoft Teams | image (c) Cisco
This provides greater choice both now and in the future as organisations will be able to choose the primary meeting platform that meets the needs of their business without having to rip-and-replace the hardware.
Initially, six of Cisco’s most popular meeting room devices and peripherals will be certified for Microsoft Teams, with more are expected to come later in 2023. The initial wave of devices to be supported are:
(c) Cisco – Schedule teams Room Support for Cisco Devices
2. Simplified and familiar management
One of the biggest headaches when moving to a different eco system and vendor is around how IT provisions, configures and manages meeting room devices.
Managing Teams Room devices is critical to scale. With the Cisco MTR solution, organisations will get all the benefits of Teams Admin Centre (subject to whether they are leveraging Teams Rooms Basic or Teams Rooms Pro) along with access to Cisco Control Hub. Control Hub is Cisco’s unified cloud device management platform with an analytics dashboard to elevate your workspace with environmental analytics and API integrations leveraging the wider Cisco ecosystem including DNA Spaces, your building management. systems and ITSM platform.
This provides consistency for organisations already invested in Cisco Devices who are familiar with Control Hub and a powerful, intuitive management interface for customers who are new to Cisco MTRs.
3. Streamlined, yet, familiar user experience
Since Cisco is baking interoperability into their room systems, it means that not only will users will benefit from a native Microsoft Teams Room experience on their Cisco Room Devices, including full access to the full range of collaborative tools such as PowerPoint Live, Teams Apps and Polls etc, but they will also be able to still natively join Webex meetings on Cisco devices that are enrolled into Control Hub.
“By enabling the Microsoft Teams Rooms experience on Cisco devices, customers have the flexibility to choose the experience they want on the devices they love”.
Cisco
With Cisco RoomOS powering Microsoft Teams Rooms, users will get access to all the intelligence features they have ben familiar with in Webex such as the Frames Camera Mode, which uses individual framing for participants to ensure everyone is seen equally in any meeting. They will also be able to take advantage of Cisco’s audio intelligence [aka noise cancelling] which blocks out unwanted audio distractions. The camera and audio intelligence features will be available through device settings via Room Navigator in case of non-touch devices and the right-side swipe menu on touch screen devices in and out of call.
Being able to continue to leverage these great features, will reduce platform learning curves as well as ensure organisations are leveraging the value and uniqueness of the Cisco Devices.
Why this is good news for Partners
For Partners, like Cisilion who specialise in both Cisco and Microsoft collaboration solutions and services, we have also been longing for this to happen for years.
We see many organisations unable to justify the expense of meeting room technology refresh and re-investment who “simply want to move their meeting and collaboration platform of chois to Microsoft Teams”.
This new partnership means that partners are now able to better serve the needs of their customers collaboration strategy, budget, deployment schedule and hardware preference. There is no doubt that Cisco has some of the best video conferencing devices and technology in the market today, coupled with their phenomenal global support and maintenance that Cisco partners have leveraged to provide the stability and uptime guarantees that their global customers expect and demand.
Why this is great news for Microsoft
Partnership is two way of course.
Cisco is a world leader in video conferencing and meeting room technology. The majority of their Webex room kit includes a wealth of clever AI powered tech such as speaker tracking, noise cancelling, occupancy sensors, environmental monitoring and integrated digitial signage technology as well being the only vendor that creates truly immersive panoramic meeting experiences such as the Cisco Panorama.
In the past, Cisco, Microsoft and Zoom have all collaborated jointly on developing a native video interop technology which uses Web RTC technology, called Direct Guest Join. This, while useful, is really around bringing better inter company collaboration than actually allowing organisations to run Teams as their preferred meeting technology and is limited in functionality.
Customers seem to be wanted to work with their choice of a communications platform of their choice. With the small (and arguably shrinking market share), Cisco are loosing out on revenue and market share in the hardware space by only supporting their native platform. Partnering with Microsoft seems therefore a sensible move and allows them to retain their quality brand and footprint I the enterprise that has been “forced” to invest in other AV vendors in order to deliver against their collaboration strategy with a Microsoft Teams.
Cisco and Microsoft’s new partnership will enable Microsoft to work. Collaboratively with Cisco (rather than compete) and bring a new class of innovation into Teams Rooms by borrowing some of Cisco’s smarts.
We understand that Cisco are already be working with Microsoft to integrate their DNA spaces services into the newly announced Microsoft Places bringing intelligence and analytics on how meeting spaces are used. This forms a major part of Cisco’s Smart Buildings initiative.
Cisco is giving additional flexibility and choice whilst bringing new innovation to Microsoft Teams.
Cisco
Wait – I have loads of Questions…
That’s ok – the news is still hot of the press. Cisco are running a number of partner and customer webinars and sessions over the next month or so.
We have collated the most common and obvious questions and attempted to answer them here:
1. What does this for the future of Webex?
Webex is a great product and trusted by many FTSE 100 organisations, but the market has shifted and is still shifting rapidly which Cisco clearly recognises.
Whilst we don’t have firm figures for market share from Cisco directly, a 2021 report estimated that Zoom had a 46 percent share (though was very consumer skewed), Microsoft a 54 percent share and Webex market share of meetings was around 7 percent.
That said, Cisco does has a strong install base of Cisco Webex, which they will continue to support and develop. Their devices will now be designed to support both Cisco and Mcirosoft Teams meeting platforms. They are committed to continuing to deliver the best user experience with Webex and will continue to invest in developments that optimise the Webex experience when running on Cisco devices.
Cisco have also said that they will provide Webex Meetings free as a ‘backup to Teams’ for customers using their devices as Mcirosoft MTRs.
2. What Cisco devices will not be supported?
Cisco Room Kit and Room Kit Plus will not be supported on Microsoft Teams since these run on hardware platforms that are currently unable to support Microsoft Teams Rooms. Cisco Desk and Cisco Desk Mini are also currently unable to run as Mcirosoft Teams devices due to hardware platforms that are unable to support native Microsoft Teams Display mode.
As such organisations can of choose from the range of non-Cisco Teams Room Certified devices from other vendors such as Yealink, Poly, Logitech or Neat.
Cisco recommend that their customers with medium sized room look to upgrade / invest in the Cisco Board Pro, which in addition to being an interactive collaboration device works, can also serve as an all-in-one meeting room system when paired with a Cisco Room Navigator.
3. How will this effect Zoom, and Microsoft Video Interop?
This will not change the either the in which third party (incuding Cisco, Pexip or Poly) Cloud Video Interop (CVI) work or the way in which the Web RTC based Direct Guest Join services work between the three VC platforms.
Cisco have said that they will continue to work with Zoom, Google, and Microsoft to enhance these meeting experiences. Both Microsoft and Cisco are also committed to continue to enhance our respective WebRTC based guest join experiences. This announcement means that in addition to the above, their devices can now be configured as Microsoft Teams Rooms devices – meaning they can deliver a native Teams user experience.
4. How do we license the Cisco Devices for Teams Rooms
Microsoft Teams Rooms licenses must be purchased directly from your Microsoft CSP Partner or from Microsoft as part of your Enterprise Agreement . For more information, see the core Teams Room Basic and Teams Room Pro pricing information.
5. Do we still need a Cisco Webex license for the device?
No – but Cisco strongly recommend that organisations buy the Webex Suite to ensure they can leverage the full value of running MTR on a Cisco Device. This is because customers who do not purchase a Webex Suite, will only be able to access Webex meetings via direct guest join, and will not be able to take advantage of the advanced management and workspace analytic capabilities of Control Hub.
6. How will Cisco differentiate their MTRS against the other MTRs?
Cisco’s approach here is that their existing (and new) customers will get to experience the best of breed audio and video intelligence features that have previously only been available to customers using RoomOS and Webex Meetings.
Cisco customers that have bought any part of the Webex Suite will get access to Cisco Control Hub device management and fully featured Webex meetings within Microsoft Teams Rooms.
“Cisco will continue to develop our hardware and software as award-winning, purpose built design, supreme hardware quality and broad device portfolio which makes Cisco Devices the best solution in market for Microsoft Teams.”
Cisco.
Want to know more?
With the digital ink still drying on the announcement, Cisilion are here to help our customers think (or re-think) and plan about how this may impact their meetings space, remote work and collaboration roadmaps.
Speak with Cisilion today to find out more about your interoperability journey from Cisco Webex to Microsoft Teams or how to achieve seemless interoperability between the two platforms.
Cisco are also hosting a customer webinar on November 8th – which can be registered for at https://cs.co/MTR
Microsoft has been named a Leader in the 2022 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Security Information and Event Management (SEIM) and was positioned highest on the measure of Ability to Execute axis.
Gartner Magic Quadrant for SEIM 2022
What is Sentinel?
Microsoft’s end to end security takes the best of SIEM and combines that with the best of extended detection and response (XDR) to deliver a unified security operations platform.
Microsoft Sentinel is a scalable, cloud-native solution that provides:
Security information and event management (SIEM) and
Security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR).
Sentinel delivers intelligent security analytics and threat intelligence across the enterprise with integration into almost any application, network and service. Sentinel provides a single comprehensive, intelligent, AI driven solution for attack detection, threat visibility, proactive hunting, and threat response.
It’s unique bird’s-eye view across the enterprise, helps alleviate the stress of increasingly sophisticated attacks, increasing volumes of alerts, and long resolution time frames which often cripples IT and SecOps teams.
Leaders because….?
Microsoft’s vision for protecting organisations from threats is unique compared to competitor vendors/products that only offer a SIEM platform. Just look at how far they have moved in 12 months… Incredible for a fairly new product.
In the annoucement from Microsoft on the recognition they say that “the breadth of coverage only a SIEM can provide and the depth of insight that XDR provides. That means that organisations that leverage Microsoft security solutions have more context to work from to resolve attacks faster. Customers using our XDR capabilities, such as Microsoft 365 Defender, also receive a discount on their data ingestion into Microsoft Sentinel.“
You can access and read the full Gartner report here
Microsoft Surface celebrated 10 years of Surface yesterday, with the 2022 line up, which saw Surface Pro 9 with 5G, Surface Laptop 5 and Surface Studio 2 + being launched.
With what was a modest event, compared to previous years, Microsoft unveiled a handful of new and updated Surface devices including:
Surface Pro 9
Surface Pro 9 with 5G
Surface Laptop 5
Surface Studio 2+
Audio Dock and Microsoft Presenter +
The keynoted by Panos Panay, EVP and Chief Product Officer at Microsoft, kicked off the event taking viewers through the history of Microsoft’s journey with Surface.
Surface Pro 9
Always my favour form factor that makes Surface a Surface is the Pro range. Microsoft Surface Pro 9 tablet was annouced with a new Liberty floral print design in blue colour, which has been created in collaboration with design house Liberty London.
Surface Pro 9 – Image (c) Microsoft
Like the Laptop 5, The Surface Pro 9 comes equipped with Thunderbolt connectors and has a 120Hz, 13-inch PixelSense display which makes it perfect for use both as a hand-held tablet and as a laptop when attached to a type cover keyboard.
Microsoft displayed how the Windows 11 adapts with larger spacing between apps when the keyboard is detached from the tablet. Microsoft showcased just how quickly Windows 11 adapts to the change in use, with larger spacing between apps when the keyboard is detached from the device.
Surface Pro 9 is the first in the series with 5G capabilities. This variant is built on the ARM-based Microsoft SQ3 processor powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon and has a battery life of up to 19 hours.
Other variants of the tablet are powered by Intel’s 12th-generation EVO processor.
The front facing camera is centred and field of view has been widened. The (optional) Surface Slim Pen 2 The tablet has a microactuator inside, which, according to Microsoft means “its ink-focussed view makes writing on the screen feel like writing on paper with digital ink that appears to flow”.
Exlusive also to the Surface Pro 9 5G model, is a new NPU (neural processing unit) which Microsoft said is the most powerful ever in a laptop. The NPU gives the Pro 9 the ability to dynamically focus on the subject at all times, even if the subject is moving. It can automatically creates blur effects and smooth auto framing.
Also provided by the NPU, is a new Voice Focus, which drastically cuts out all kinds of background noise. This was showcased with a leaf blower and hair dryer and seemed extremely impressive (almost magical).
Surface Laptop 5
Laptop 5 was first new product revealed at the event and follows last years Surface Laptop 4, released in 2021.
Surface Laptop 5 – image (c) Microsoft
Following the same popular design size, Laptop 5 was shown being opened with just one hand revealing a new, quieter keyboard which has been further optimised for responsiveness. As you’d expect, the design is sleek and light and available in four colours, including the newest colour, sage green.
Surface Laption 5 is built on the latest Intel EVO platform and now has Thunderbolt 4 ports.
Microsoft says that the laptop is up to 50 percent more powerful than its predecessor. It has up to 18 hours of battery life and features a fast charge feature, which powers up the laptop in 30 minutes to provide 9 hours of battery life.
The Microsoft Surface Laptop 5 has the usual 3:2 PixelSense display for both their 13.5-inch and 15-inch models and feature Dolby Vision IQ to deliver richer details and sharper contrast that are tuned to automatically adjust colour accuracy. The screen is also 120hz.
From an audio perspective, we get Dolby Atmos 3D spatial processing speakers, placed right behind the corners of the keys on the keyboard.
Surface Studio 2+
A superb device that many thought had been forgotten was also brought back to life. Oddly called Studio 2+, rather than 3, this could suggest a design change might come in the future, but for now it keeps the futuristic design of Studio 2 and is beautiful.
Surface Studio 2+ — Image (c) Microsoft
Surface Studio 2+ is powered by Intel i7 quad-core processor and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060, which Microsoft say is “five times more powerful than the original Surface Studio.”
It comes with three Thunderbolt ports in keeping with rest of the line up and has a 4K display with a colour depth of DCI P3. This also naturally features both Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos audio.
The gorgeous 28inch screen can be adjusted with just a one-finger push which allows it to intelligently glide and stay in what ever position works for the mode of work. Leveraging Windows 11’s snap layout feature, the screen is large enough to have four separate 14-inch display windows open at the same time, something designers love.
Audio Dock and Microsoft Presenter+
Two other hardware products were revealed at the event. These were Microsoft Presenter+, which is a Teams remote with a mute button, and Audio Dock with multiple ports and spacial speaker and mic
Windows and Surface Together
Whilst the focus was of course about the new Surface line up, most of which were inline with the predictions, the importance and development of Windows was also front of stage. As such, Microsoft used this event to showcase new features for Windows 11, many designed specifically around Surface and other multi form factor devices like Surface Studio Laptop, a Surface Pro and Studio 2+.
Following up from the Windows 11 22H2 update that is now rolling out, Microsoft highlighted so of the new accessibility features that are built in to Windows 11. This incudes a system-wide live captions from audio content, which automatically appears on the screen when any audio from any source is playing.
Among other accessibility features showcased was system wide voice access for voice control and navigation which include new natural voices.
Pricing and Availability
No official announcement of the price of any new Microsoft Surface product was made during the event.
In what could be good news for Business and VC/Collab partners alike, organisations will soon be able to choose between running Cisco Webex or Microsoft Teams natively on their Cisco Meeting devices and cameras starting in 2023.
This was annouced by Cisco and Microsoft at Ignite today (Microsoft’s annual tech conference).
Both Cisco Cisco Room and Cisco Desk Devices, will be certified for Microsoft Teams, a move annouced a few years ago and then back tracked by Cisco but now clearly front and centre.
“Interoperability has always been at the forefront of our hybrid work strategy, understanding that customers want collaboration to happen on their terms — regardless of device or meeting platform. Our partnership with Microsoft brings together two collaboration leaders to completely reimagine the hybrid work experience.”
Jeetu Patel |EVP and GM |Collaboration |Cisco
What might Cisco bring to the Teams Eco System
Cisco becoming a partner in the Certified for Microsoft Teams program for the first time is a big move for Cisco. The Teams Room eco system is already quite crowded with vendors including Yealink, Poly, Logitech, Neat to name a few.
The quality of Cisco kit often dwafs that of the other vendors out there, ever since their aquisition of Tanburg back in 2010.
Under the terms of the partnership, Microsoft Teams will run natively on Cisco Room and Desk devices starting from the first half of 2023, giving users the option of staying within the Teams experience while taking advantage of Cisco’s video and camera technology, complete with noise removal and built-in intelligence.
“Our vision to make Teams the best collaboration experience for physical spaces is brought to life by our incredible ecosystem of hardware partners. By welcoming Cisco as our newest partner building devices Certified for Microsoft Teams, we are excited to bring leading collaboration hardware and software to market together for our joint customers.”
Jeff Teper |President |Collaborative apps and platforms | Microsoft
What devices will be supported?
In the blog, Microsoft and Cisco say that “Initially, six of Cisco’s most popular meeting devices and three peripherals will be certified for Teams, with more to come.
The first wave of devices, expected to be certified by early 2023, will include the Cisco Room Bar, the Cisco Board Pro 55-inch and 75-inch, and the Cisco Room Kit Pro for small, medium and large meeting room spaces, respectively. Cisco Desk Pro and Cisco Room Navigator will follow.
This is great for customers who want to shift eco systems without having to replace their vast array of meeting room technology where this meets the requirements of course to become Teams Native.
Is the end of Webex?
According to Cisco,Absolutely not..
This is all about choice and recognition of the growth and impact of Teams. Cisco customers will have the option to make Microsoft Teams Rooms the default experiences, and the devices will continue to support joining Webex meetings with all the features and functionality customers enjoy today via interop capabilites.
This move also helps customers and partners better meet their sustainability goals and budgets meaning that they can retain the value, quality and brand of Cisco they like in a Teams Native experience without compromise.
What do you think of this news? Share you comments in below.
At the Meta Connect virtual conference yesterday (11th October), Microsoft announced they will make Windows, Office, Teams, and others such as Dynamics available for the new Meta Quest Pro and existing Meta Quest 2 virtual reality headsets under an expanded partnership they announced with Meta, Facebook’s parent company.
Satya Nadella & Mark Zuckerburg at Meta Virtual Connect Conference
“You will be able to play 2D games with your Xbox controller projected on a massive screen on Quest. It’s early days, but we’re excited for what’s to come. Who knows, the next time we talk, maybe we’ll be playing flight simulator together in VR.”
Satya Nadella | CEO | Microsoft
Partnership – not competition
Rather than compete head-to-head within the metaverse space, Microsoft and Meta announced they are partnering to work together on improving the way in which people collaborate, work and game together in virtual reality. The first part of this partnership will see Microsoft bringing its biggest services — Teams, Office, Windows, and Xbox Cloud Gaming to Meta’s Quest VR headsets.
Microsoft Teams on Meta’s Quest VR headsets. Image (C) Meta
Microsoft Teams will be available on Meta Quest devices, which will allow people to use Meta’s VR headsets for virtual Teams meetings, as an alternative to Meta’s Horizon Workrooms virtual meeting technology.
People will also be able to join Microsoft Teams meetings from Meta Workrooms.
In the future, people will be able to use Meta avatars in Teams for whiteboarding, brainstorming, and meetups.
Users will be able to interact with features across Microsoft 365 apps including SharePoint, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook from both Quest Pro and Quest 2.
It will be possible to stream Windows 365, the cloud-version of Windows 11 to Quest Pro and Quest 2 devices.
Microsoft Intune and Azure Active Directory will be available on Quest devices to provide enterprise security, authentication, and device management.
“We are bringing a Microsoft Teams immersive meeting experience to Meta Quest in order to give people new ways to connect…you can connect, share, and collaborate as though you were together in person.”
Satya Nadella | CEO | Microsoft.
Microsoft 365 in VR. Image (c) Microsoft
Is this the end for HoloLens?
Microsoft isn’t giving up on HoloLens for enterprise application, such as remote assist for Oil and Gas, Health, and Military use, but the Meta partnership will allow Microsoft to branch more easily into consumer and commercial applications whilst achieving a much lower entry point using consumer grade technology and services/platform which exist today.
“Meta complements our commitment to HoloLens,” Microsoft’s Teper says in his post.
Release Dates?
Meta will release the Quest Pro on October 25th for $1,499.99. with regards other Meta services in and across Office 365, we will no doubt here more at the various Tech conferences this week. UC Expo, South Coast Summit and of course Microsoft Ignite
