If you wernt able to catch Satya Nadella's keynote at Microsoft Ignite 2024, here are a couple of Highlights that caught our eye.
Satya kicked off by reiterating the company mission, which aligns to the Copilot narrative.
The keynote underpinned the mission and focussed on the 3 data and AI platforms that are driving innovation and there were a number of insights and announcements within each platform.
Here are a few that really caught our eye.
Before getting to the announcements within Copilot, Satya fronted his keynote by saying that Microsofts interest and invesment in security had never been more important, security is a team sport and shared details of the Security Future Initiative.
The SFI is a multi-year commitment to advance cybersecurity protection. It focuses on AI-based cyber defenses, fundamental software engineering, and advocating for stronger application of international norms.
Purview was specifically called out as being pivotal to providing correct governance and the largest ever hacking event was announced - Zero Day Quest. This new program provides new opportunities for the security community to work hand in hand with Microsoft engineers and security researchers to share, learn, and build community in order to keep everyone safe.
Onto the key Announcements:-
The first platform (The UI for UI - Copilot) includes Copilot, Copilot Studio and Agents.
A number of organisations have now invested in Copilot and the use cases have been well documented online https://aka.ms/MicrosoftAIStories.
Copilot Pages, a multiplayer canvas that enables you to ideate and collaborate was showcased as well as developments within the Copilot for M365 suite. Much of the capability has already been well publicised, but the leap in capability with Excel was highlighted. Satya stated that what Copilit with Github did for developers, Copilot woll do the same for Data Analysts.
The main announcements were around actions, agents and analytics.
Copilot Actions looks like a great addition to the existing Copilot capabilities. Think Outlook rules in the age of AI. It can automate everything from Scheduling emails to requesting feedback on a document. Its a very simple way to scale your day to day capacity and productivity.
https://aka.ms/RichArtifactsinPages
You can use agents within the context of your team, scoped with specific roles with specific permissions that can act as an extension to your team. For example a facilitator agent will chair, minute and follow up on meetings for you.
Its a s simple but powerful way to simplify and improve productivity across personal and business processes. These agents supercharge Copilot adding specialized skills and knowledge while automating specific tasks A number of prebuilt agents already exist - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-copilot-studio/template-fundamentals.
Copilot will empower every employee and Copilot studio agents will transform every business process.
Copilot Anaytics was announced allowing businesses to get better insight on Copilot usage, enabling businesses to map copilot usage to specific business outcomes.
Microsofts goal is to create a distributed computing fabric and have already launched the copilot plus PCs into the market as well as Windows365 in the Cloud PC category, allowing you to stream PC's to any device. W365 is growing rapidly (triple figure growth annually).
The next big step and announcement involved Windows 365 Link. Simple, Secure, purpose built device for W365. Adminless, passwordless, expands PC category to connecting you directly to your cloud PC without any data residing on the device. These devices will be available in April next year.
The final platform was Copilot & AI stack, exposing every layer of the tech stack to customers to enable them to build their own Copilots, sharing examples of Nasa, who have built their own earth copilot.
Toyota have also building their own Copilot, enabling engineers to ask copilot any question 24/7.
The main announcements were:-
Microsoft now 60+ Data Centre regions, more than other provider. Their commitment to building these sustainably continues as they aim for their carbon negative objectives. Satya announced that they had build 2 new data centres, built from low carbon timber which reduces the carbon footprint by 35% when compared to a steel DC construction.