Category: Business

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#Ignite2019 Day 1 – Key Announcements

Today saw Day 1 of Microsoft’s Annual Ignite conference in Orlando.

As expected there was a lot of hot (mainly Teams and Azure) news announced first thing and after reading many of the blogs, tweets and linked in posts, I’ve tried to summarise and include all the main (and my favourite) highlights (so far) in this one post.

This will likely be out of date before I finishing writing it, as there will be other “smaller” announcements through the day and into the rest of the week. We have also seen some other key big announcements from Microsoft partners and even their “competition” all Microsoft focused of course. 

1. Microsoft Teams: Wealth of new features and integrations from Cisco and Zoom. 

As expected, Microsoft Teams got some big announcements today, with the much anticipated roll out (this week) of secure private channels. Also announced was early 2020 roll out of pinned channels, multi-window chats and meetings. Microsoft also announced new integrations with To Do, Microsoft Planner, Project, Outlook, Yammer and the newly updated Power Platform. 

2. Breaking down the vendor wars with improved meeting room and interop between Cisco and Zoom

Microsoft and Cisco have announced a partnership to work together to simplify the interop between Microsoft Teams Rooms and Phone System with Cisco Webex Room devices and IP voice gateways respectively and includes three new initiatives to help customers to get more out of their current investments.

  1. Cloud Video Interop (CVI):  Cisco Webex will introduce an interop solution that will be certified as a Microsoft Cloud Video Interop (CVI) solution and will allow Cisco Webex Room devices and SIP video conferencing devices to join Microsoft Teams meetings with a reliable interop experience.  Coming early FY20.

  2. Direct guest join, for meeting room devices: Cisco and Microsoft are also working together on a new approach that enables meeting room devices to connect to meeting services from other vendors via embedded web technologies.  They announced a new “direct guest join” capability from their respective video conferencing device to the web app for the video meeting service.

  3. Direct Routing for Phone System:  At the heart of Microsoft Teams Direct Routing are Session Border Controllers (SBC). Since many customers also use Cisco Networking technology including SBCs and want both companies to provide joint solutions that do not require replacement of key infrastructure. Support for Cisco as a certified SBC is due in CY2020.

Zoom and Microsoft also announced that they have worked together to enhance conference room interoperability and simplify how users connect to third-party meetings.

This Zoom and Microsoft collaboration provides interoperability between the Zoom conference room solutions to provide streamlined meeting experiences. This will mean Zoom Rooms will be able to join Microsoft Teams meetings and Microsoft Teams Rooms will be able to join Zoom meetings, all without the purchase of additional licenses or third-party services. This is coming early CY2020.

 

3. Microsoft Flow is renamed to “Power Automate”

So this might take some time to grow on me, but Microsoft Flow, is being renamed to Power Automate. The name change was announced to allow the platform to “better align” with the wider Power Platform. Microsoft Flow (Sorry Automate) is also getting new a bunch of new features including Robotic process automation (RPA) for automating complex processes that span legacy and modern applications.

 

4. New: Microsoft Endpoint Manager

Microsoft Endpoint Manager is an integrated solution that promised to centrally and securely manage all of the endpoints across an organisation.  This the next major milestone for Intune and will bring together Microsoft Intune and System Center Configuration Manager functionality while also adding a new intelligent actions and analytics.

Endpoint Manager will deliver a unified, seamless, end-to-end management for Windows, Android and Apple devices, apps, and policies without the complexity of a migration or disruption to productivity.

Expected in Q1 of 2020, Microsoft have also said they will be making Intune available to all existing SCCM customers for Windows PC management, meaning that Starting on 1st December 2019, customers can start to co-manage these devices in Microsoft Endpoint Manager, and start using cloud-powered features like Autopilot and Desktop Analytics.

 

5. New Chromium-based Edge: Jan 15 2020 Release

Actually one of my favourite #Geekouts right now – Microsoft has said that January 15, 2020 will be be for official release date of their new Chromium-based Edge browser for Windows and Mac. Microsoft announced that a “release candidate” build is available to download today in more than 90 languages which can be installed alongside the Canary, Dev, or Beta builds you may already be running or testing.

If you are a big Google Chrome fan, I urge you to try this out – its a really great browser and has loads of enterprise features built right in including native integration with your Office 365 environment.

https://www.microsoftedgeinsider.com/ 

 

6. New: Office Mobile app for iOS and Android

I’ve been using this for a while (well a week or so) and today Microsoft is making this generally available for preview. The new Office Mobile app for iOS and Android combines Word, Excel, and PowerPoint functionality into a a simple single mobile app, similar to the old Office Hub on Windows Phone for those that remember it!. The new app has a really useful comes with an “Actions” pane, with easy access to common tasks, including scanning documents.

 

7. New: Project Cortex – a Microsoft 365 application that leverages AI to help better organise company data 

Microsoft today, announced Project Cortex, the first new Microsoft 365 app since the announcement of Microsoft Teams that uses AI to analyse business data and in turn create a kind of neuro-knowledge network. The app will be able to organise data into different projects and customers, and make it easier for employees to find important info that can be buried in documents, conversations, or videos across their hybrid IT environment. This to me sounds a bit like Delve on steroids and one I need to read a bit more on (as I’m sure you will too), but it seems to be able to recognise data in documents and pull them together into actionable and useful information.

The follow video is quite an easy watch and shows some of the work they have done with early adopter customers https://youtu.be/K0Y15WKXuws

More in-depth info can be found here: 

 

Hope you found this useful – please share your favourite announcements, small or large…. 

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Did you know there’s a “Business” version of the SurfaceProX

With all the news and media about Surface Pro X, it’s easy to miss that Microsoft have also released a dedicated business version called… Well Surface Pro X for Business which has one core feature aimed at business rather the consumer.

What’s the Difference

On the surface (ok dad joke) the business version isn’t much different from the consumer version. It’s the same spec, same processor, same pen and battery etc, but where it differs is in its security, which is unique to the new Surface business line up in this latest generation.

The Surface Pro X for Business is what Microsoft are calling a “Secured-core PC.”

What’s a Secured-core PC?

In short, this new technology is powered by Windows Defender System Guard and protects the Surface Pro X from firmware hacking such as LoJax

With Secured-core, your organisation can now prevent hackers from tampering or altering with the UEFI (or BIOS) which in the future I think will be a pre req for IoT type devices as well as business decides of all types.

There are 3 levels of protection provided by Secured-Core which make the Surface Pro X ultra secure and essentially shields Windows 10 from attacks and unauthorised access which target the device before Windows has booted or during shutdown.

  • Firmware attacks
  • Kernel attacks and
  • System integrity attacks

Who’s Secured-core ideal for?

Microsoft claim that the target market are people that work in the most data-sensitive industries such as government, financial services, and healthcare but really this is suited to any organisation that ultra concerned with security.

Just Surface?

No… This is by no means limited to just Microsoft decides. Lenovo, Panasonic, Dynabook, Dell, HP etc are all behind this new approach

Find out more

  • Microsoft have published the following information about Secured-core here
  • Thurrot have published this information
  • Computing have this to say

What do you think about Secured-core? Needed? or Over kill?

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New AI capabilities promise to transform the physical retail space

OK so a short blog this time and about something I don’t usually write much about… Dynamics

Microsoft have announced 2 major and significant new features coming to its #Dynamics 365 platform which will essentially bring Dynamics 365 AI into real stores.. Which is actually really really cool..

Aimed at bringing AI driven insights to physical retail stores

These two new retail-focused apps named are called “Dynamics 365 Commerce” and “Dynamics 365 Connected Store”.

  • Dynamics 365 Commerce is a solution that will unifiy back office, in-store, call center and digital experiences all within a single interface with “intelligent” features.
  • Dynamics 365 Connected Store will help companies improve the physical retail experience by analysing data from video cameras and IoT sensors to help show traffic flow, dwell zones, dead areas etc allowing retail spaces to better visualise and plan their store front layouts and adjust based on where people foot fall and grouping occurs.

Dynamics 365 Connected Store will help companies improve the physical retail experience by analysing data from video cameras and IoT sensors to help show traffic flow, dwell zones, dead areas etc allowing retail spaces to better visualise and plan their store front layouts and adjust based on where people foot fall and grouping occurs.

This could add real competitive edge to Dynamics retail customers

This release wave will also see a new Dynamics 365 Product Insights, a new application with Dynamics 365 which will use product telemetry to help companies “build richer relationships and improve engagement.”

Learn More – There is a free Microsoft Business Applications Virtual Launch Event on the 10th October in which the world will learn more.

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What are Flow and Power Apps all about ?

I was in a client meeting earlier today and we were talking about process automation, their journey to Microsoft 365 and shifting workloads from on-premise to cloud. During the meeting, the words “Microsoft Flow”, Microsoft PowerApps and “Power Platform” came up a handful of times until one of my customers said “Sorry, don’t mean to sound dumb, but what is Flow and PowerApps?”

Now then…I am not an expert in either of these (well yet anyway), but I have been playing around with these for a little while and just wanted to summarise (in-case there are others that simply don’t know) what these are and why you might/should care.

In Summary, Microsoft’s PowerPlatform is made up of a handful of core services, including Flow, PowerApps, Power BI and Dynamics 365

Microsoft Flow

Microsoft Flow is a cloud based services that can helps you (yes the user not just admins) automate almost any process. Flow is accessed from the Office 365 App Launcher and it does indeed look and feel like it is part of Microsoft Office 365 but actually it is more part of the Business Apps products group and more aligned, in essence to more to Power BI and Dynamics 365.

With Microsoft Flow you can easily build a set of steps that link together to form a process (a bit like If this then that) that start when a certain event happens or is trigger. These events can be a scheduled time, the update or creation of data (for example a file, record or an email) or they can be triggered manually (there’s even Flow buttons you can create). .

All the processes developed in Microsoft Flow use a browser based Flow Designer tool and enable users to create Flows without the need to do any coding (though you can so think “No or Low Code”.

There are loads (hundreds in fact) of template Flows to get you started and i was amazed how quickly it was to set-up a simple “trigger” flow that would detect an email containing a simple string (from a particular sender), send me an alert and add the email body to a Microsoft OneNote page.

Example Flow

I’m not going to go in to “how to create and use” Flows here as the links below will help get you started quickly…definitely worth a play around with one lunchtime!

Power Apps

PowerApps is also part of this “No or Low Code” Power Platform and really they shouldn’t be seen as separate products since they tie in and work really well together.

PowerApps essentially helps people create the interface into the business processes (Flow) that they would like to implement. PowerApps are often used by organisations to replace paper based processes – its similar in nature, if you are familiar with the kinds of apps and forms that Lotus Notes used to offer….

Who’s experts in this space.

There are quite a few dedicated Microsoft Partners in this space, but a couple of good sites and references to learn more (ones i am using anyway) are listed below

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